Is he Falash?” is one of the first questions husband and wife Amos Kamil and Madeline Till face when people meet the Ethiopian baby they adopted last summer.

For those who know the couple are Jewish, the assumption is that the black little boy is a child of the Falash Mura, the Ethiopian people who have asserted their Jewish roots and have been immigrating to Israel for 25 years.

The answer for little Itai and dozens of other Ethiopian children adopted by families in New Jersey is “no.” They are simply a lucky few out of the thousands of children in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and elsewhere in the country whose parents have died, many from AIDS, or who simply could not afford to keep them. Though the details about their families are often cloudy, they are believed to be Christian.

There was a festive gathering of such children with their adoptive parents this past Sunday, Jan. 7, in Maplewood, organized by Randi Fried of West Orange, among whose four children are two daughters adopted from Ethiopia.

Till and Kamil, who live in Montclair, and about 29 other families were joined by a number of Ethiopians who live in the area who have pledged to support them in giving their children a strong sense of the culture from which they came. Kamil is the recently appointed director of marketing and communications for the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey.

At least five of the 30 local adoptive families involved are Jewish. A number of them said, like Till and Kamil, that they were very impressed by the dignity and decency of the Ethiopians they encountered in Israel and that those encounters sparked their interest in adopting an Ethiopian child. There were jokes about how beautiful the Ethiopians are and what a good infusion of genes this could be for the Jewish people, but there was also serious discussion about their innate qualities.

“Children are cherished in their culture,” Till said. “Even when these kids have lost their parents at a very young age, they have a deep sense of self-confidence.”

Among the guests at the gathering was Beniam (Ben) Bekele, an Ethiopian now living in New Jersey who helped Till and Kamil when they went to Addis Ababa last July to bring Itai home (see related story).

Bekele has strong ties to the local Jewish community. He works as a custodian at Bnai Keshet, the Reconstructionist congregation in Montclair (where the Till and Kamil family are members), and at the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union lower school campus in West Orange while he studies to become a radiology technician. For the adopted children, as it was for himself, he said, coming to the United States offers opportunities they wouldn’t have back in their homeland. He is hoping to bring his mother and his siblings over, though the cultural adjustment would be hard for them — as it was for him.

Asked about this connection between Jewish adoptive parents and children from his home country, he said, “The Ethiopians have a good feeling about Israel and the Jewish people. I haven’t heard anyone who has problems with this.”

As for his own role in helping the Kamil and Till family and other local adoptive parents, Bekele has been around Jews enough to agree that it was beshert, or meant to be.

According to the United States Department of State, there are several U.S.-based adoption agencies authorized by the government of Ethiopia to provide adoption services, and accreditation for several others is pending. Private adoptions are permitted in Ethiopia but discouraged by Ethiopian authorities because they may bypass the process and protections put in place by the government there.

According to Immigration and Naturalization Service statistics, there were 731 U.S. adoptions from Ethiopia in 2006, up from 441 the year before. (The State Department’s Web site offers more details on requirements and procedures for adoption from Ethiopia.)

Rahel Worku, who came from Ethiopia in 1992 and lives now in West Orange, was at the Jan. 7 gathering, where the guests feasted on traditional foods from the African nation. She and other members of the community said they are hoping to establish a cultural center at their church in West Orange. The adoptive parents and their children would always be welcome, she said, to come to the center to learn about Ethiopian culture and share more of its delicious food.