I don't have cable so I haven't seen the show, nor am I Ethiopian, but I have done a fair bit of research on Ethiopia in connection with my linguistic studies. It does indeed seem that the Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel, as Schultz pointed out; formerly they were known as Falasha, but that is now considered pejorative) are a very old community, though their origin is not entirely uncontested (see, for instance, the work of ethnomusicologist Kay Kaufman Shelemay, who researched the roots of Ethiopian Jewish liturgy
in situ shortly before the revolution and came to the conclusion that it probably had at least partially Christian origins). There was indeed a lot of political manipulation involved in the recent (post-Western "discovery") history of the Ethiopian Jewish community, culminating in the airlift to Israel in the early 1980s that took the vast majority of Ethiopian Jews out of the country. They are not really treated equally in Israel, either (see the movie "Live and Become" for a little snapshot of Ethiopian Jewish life in Israel; it's quite well done and fair, and stars some members of the Ethiopian community in Israel).
I have no idea how many Jews there currently are in Ethiopia, but they seem to have been historically concentrated in Ambober (near Lalibela) and other places in the north. Their original languages, however, weren't Amharic, Tigre, Tigrinya, or other Semitic languages common to the north, but one of the Agaw languages (Cushitic, in common with the majority of
Muslims in Ethiopia, though Christians also speak these languages; apparently famous singer Ejigayehu "Gigi" Shibabaw's father was an Awgni/Agaw native speaker, and she has sung in this language on some of her material, in addition to singing Ethiopian church songs), Qimant. I have no idea when they switched to Amharic, but Qimant has been dead for a while, and since at least the 1950s (the earliest recording of an Ethiopian Jewish liturgy that I have, recorded by famous Ethiopianist linguist Wolf Leslau) they have used Ge'ez as a liturgical language, just like the Christians do. So things like this contribute to some confusion as to their ultimate origin, at least on the part of outsiders.
At any rate, I wouldn't guess that the Jewish areas were somehow looked over in the process of evangelization, as they have always lived among Christians. Rather, I would postulate that Ethiopian Orthodoxy has always had a very strong connection to the Hebraic roots of our faith, so they were probably respected on that level and seen in a different light than the other Cushitic people who, before before converting to Christianity (and later Islam), practiced traditional forms of polytheism or henotheism. That's just a guess, though, and I do hope one of our lovely Ethiopians shows up to give the real story.
Anybody catch this program? I'm sure there will be repeats.
So instead of God parting the Red Sea it was...wind setdown! That is really stretching it there...
BTW for your Ehtiopians, on the show there was a historian doing DNA samples of the Jewish community in Ethiopia. According to the show Judaism only represents 1% of the population and there is one last living Jewish rabbi which seems to be a woman. So did this spot get missed on evangelizing? I was kinda bewildered by the fact there are Jews in Ethiopia, there must be some sort of political motive there...
