Ethopian Jew directs Institute of Semitic Studies in Princeton.
By: Jeff Milgram
Think of Ephraim Isaac as a bridge between geographical regions, cultures, religions and languages.
As an Ethiopian Jew, Professor Isaac, director of the Institute of Semitic Studies in Princeton, bridges the divide between Africa and the West, Africa and the Middle East, blacks and whites and between Christians, Muslims and Jews.
It’s quite a lot for one man, but his résumé lists enough accomplishments for several lifetimes.
Professor Isaac speaks 17 languages, was the first faculty member appointed to Harvard University’s Department of African American Studies, translated Handel’s "Messiah" into Amharic the main language of Ethiopia and helped set up a literacy program that taught 1.5 million Ethiopians to read since the mid 1960s.
If that wasn’t enough, Professor Isaac also organized conferences on the Dead Sea Scrolls and relations between Muslims and Jews in Yemen, helped settle a dispute between archbishops of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and took part in the Northern Ireland peace process.
After a 1995 speech at the eighth annual National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education, Professor Isaac was described as "a living saint wise and inspirational" in an audience questionnaire.
"Many notable scholars were enticed to study Africa’s rich past by your searching research and your inspired teaching," said Andreas Eshete, president of Addis Ababa University on July 24 when he conferred an honorary doctorate on Dr. Isaac. "As in your current work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, you explore the largely uncharted terrain of the connections between Ethiopia and other cradles of civilization."
He’s proud of all of his accomplishments, but Professor Isaac wants, in the end, to be remembered as a mensch Yiddish for a profoundly decent person.
"In a sense I am a universal man," Professor Isaac said. "I was once described as a cultural millionaire."
He has an insatiable interest in music, languages, religions, culture and peace work.
"Maybe I’m deficient in sports and movies," he said.
But he wants to be known as a good human being.
"When everything is said, some know me as a scholar, a philosopher, a thinker. What I’d really like to be known in my life as a man who tried to do good," he said.
He has done good. "I testify that your sincere determination to resolve our dispute through calm dialogues and your action to bring us together led to our accord that will never be forgotten," Archbishop Abba Gabriel, a member of the synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, wrote in a letter to Professor Isaac in 1992.
In the 1960s, while he was a college student in America, Professor Isaac helped launch a literacy program in Ethiopia. He is currently active in the Peace and Development Committee for Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.
"We’re trying to persuade the government to create a Ministry of Peace," Professor Isaac said.
Professor Isaac is the son of Moses Isaac, a Jewish silversmith and Hebrew teacher from Yemen who was serving as a ritual slaughterer to a Yemeni community in Ethiopia.
"My father knew the Hebrew Bible by heart," Professor Isaac said.
His father agreed to stay in Ethiopia if he could find a woman who would convert to the Yemeni form of Judaism, the most observant in the world, Professor Isaac said.
He found a Oromo woman who was willing to convert. They married and had seven children. Professor Isaac is the fifth.
He was educated in Ethiopia and was given a scholarship to go to college in the United States. He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, music and chemistry from Concordia College, a master’s from Harvard Divinity School and a doctorate in Near Eastern languages from Harvard.
Professor Isaac was the first professor hired in Afro-American Studies at Harvard. Princeton Professor Cornel West was one of his students.
He has taught at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, Howard University Divinity School, Lehigh University and Bard College.
His research spans biblical Hebrew, the late Second Temple Period in Israel, rabbinic literature, Ethiopian history and the origin of the African slave trade.
Professor Isaac has been a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities and at the Institute for Advanced Study.
There is a scholarship in his name at Harvard.
He has translated The Book of Enoch from a 14th century Ge’ez manuscript and is currently working with faculty members at the Princeton Theological Seminary on translating Enoch from fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Book of Enoch heavily influenced Jesus and his disciples, Professor Isaac said.
"We cannot understand the Judaism of 2,000 years ago and early Christianity without The Book of Enoch," he said.
Professor Isaac is fiercely proud of Ethiopia, its history and the friendly, dignified people who live there.
It was in Ethiopia’s Afar region where scientists discovered the remains of "Lucy," the oldest human who lived more than 3 million years ago.
The country’s rich history is woven with the legends of Israel’s King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the lost Ark of Covenant, said to rest in Axum, Ethiopia’s first capital, and the birth of Christianity, the rise of Islam and the story of King Lalibele, who, according to tradition, built 11 rock-hewn churches that are still standing today.
"The roots of the Semitic languages are in Ethiopia," Professor Isaac said. With a history that goes back at least 3,000 years, Ethiopia has a rich collection of manuscripts written in Ge’ez, the classical language of Ethiopia.
It’s also never been colonized, he pointed out, which has made Ethiopia a symbol of black dignity, he said.
With drought, starvation, a communist government and wars, Ethiopia is emerging from a difficult period in its history.
"It’s a beautiful country, with high mountains, low valleys, deep gorges," Professor Isaac said. "And the climate is about perfect."
With a combination of wildlife and historical sites, Ethiopia may be ripe for exploitation as a tourist destination, Professor Isaac said.
"It’s a country with great economic potential," he said.