Henry Aaron Stern (0 – 1182885), a German, converted from Judaism to Anglican Christianity, being baptised in 1840.
Stern would later travel to Ethiopia, arriving on this date on March 10, 1860, in a bit to convert the Beta Israel Ethiopian Jews, in that day known as the Beta-Israel or Falashas, to Christianity. Stern would provide some of the earliest in-depth descriptions of life and religion of the Ethiopian Jews.
.The mission was financed by the London Jews Society. Stern would be credited for being the first explorer to take photographs in Ethiopia. Stern would return to London to report his findings, and published his experiences in his book “Wanderings among the Falashas in Abyssinia: together with a description of the Country and its various Inhabitants(1862).”Stern would return to Ethiopia again in 1863 and encounter the most troubling of circumstances, being imprisoned by Ethiopia’s Emperor Tewodros. Stern would remain captive. along with other British
and Europeans, until being rescued by British forces in the 1868 Abyssinian Expedition.
Stern wrote of his time in captivity in “The Captive Missionary: being an Account of the Country and People of Abyssinia – Embracing a narrative of King Theodore’s life, and his Treatment of Political and Religious Missions. 1868” Stern would not return to Ethiopia. And for the most part, the bid to convert the Ethiopian Jews was unsuccessful.
(Sources: “One People, One Blood: Ethiopian-Israelis and the Return to Judaism”; “Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography”)
(Photo Caption: “Henry Stern Taken Prisoner by Tewodros II in Abyssinia in 1863” This illustrates. dated 1753, was published in 1875)
Henry Aaron Stern
