Jacques Faitlovitch
Jacques Faitlovitch, an Ashkenazi Jew born in Łódź, Congress Poland, studied Ethiopian languages at the Sorbonne under Joseph Halévy. He traveled to Ethiopia for the first time in 1904, with support from the French banker Baron Edmond de Rothschild.
He traveled and lived among the Ethiopian Jews, and became a champion of their cause. In 1923 he opened a Jewish school in Addis Ababa.
A Zionist, he settled in Tel Aviv in the 1930s and had links with Yitzhak Ben Zvi and with the revisionist movement. Dr. J. Faitlovitch bequeathed his valuable library to the Tel Aviv Municipality, with the collection now located at the Sourasky Library of the Tel Aviv University.
A film about Faitlovitch's life was planned by Six Point Films. A film entitled Jacques Faitlovitch and The Lost Tribes, directed by French filmmakers Maurice Dorès, Sarah Dorès was screened in 2012 and later in various film festivals.
