Ethiopia Street

The main street that I take from the Albright to HUC is HaNevi'im Street ("Street of the Prophets"), which is one of the major east-west courses through Jerusalem. After you've crossed into West Jerusalem but before you reach the city center, you come upon Ethiopia Street, a narrow and leafy street named for the Ethiopian Church at its end. According to 1 Kings 10:1-10 the queen of Sheba came to visit King Solomon and was so impressed with his wisdom and wealth that she gave him a blessing and talents of gold. End of story.

Ethiopian tradition, however, maintains that Solomon gave as well as received. In this case he sent the queen home with a bun in the royal oven. When this son Menelik grew up, he visited his father in Israel, and unbeknownst to Menelik, some of his men carried off with the Ark of the Covenant. To this day, Ethiopian Christians believe that the Ark is held in the Ethiopian town of Aksum, guarded by monks who have sworn to protect it. Also the emperors of Ethiopia (until 1975) claim to have descended from Menelik and therefore King Solomon.

That's almost everything I know about the Ethiopian Ark tradition (with a little help from this month's Smithsonian magazine). Finally, I might mention that there are many Ethiopian Jews as well, and during the 80's Israel evacuated many of them to this country in Operation Moses. Despite such a clever name (Moses...exodus...get it?!), the humanitarian impulse led to resentment among displaced Palestinians and also antipathy among the Orthodox who didn't think the Ethiopians were Jewish enough. But that's another story; back to the church.

Here's the main entrance to the church. Atop the gate is an inscription in Ge'ez, the language of Ethiopia, flanked by the Lion of Judah, a reference of course to the country's Israelite origins:

When my friends and I arrived, we had to remove our shoes before entering. Inside the church is another building that is closed to the public. There is a veiled entrance on each of the four sides, and in front of this one was a cantor singing and clapping his hands.
There was actually a service going on while we visited, but all the action was behind the veil, so we could actually move pretty freely along the aisle that surrounds the altar building like a moat. Around back we came upon the women's seating area:


The pillars along the aisle all have a painting of an Ethiopian saint. This one is St. Tekle Haimonot, who founded the Debre Libanos monastery. According to the caption, those spikes were meant to keep him vigilant during the day and night. Sometimes one spike just isn't enough.

One other interesting thing on Ethiopia Street is the house of Eliezer ben Yehuda, who is the father of modern Hebrew. Born in Lithuania, he came to Israel in 1881 and expanded Hebrew from a sacral language to one that was available for everyday use. His house used to have a plaque in front of it (you can see where it had been posted), but it was stolen by the Orthodox, who object to Hebrew's use as a secular language.

And last but not least, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that my favorite falafel stand is located a mere block away from Ethiopia Street on the Street of the Nevi'im. It's runs by these guys from Yemen and was recommended to me by a local. You can see the crowd it attracts -- for good reason!