Sigd Celebration Brings Ethiopian Jewish Holiday to Baltimore

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Sigal Kanotopsky
Sigal Kanotopsky (Courtesy of the Jewish Agency for Israel)

For many Jewish people, the period between Simchat Torah and Chanukah is a time with few significant holidays.

But for Ethiopian Jews, the 50th day after Yom Kippur — this year, on Nov. 13 — marks a special time for their community: the often-overlooked holiday of Sigd. Also known as Mehlella or Amata Saww, the holiday celebrates the acceptance of the Torah and serves as a day of study and prayer.

On Monday, Nov. 20, the Macks Jewish Connection Network hosted a Sigd celebration at the Weinberg Park Heights JCC in hopes of familiarizing more people with the holiday and giving Ethiopian Jews in the area a place to celebrate with their community.

The New York Public Library article “Sigd, the Pilgrimage Holiday of Ethiopian Jews” describes Sigd’s origins as a pilgrimage holiday dating back to the mid-15th century. Traditionally, Beta Israel, as Jewish people were known in Ethiopia, would wear clean, white clothes and would journey to the tops of nearby mountains with ritual significance to pray.

In more modern times, as My Jewish Learning notes, Sigd is a day of Torah study and fasting. Participants read from the Octateuch, Beta Israel’s traditional scriptures, and end their fast with a midday feast, music and dancing.

“It’s about individual purity, prayer and fasting,” explained Sigal Kanotopsky, who gave a lecture about Sigd at the Baltimore community celebration. “Through prayer, we communicate our intention to God that we will go back home to Jerusalem.”

The Northeast regional director of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Kanotopsky was born in an Ethiopian village, with her family immigrating to Jerusalem when she was 5 years old. She continues to celebrate Sigd each year with her husband and children, even in the United States.

According to JNS.org, this year’s Israeli Sigd ceremony was significantly smaller than normal due to the country’s ongoing conflict with Hamas. Sigd has been recognized as a state holiday in Israel since 2008. The official ceremony was largely attended by Jewish Ethiopian spiritual leaders and rabbis, but many still made the trip to Jerusalem to celebrate with their friends and family.

As Baltimore is one of the communities under her jurisdiction as JAFI’s Northeast regional director, Kanotopsky was contacted by a Baltimore-area shinshinim and was asked to speak about Sigd as part of the local celebration. Baltimore’s Jewish community has held small events to celebrate Sigd before, but Kanotopsky said she hoped to bring it to a wider audience.

According to My Jewish Learning, the Beta Israel in Ethiopia lived in isolation from other Jewish communities for several hundred years. Ethiopian Jews were first accepted under the Law of Return in 1975 by then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, with 200 Ethiopian Jews being airlifted to Israel in 1977.

In the following decades, thousands of more Ethiopian Jews came to Israel. There are now more than 160,000 Israelis of Ethiopian descent.

“In Ethiopia, Sigd has a sort of longing to it,” Kanotopsky added. “The longing to reunite with your brothers and sisters in Israel, in Jerusalem. In Israel, we gather for Sigd having fulfilled that dream, to remind us of why our ancestors made that dream come true.”

Especially in times like these, as Israel’s war against Hamas rages on, she said that it is important for people to know about the country’s Ethiopian Jewish community, their culture and how smaller Jewish communities can support each other during times of strife.

“The values of Sigd demonstrate our natural responsibility to each other,” Kanotopsky said. “While our dream came true, there are many Jews that are still yearning and longing around the world.”

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