Bridging Generations: A Sigd Pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Ethiopian-Israeli Community

On Monday November 4th, the 29th day of Cheshvan, Ethiopian-Israelis from across the country gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the Sigd festival. Sigd is a holiday unique to the Ethiopian Jewish community, commemorating both the giving of the Torah and the communal gatherings held in Jerusalem in the days of the prophets Ezra and Nehemiah. In Ethiopia, the day was marked with a half-day fast and a pilgrimage to the top of the nearest mountain. There, the community's religious leaders would chant from the Torah and lead the community in prayer.

With the mass aliyah of the Ethiopian Jewish community in the 1990's, celebration of the Sigd festival shifted to Jerusalem. Today, Ethiopian Jews from the Amhara region of Ethiopia hold their ceremonies at the Western Wall, while Jews from the Gondar region of Ethiopia gather at the Sherover Promenade in Talpiot, which overlooks the Old City. Security officials estimated up to 35,000 attended this year's ceremonies on the Promenade.

Among those at the Promenade was a group of 15 young women from Beersheva. These women are national service volunteers participating in JDC's Project SHAHAM. Project SHAHAM is a program designed to provide support to families who are experiencing high levels of social distress, including single parent families and families with unemployed breadwinners. In particular, SHAHAM is targeted towards Ethiopian-Israelis who have special difficulties integrating into Israeli society.

The SHAHAM volunteers, many of them of Ethiopian origin themselves, serve as a bridge to Israeli culture and society for participant families. They explain the school system to bewildered parents and help them navigate Israeli bureaucracy. In addition, they attempt to instill in the Israeli-born and often culturally alienated children a respect and appreciation for Ethiopian-Jewish traditions.

One volunteer, 19-year-old Yael, attended the Sigd festival in Jerusalem with Shmuel and Esther (aged 10 and 11 respectively), two of the children she works with. It was Shmuel and Esther's first trip to Jerusalem, since, with eight children and two unemployed parents, it is difficult for their family to travel. But their parents thought it was important for the children to experience the Sigd pilgrimage first-hand. According to Yael, "You can't convey the message [of Sigd] to the children 'in the air.' They need to see it for themselves. It's something that really strengthens them, to see the whole community gathered here today. It's something they need to see."

The night before the pilgrimage, SHAHAM sponsored a Sigd program in Beersheva which Yael attended along with the Shmuel and Esther's family. The event served both as an introduction to SHAHAM and as a Sigd celebration that emphasized building bridges between the generations.

Yael explained the motivating factors behind SHAHAM's Sigd program, "One of the points of SHAHAM is to cultivate pride in [Ethiopian Jewish] traditions and build bridges between the younger and older generations, allowing [the younger generation] to see the traditions as something nice…we want to introduce cultural pride, so we learn about the Ethiopian holidays. This is one of the only holidays that's unique to Ethiopian Jews, so we want to mark it, to give [the younger generation] a taste of what life was like in Ethiopia."