Chapter 5 - Religious Education and Initiation

Summary

AS WE HAVE seen, a central role of Betä Ǝsraʾel monkswas to train the next generation of the religious leadership of thecommunity and initiate the novices into the priesthood. Thus, a central roleof Betä Ǝsraʾel monastic centres was to serve asreligious schools. The severe purity laws observed by the monks necessitatedtheir disciples to undergo a prolonged purification process before enteringthe yämäloksewoččsəfər (monastery) and maintain their purity, tothe extent possible, for the entire duration of the studies. As a result,novices lived in the monastic compound and seldom visited theirrelatives.

When discussing Betä Ǝsraʾel religious instruction, onecan differentiate between two different stages: a basic education focused onliteracy and based on the memoriza-tion of key religious texts which wasprovided to young children, and a novitiate for the purpose of becoming apriest or a mälokse (monk). Novices who did notcomplete their education or were not initiated were recognized asdäbtära, i.e., religious scholars.

Basic Religious Instruction Given to Children

In his monograph on the Betä Ǝsraʾel, Flad (1869, 32)describes the basic traditional education provided by the monks to thecommunity in the following way:

When several [Betä Ǝsraʾel monks] live together, oneof them undertakes the education of boys—girls never receive anyinstruction. Their course of education consists only of learning to readthe Ethiopian character and committing the Psalter to memory. Boys whointend to be monks, Kaahen [kahən, priests], orDebtera [däbtära], must learn the book‘Sauasau,’1 a kind of Ethiopian grammar or dictionary, inorder that on Sabbath and feast-days they may be able to translate intoAmharic, for the people, those portions of the law which are always readin the Ethiopian tongue [Geʿez].

Halévy (1877a, 231), who visited the Betä Ǝsraʾelvillage of Ayäkwa near Hoḫ^wärwa dur-ing hisvisit to Ethiopia in 1867–1868, relates that there was only onePsalter manuscript in this village of twenty-seven families, and that allthe children learn to read it.

Both accounts seem to imply that a relatively large number of children wouldreceive basic education, and not only those destined to become clergymen.This stands in contrast with Stern's (1861, 179) assertion, publishedin the same decade as the two above-mentioned accounts, that nobody in theBetä Ǝsraʾel village of AbbaƎnṭonyos knew how to read.