Henry Aaron Stern

Henry Aaron Stern (*11 April 1820, Unterreichenbach near Gelnhausen; † 13 May 1885, Hackney, London) was an Anglican missionary and priest of Jewish origin. After converting to Christianity in London in 1840 and studying with the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews, he dedicated himself to missionary work, especially among Jewish communities in the Middle East and the Beta Israel (Falashas) in Ethiopia.

Stern became especially known for his arrest and imprisonment by the Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros II in 1863, which stemmed from political tensions between Great Britain and Abyssinia. During his multi-year captivity, he endured severe torture. He and his fellow captives were eventually freed in 1868 by a British expeditionary corps. After his return to England, he worked as a leading missionary for his society until his death. His work Wanderings Among the Falashas in Abyssinia (1862) is considered one of the key sources on the life of the Falashas before their conversion to normative Judaism.

Henry Aaron Stern was born as Heinrich Aaron Stern on 11 April 1820, in the village of Unterreichenbach, near Gelnhausen in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, as the youngest son of Jewish parents, Aaron and Hanna Stern, and grew up in humble circumstances. At age twelve, his family moved to the Jewish quarter of Frankfurt am Main. Stern’s father hoped he would become a doctor, but Heinrich was inclined to pursue a trade career. At seventeen, he was sent to Hamburg for commercial training and there encountered a Jewish missionary.

In 1839, Stern received an offer for a commercial position in London. However, upon arrival, he found the company bankrupt. During his stay in London, Stern converted to Christianity under the influence of Alexander McCaul and was baptized on 15 March 1840, at the Palestine Place Chapel. He then trained as a printer at the Operative Jewish Converts’ Institution and began his theological studies at the Hebrew College of the London Jews’ Society in 1842, intending to become a missionary to the Jews.

Stern was appointed missionary to the Jews of Asia Minor in 1844 and then sailed to Palestine. Shortly after his arrival, he was ordained as a deacon on 11 July 1844, by Michael Alexander, the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem and a converted Jew. He subsequently traveled to Baghdad, visiting the cities of Babylon and Basra. In 1847, he embarked on a mission through Persia, where he preached not only to Jewish but also to Muslim audiences. After returning to England, he was ordained as a priest on 23 December 1849, at the Chapel Royal in Whitehall.

In 1850, Stern returned to Baghdad and remained there until 1853. During this time, he wrote Dawnings of Light in the East, which compiled biblical, historical, and statistical information on his travels in Persia, Kurdistan, and Mesopotamia. In 1853, he was appointed head of his society’s branch in Constantinople, where he served for three years. After the Crimean War, he undertook a mission to the Karaite Jews in Crimea and later traveled to Sanaa and other locations in Arabia. He was accompanied on these travels by his wife, Charlotte Elizabeth, the second daughter of Charles Henry Purday, whom he had married on 2 April 1850.

In 1859, Stern turned his mission to the Beta Israel, known as the Ethiopian Jews. These were not actual Jews, but dissidents who had broken away from Orthodox Christianity due to political upheavals. They had no connection to Judaism but were mistakenly identified as Jews by European travelers due to their rejection of the New Testament and their Old Testament customs, despite not seeing themselves as Jews, nor were they regarded as Jews by Ethiopian Christians.

The emperor allowed Stern to preach among the Beta Israel, under the condition that the Ethiopian Patriarch Abba Salama gave his approval. The patriarch agreed but demanded that converted Beta Israel members join the Ethiopian church, a notion Stern internally rejected as he held a strong disdain for the Ethiopian church. This disdain was evident in his work Wanderings Among the Falashas in Abyssinia (1862), in which he referred to Emperor Tewodros as "his black majesty."