Ethiopian Jews celebrated a holiday yesterday in Jerusalem that was for hundreds of of years exclusive to them and unknown to Jews elsewhere due to the Ethiopian Jewish community’s isolation – Sigd, a commemoration of the giving of the Torah combined with remembering Jerusalem and praying to return there. Take a look.
Photo: Reuters
Ethiopian Jews celebrated a holiday yesterday in Jerusalem that was for hundreds of of years exclusive to them and unknown to Jews elsewhere due to the Ethiopian Jewish community’s isolation – Sigd, a commemoration of the giving of the Torah combined with remembering Jerusalem and praying to return there.
Thousands of Ethiopian Jews, many joined by non-Ethiopian friends, flocked to Jerusalem from across Israel to attend the ceremony – lead by Ethiopian Jewish religious leaders known as kessim (priests; the rough equivalent of rabbis) – held on a promenade overlooking the Temple Mount.
Ha’aretz published a long series of photos taken of the ceremony yesterday, which you can view here.
For those of you a bit confused by this seeming doubling of a Torah-giving commemorative holiday, Shavuot did not come to be associated with the giving of the Torah until much later in its history. It began exclusively as a harvest festival and stayed that way for hundreds of years before it evolved into being the anniversary of the giving of the Torah.
Sigd's existence may be a reflection of that evolution or may simply be completely independent of it, instituted by a Jewish community that had lost touch with the rest of world Jewry at a time when literacy rates were very low and books as we know them did not yet exist.