Dreams are very important, says Chaim Avraham, a deceptively slight 33-year old immigrant from Ethiopia.

Permanently wounded while serving with the IDF in Lebanon, Chaims left eye, which was hit by shrapnel, seems unfocused, as if looking inwardhis right eye is penetrating and sharp. The porch of his tiny apartment, in an Ethiopian neighborhood in the town of Yavneh, is strewn with prayers books and chairsit has become a makeshift center for prayer and study, and for the renewal of Ethiopian Jewish devotional practices abandoned during the years of immigration and turmoil. If you do the commandments in purity," Chaim says, "then God reveals secrets to you in dreams, gives you wisdom and understanding so that you know how to act. To Chaim and his friends, receiving guidance from God is crucial, because there are no instruction books for what they are trying to do and no oneat least no one living--who can show them the way. Chaim, along with the ten or so young and middle aged Ethiopian Israelis, men and women, who have gathered together to tell me their story, are the disciples of Abba Beyene Demoza, a God-intoxicated ascetic and healer who was the last in a six hundred year lineage of Ethiopian Jewish monks called Maloksai in Amharic. Abba Beyene, who arrived in Israel in January 1990, spent the last decade of his life in the town of Ashdod, praying and reciting psalms most of his waking hours, sleeping only two or three hours a day, and fasting until midnight every day of the week, when he would eat a simple meal of legumes soaked in water and vegetables. During the last years of his life, young Ethiopians had begun to gather around Abba Beyene. By the time of his unexpected death in the year 1999, at the age of 60, 8 or 9 young people were living with him in a bomb shelter in Ashdod that had begun to serve as an ad hoc yeshiva, attempting to emulate both the calm serenity of his faith and his fierce devotion to God. Another dozen or so came frequently for prayers and lessons, and 20 disciples were scattered across the countryin Netanya, Hadera, Ashdod and elsewhere. Since their communitys mass emigration to Israel, the unique religious heritage of Ethiopian Jews, which had developed in isolated rural villages, had seemed threatened to the point of extinction by its shattering collision with modernity, urban poverty, and rabbinic Judaism. For the first time, the spiritual imagination of a substantial core of young Ethiopian Jews, or Beta Israel, had been set on fire. Now, six years later, his disciples are searching for a way to bring Abba Beyenes message of purity and faith to a God-starved world. One of them, Kes Ambacho, who dropped out of school at the age of 13 and eventually moved to the shelter to study with Abba Beyene, has been ordained as a religious leader by the older generation of kessoch. Inspired by their teacher, whom they consider a tzaddik of rare stature, they are hoping to renew the ancient monastic tradition, which included both men and women amongst its practitioners, and was the backbone of Jewish religious life in Ethiopia. We will continue all the way, to the very end, says Shoshana, a woman in her forties with smooth skin and bright eyes, whose grey-streaked hair is covered by a white shawl. What my father taught me, she continues, referring to Beyene, I will never give up. In Ethiopia there was a forest, where the moloksai could isolate themselves. Chaim adds. Here there are many temptations. But with the help of God we will continueat least one or two of us.

Like most of Beyene's disciples, Moshe, a husky 31 year old who works in a print factory during the day and devotes his nights to study and prayer, initially sought out Beyene because of his reputation as a healer. "I had a serious illness," he says, "one that you can die from. I had lost my appetite for food completely. I heard about Beyene from my father, and then I dreamt about hima man dressed all in white, standing in a very high place. When I first saw him, in the shelter, he seemed to me an angel, not a man. Within a week I came back with a suitcase to join him. 'Welcome', he said. Within two days, I was eating with gusto, miraculously on my way to recovery." What Beyene's disciples want now is a place of their own in the countryside where they can pray, studyand teach. So many people are searching to find a way out of the physical and mental problems that are torturing them," says Chaim. "We want to help lead people out of their distress. We want to raise the Torah up anew. We want to teach our children, so that they should not forget our ancient prayers and the melodies. All the stories of the holy monks?" Chaim adds, referring to the stories of miracles and self- sacrifice that have been passed down as part of Beta Israels spiritual heritage, "Theyve already done what they have done. But what about us? We can be like them, if we are given the chance. We want to prove it in reality, in tachlis." Most Israelis, and even some Ethiopian Jews themselves, have never heard of Beta Israels monastic tradition, though for centuries monks served as the communitys undisputed spiritual leaders. Although some of the Essenes, a radically pietistic Second Temple sect, which some researchers, such as anthropologist Shoshana Ben Dor, believe might have influenced Ethiopian Jewry, practiced celibacy, the mainstream rabbinic tradition definitively rejected celibacy and monasticism. In Ethiopia, however, in the 15th century, a famously charismatic holy man, Abba Sabra--according to some historical testimonies a Christian monk who converted to Judaism, according to others a Jew who had spent long years in an imperial prison-introduced monasticism to the Beta Israel. Although Westerners usually associate monasticism with the Catholic or Orthodox Church, in 15th century Ethiopia monks were often rebels, according to Professor Steven Kaplan of Hebrew University, who clashed with the increasing hegemony of official, imperial Christianity, rejecting as idolatrous, for example, the cult of Mary or the custom of bowing down to the cross. As late as the mid-19th century, there were Jewish monastic communities with as many as 200 members although monks and nuns also lived at times in small groups on the outskirts of Jewish villages. Still others moloksai lived as hermits, sleeping in caves in isolated regionsaccording to legend, sometimes accompanied by lions sent by God who served as their personal guardians. Jewish monks trained the Kessoch the Jewish spiritual leadersand also solved legal or familial disputes, and prayed for the welfare of the community. They also presided over ritual sacrifices which the Beta Israel offered during holidays, as prescribed by the Torahone nearly inaccessible pilgrimage site for Ethiopian Jews is a charred crater, where heavenly fire is said to have flamed down from above in order to consume a Jewish offering. During the second half of the 19th century, the Jewish monastic tradition in Ethiopia suffered a three-fold blow. In 1858, Protestant missionaries from England began to target the Beta Israel. Recognizing the critical role of the moloksai, they repeatedly

attacked their legitimacy, stressing in their propaganda that Jews in other lands had no tradition of monasticism, and no longer followed the laws of ritual purity or offered sacrifices, two practices emphasized by the Beta Israel monks. The appearance of the missionaries aroused fears of forced conversion and may have been at least partly responsible for inspiring Abba Mahari, universally revered by Ethiopian Jews as a holy man and prophet, to attempt to lead 5000 of his people across the Red Sea to the holy land in 1862. Maharis trek ended in disaster, with many Beta Israel dying of disease or hunger in the northern region of Tigre. The worst was yet to come. In 1888, a four year famine later known as the Kufu Ken (Terrible Days) began. The famine apparently started when Italian colonists in Eritrea brought diseased cattle into Ethiopia from India. Within half a year, ninety percent of the cattle in the Ethiopian highlands were dead, and without oxen, the peasants could not plow their fields. As in the story of the ten plagues, more disasters ensued. A severe drought, which lasted several years, followed the cattle plague. Dervish militias crossed from Sudan and raided the weakened highlands region repeatedly, taking whatever food and goods the famine had left. Lions and leopards, emboldened by hunger, entered the villages to hunt for human prey. Historian Steven Kaplan estimates that as much as two thirds of the Beta Israel population, and possibly even more, perished during the Kufu Ken. The moloksai, who depended on tithes from the villagers for their survival, were hit even harder. In the aftermath of the Kufu Ken, some of the remaining monks, according to oral history accounts, were told by God to leave monastic life in order to fulfill the now urgent command of the hour replenishing the depleted Beta Israel population. The third strike against monasticism came from friendly fire. In 1904, Jacques Faitlovich, the French Jewish scholar and linguist who devoted much of the remainder of his life to Ethiopian Jewry, arrived in the Ethiopian highlands. Faitlovichs aim was to gain the Beta Israel recognition as Jews and support from world Jewryin order to do that, he emphasized those aspects of religious life that the Beta Israel had in common with other Jews. Consciously or unconsciously, he conveyed an antimonastic and anti-sacrificial message which was noted by community leaders. By the time Beyene Demoze was born in the early 1940s, only a handful of moloksai remained. According to his disciples, Beyene showed signs of exceptional piety at an early agehe refused, for example, to nurse from his mother's breasts while she was menstruating. At the age of seven he was sent to train with elderly moloksai who lived in the Simian Mountains. When I met with Abba Beyene in 1993 in the abandoned synagogue in Ashdod that he had occupied until moving to the bomb shelter, he told me that he had been ordained in order to provide for the last remaining monk in the region who needed meat to strengthen him but was too weak to slaughter for himself; monks are allowed to eat meat only when slaughtered by another monk. But Beyene also told his disciples that he had once been set to marry, but that God ordered him in a dream to break off his engagement or face death. Abba Beyene spent years living alone in the Simian Mountains as a hermit, descending eventually to Weleke, his home village, only after being ordered by God to return. By that time, Abba Beyene had earned recognition as a holy man, healer, and even a prophet. He learned Hebrew and received dream instructions saying that prayers should now be recited in Hebrewhis practice for the remainder of his life,

was to pray in Hebrew during the day and in the traditional Geez during the long hours of the night. In the early 1980s, he traveled through the Gondar region telling villagers that the time had come to leave for the holy land, until he was captured, imprisoned, tortured and eventually released by the communist government. Micha Feldman, the Jewish Agency representative in Ethiopian and a central figure in the immigration saga, recalls meeting Beyene in Weleke in 1986, He was living in a storage shack, maybe a meter and a half by a meter in size and crowded with ritual objects, at the edge of the village. He refused to shake my hand because of his concern for ritual purity. My teachers knew that they would never reach the land of Israel, that the ingathering would coincide with the end of the molaksai, Beyene told me in 1993. Beyene himself was instructed in a dream to stay in Ethiopia, rather than go to Israel "A land in which purity and impurity are all mixed together, but begged God to be allowed to see the holy land. According to his students, permission for Aliyah was granted from above only on condition that he fast continuously, which he did until the end of his life. Once in Israel, Beyene, already reasonably adept in Hebrew, took stock of the form of Judaism he encountered here. According to his students, he loved Pirkei Avot and admired the devotion to learning and prayer that he witnessed in Israeli yeshivot. But he did not accept rabbinic dictum when it conflicted with his own understanding of Jewish practice, which was primarily based on the five books of Moses, and not on the Talmud. He believed it forbidden to use electrical appliances, like refrigerators and hotplates, left on before Shabbat, and as for Tefillinin an interesting parallel to the Esseneshe believed that they should contain the Ten Commandments, which he saw as the essence Judaism. Most of all, he did not understand why the rabbis did not keep the laws of purity prescribed by the Torah. From his austere headquarters in Ashdod, Beyene counseled hundreds of Ethiopian immigrants who came to him in states of crisis. Whereas traditional Ethiopian healers used magical means, including the appeasement of malevolent spirits called zaar to cure mental and physical illness, Beyene viewed such techniques as idolatrous. His message was simple: Have complete faith in God, pray to Him with all your heart, in your own words, follow the Torahs commandments, and you will be healed. Controversiallysome in the Ethiopian community say dangerously-- Beyene opposed reliance on doctors, hospitals, and medicines, apparently considering them another form of magic. Instead, he asked his petitioners to undertake a traditional three to seven day fast in which they consumed only raw garbanzo beans soaked in water. During the period they were fasting, he would analyze their dreams to see if their process of healing and penitence had been completed. Petitioners would sometimes bring him gifts of money, which he would distribute to the numerous poor families who approached him for help, keeping nothing for himself. Beyene never wavered from his own ascetic practices. He would pray standing up for as much as five hours at a stretch. On Shabbat, he did not sleep at all, praying through the night. A few years before his death, he developed infections in his legs that dripped with pus, adamantly refusing medical attention, and continuing his custom of standing. It was a test, his disciples say. Eventually one day, the infections just disappeared. But several days before Passover 1999, Beyene fell ill again. Within three days, still refusing medical attention, he died. .

The life to which Abba Beyenes students aspire provides a rare glimpse into the heart of the Ethiopian Jewish tradition. From the outside, Ethiopian Judaisms emphasis on the Biblical laws of purity, for exampleincluding stringencies that even the most Orthodox rabbinic Jews abandoned after the destruction of the Temple is difficult to understand. But refracted through the example of Abba Beyene and his fiery young disciples who teach, sounding like devotees of the Hasidic teacher Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, that Crying out to God, with tears, with your whole heart is a key practice, purity and impurity take on new meaning. At the core of Beyenes teaching is the belief that God reveals Himself, primarily through dreams, to all who prepare themselves and long for His guidance. To receive God's spirit, you must be pure as if entering the Temple. If you have had a seminal emission, says Moshe, You have to purify yourself, and then God can come close to you. Not all of Beyenes students agree on whether it is possible to maintain his radical path while negotiating the complicated realities of present day Israel. Kes Legelem of Yavneh, 53 years old, knew and admired Abba Beyene from the time he was a small child in Ethiopia, and was asked by the monk to watch over my students in the event of his death. He does not believe that the tradition of monasticism can or should be renewed, or that illnesses can be treated today through faith alone. Unfortunately, most of us are filled with sin, with impuritiesour prayers dont rise straight to heaven. Its impossible to say to people today, Dont go to the hospital. Kes Ambocho, a handsome 25 year-old with three young children who lives in a threadbare apartment in Ashdod, is surprised to hear that some of Beyenes other disciples wish to become Moloksai. You cant just become a Molaksai. It must be from God. You have to dream it three times. I don't believe it can happen these days." Even working full time as a Kes now seems an impossible dream to Ambacho. In 1993, the sixty or so Ethiopian Kessoch were granted salaries by the Religion Ministry to serve their people, after a campaign of demonstrations. But although many of the elderly Kessoch have died or become infirm since then, and there are a number of cities with large Ethiopian populations and no religious leaders, the Ministry refuses to recognize the eight new Kessoch, including Ambacho, who have been ordained in Israel. Ambacho recently approached the Ministry of Religion, asking for help. "'Are you a rabbi', they asked me. 'No, I am a Kes,' I said. 'Then we don't want you' they told me." Ambacho now makes a meager living as a gardener and street sweeper. "What can I do?" he asks. "I take my broom and sweep." Chaim Avraham and his friends refuse to be discouraged. They say they will fight to gain recognition for young Kessoch such as Ambacho. Not weighted down by familial responsibilities, they can devote themselves to becoming close to Godand developing a message so simple and powerful that it can be spread among the poor and downtrodden. They fast Mondays and Thursdays, and eat only food which they themselves prepare, according to the stringent laws of purity. Once a month, on the night of the new moon, they travel to Jerusalem and spend the entire night praying at the Western Wall. Chaim dreams, meanwhile, are pointing him in the direction of spiritual greatness. "Abba Beyene came to me three times in the same night," he says. 'You will fail,' he told me. 'No, I won't,' I answered him each time. It was a sign."