The
article first appeared on Jewish Ideas Daily and is reprinted with their
permission.
"Last year," said Orly Sahalo, a 21-year-old Israeli of Ethiopian descent, “I
arrived only at the end, and I missed out.” She was talking about the Sigd
festival, which recently took place in Jerusalem.
In Ge’ez, the
liturgical language of Ethiopia, “Sigd” means prostration. On the Sigd,
Ethiopian Jews, before their mass immigration to Israel, would ascend a
mountaintop, pray, read from the Bible, and affirm their desire to return to
Jerusalem. Now they are in Jerusalem, and the Sigd has become a national holiday
in Israel.
This year, Orly Sahalo was not going to miss out on the full
Sigd experience. Encouraged by her boyfriend, the 28-year-old Ethiopian-Israeli
photographer Gidon Agaza, she turned up early at the Armon Hanatziv Promenade in
Jerusalem, where thousands of Ethiopian Israelis were gathered to celebrate the
holiday.
“I had goose bumps,” she said. “I saw all the women dressed in
white, lifting their hands, and the kessotch” – the traditional religious
leaders of the Ethiopian Jews – “using their instruments,” the drums and
trumpets accompanying the prayers, “just as it is written in the
Bible.”
Indeed, this year Sahalo also attended preliminary educational
events before the festival, “so that I could understand the holiday. I wanted to
be able to answer questions about the Sigd if people happened to ask me, and to
know for myself what was practiced in Ethiopia.”
One of those educational
events was a talk on the eve of the festival, at Bar-Ilan University, by Mula
Zerihoon, a 40-year-old kes who was ordained in Israel. The Sigd, he explained,
“is based on the times of Ezra and Nehemiah, when, after 70 years in exile, the
Jews returned from Babylon to the Land of Israel. In Jerusalem, they held
a day of fasting, repentance, teaching of the Torah, and prayer.”
In
Ethiopia, he recalled, “when we climbed the mountain, we felt Jerusalem in our
heart of hearts. This deeply impacted our Judaism. Jews came from afar, two or
three days, on foot, on horses, and on mules, in order to have the chance to
hear Torah from the kessotch. The people learned and were
strengthened.”
THE BOOK of Nehemiah states that after the Jews returned
to Jerusalem, “all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the
broad place that was before the water gate, and they spoke unto Ezra the Scribe
to bring the book of the Torah of Moses, which the Lord had commanded, to
Israel.”
Today, that broad place, Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv Promenade,
overlooks the Temple Mount and offers an unobstructed view of the walls of the
Old City. On the day of this year’s Sigd, dozens of kessotch from across Israel
assembled there beneath colorful umbrellas on a platform draped with the flags
of Israel and Jerusalem.
Chanting in Ge’ez, they praised God and asked
for forgiveness and blessings for the Jewish people. They read selections from
Nehemiah, Exodus and Deuteronomy to the congregation, dealing with the giving of
the Ten Commandments and the return from exile. They first read in Ge’ez and
then translated into Amharic.
THROUGHOUT THE morning and afternoon, Gidon
Agaza snapped pictures of the kessotch and worshipers.
“I have been
attending the festival for 13 years,” he said.
“Each and every year that
I come, I am moved anew to see mothers praying from the heart. I have a large
archive of Sigd celebrations. I need these photographs in order to explain to
people the Ethiopian community and its traditions.”
At a nearby teaching
tent, Shoshana Ben-Dor and Ziva Mekonen-Degu offered instruction in the order
and meaning of the day’s prayers to some 80 visitors. Most of them were young
adults. In collaboration with the kessotch, the two women have been preparing a
mahzor, a prayer book, for the Sigd, in Ge’ez, Amharic and Hebrew. It is the
first of its kind, slated to be published by next year’s festival. They hope it
will make the holiday accessible to more people.
Ben-Dor believes that
all Jews, not just Ethiopian Jews, can benefit from the holiday. “The Sigd
brings together elements that exist in several Jewish holidays in a way that no
other Jewish holiday does,” she says. “It has aspects of repentance – asking for
mercy and hoping that God has forgiven us – that are found in the High
Holidays.”
In addition, she explains, “it has the mourning for Jerusalem
found in Tisha Be’av and the return to Zion found in Yom Ha’atzmaut [Israel’s
Independence Day]. And it has the covenant and the giving of the Torah, which
are found in Shavuot.”
In sum, she says, the Sigd “is the only day in the
entire calendar that brings these all together – and includes an annual renewal
of the covenant. Thus, there is an importance in the Sigd for all
Jews.”
Orly Sahalo was especially impressed by the activities for
children and young adults that she saw at Armon Hanatziv.
“They will
learn,” she said, “and this holiday will have a continuation.” She was also
“moved to see the kessotch distributing handfuls of Jerusalem soil to the
worshipers. People are able to take a piece of Jerusalem home with them, just as
in Ethiopia they were able to take home soil from the mountain on which the Sigd
was held.”
The author is a writer and teacher whose works have appeared
in a number of literary and historical journals.