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Ethiopian Jewish holiday of Sigd gets a boost in the US with picture books and new resources
(JTA) — Synagogues and Hebrew schools in the United States looking to help their communities celebrate Sigd, an Ethiopian Jewish holiday, have gotten a helping hand this year, thanks to Sigal Kanotopsky.
Kanotopsky is the first Ethiopian Jew to hold a regional leadership position at the Jewish Agency for Israel, a nonprofit agency associated with the Israeli government that promotes immigration to Israel. Now overseeing the agency’s operations in the northeastern United States, she was 7 when her family arrived in Israel in 1983, part of a wave of Ethiopian immigrants who had made their wave largely by foot, through Sudan and countless hardships.
The wave of Ethiopian immigration brought — Sigd, which takes place 50 days after Yom Kippur and celebrates yearning for Israel — to the Jewish state. (This year, the one day festival begins Tuesday night.) Advocacy from within the community led to Israel adopting Sigd as a national holiday in 2008. But it remained largely under the radar in other countries — and even to many in Israel — until the last few years, amid a growing appreciation for Jewish diversity.
“In a year that saw renewed and widespread understanding of the importance of the Movement for Black Lives, celebrating Sigd provides American Jews with a unique opportunity to activate our sense of the racial diversity of the Jewish community,” Ruth Abusch-Magder and Beza Abebe wrote in 2020 on Kveller. “By celebrating Sigd here in the U.S., we send a powerful message that we are all part of the global Jewish peoplehood.”
Last year, PJ Library sent “Pumpkin Pie for Sigd,” a picture book about an American in Israel finding comfort during Thanksgiving by joining her friend’s Sigd celebration, to thousands of American Jewish families. And now, under Kanotopsky’s leadership, the Jewish Agency has released what it is calling “Sigd in a Box,” a collection of digital resources that communities can use to teach about Ethiopian Jewish music, food and customs.
“By accessing Sigd-in-a-Box, Jewish communities across the globe can grow closer — first learning about one another’s unique customs and cultures, and then even serving as de facto ambassadors for Sigd,” Kanotopsky, who has been based outside Philadelphia since last year, said in a statement. She is visiting a handful of communities in person to share Sigd traditions.
The growing recognition of Sigd among non-Ethiopian Jews has generated complicated reactions for some. “It is a strange feeling to see all the many invitations and publications about Sigd celebrations on social media,” wrote Shula Mola, an Ethiopian-Israeli scholar spending the year in the United States, in a Jewish Telegraphic Agency op-ed last year. She recounted how she had been ambivalent about Sigd’s embrace in Israel, remembering the pressure she felt to be an ambassador of a culture that many Israelis long seemed unwilling to learn about and knowing that many Ethiopian Jews there continue to feel marginalized.
This year, Israel’s population of Ethiopian immigrants has grown. In the latest development in a painful and protracted immigration saga, hundreds of Falash Mura — descendants of Ethiopian Jews who converted to Christianity about 200 years ago and who are relatives of the Beta Israel Jews who were airlifted to Israel in 1991 — were permitted to move to Israel over the summer. But an estimated 10,000 remain in Ethiopia, and the Jewish Agency has been working with the Israeli government to bring more of them to Israel.
“Sigd is a wonderful opportunity for our global Jewish community to become closer as we celebrate this moving day of communal reflection,” said the agency’s chairman, Doron Almog, in a statement about the new Sigd resources. “It’s a time for us to learn more about the rich Ethiopian Jewish culture and also honor the difficult journey many made — and many who are still waiting to make – to Jerusalem.”
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UK adopts sweeping measures against antisemitism in schools
(JTA) — The U.K. has adopted sweeping measures to combat antisemitism in English schools, prompting pushback from the country’s largest teachers’ union.
The move came after a new government-commissioned review found that three in five Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism in English schools. The most common incidents were jokes, stereotypes and comments about Jewish people. About half of respondents who witnessed or experienced antisemitism said the incidents were not reported, most often because they did not think they would be taken seriously.
The government on Wednesday accepted 27 recommendations from the report, including dedicated antisemitism training for leaders and staff, improved recording of antisemitic incidents and moves to build a better understanding of Jewish life, identity and contemporary antisemitism.
The government commissioned the report following a spate of high-profile attacks on Jews in Britain, including an attack on a synagogue in Manchester last year that left two men dead.
The report’s author, Sir David Bell, the vice chancellor of the University of Sunderland and former chief inspector of schools in England, recommended addressing antisemitism distinctly from other forms of racism. He argued that antisemitism was a “uniquely complex” problem because of intertwined racial and religious dimensions, since Jewish identity can encompass both an ethnicity and a religion, along with expressions of prejudice that hold all Jews responsible for the actions of Israel.
The government will also encourage English schools to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The definition is supported by many mainstream Jewish organizations and has been adopted by 47 countries, including the U.K., but critics say that it conflates some forms of antisemitism with criticism of Israel.
British Education Secretary Lucy Powell called Bell’s review a “generational moment” and said that “implementation is now my priority.”
However, the National Education Union, the largest union representing teachers, lecturers, teaching assistants and support staff in the United Kingdom and Europe, raised concerns on Wednesday about recommending the IHRA definition for schools. NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said in a statement that the definition “risks deepening the problem rather than tackling it, and actively undermining efforts to confront antisemitism.”
“The IHRA’s contested framing risks blurring the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and the genocide in Gaza, leaving teachers with uncertainty when they need clarity,” said Kebede. He cited a risk that “children who cannot critically explore issues through classroom discussion will instead seek their answers in online and unsafe groups.”
Kebede also encouraged Britain’s Department for Education to strengthen guidance on all forms of racism, not only antisemitism, saying that 65% of teachers report they have not received any antiracism training in the past year.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, an umbrella organization for British Jewish communities, celebrated the antisemitism report and the government’s adoption of its proposed measures. The group specifically praised the report’s “clear recommendations that schools and local authorities follow government guidelines by adopting the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism as a tool to deepen understanding of contemporary antisemitism.”
“We remain concerned about undue external influence on schools driven by narrow political agendas, and tendentious materials seeping into schools and increasing disharmony, and we will continue to press for vigilance against this,” said the Board of Deputies.
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Orthodox Jewish man stabbed in midtown Manhattan
(New York Jewish Week) — An Orthodox Jewish man is in stable condition after being stabbed on Wednesday evening in the Diamond District of midtown Manhattan. Police are investigating the attack as a possible hate crime.
Police told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident as a possible antisemitic attack, and Manhattan Shomrim — the Jewish community watch group — has asked people to share footage as police search for the suspect. No arrests have been made.
The victim was identified by police as a 26-year-old man, and Orthodox Jewish outlet COLLive identified him as a resident of Crown Heights, the neighborhood that is home to the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement’s headquarters.
He was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition. Police said they were called at about 5:50 p.m. on Wednesday after the man was stabbed in the back with “an unknown sharp object” on 47th Street near Fifth Avenue. ABC7 reported that the victim told investigators he believed he was stabbed with a needle or syringe.
According to the Chabad website, which published an interview with the victim, he is a recently ordained Hasidic rabbi named Joseph, who commutes to Midtown each day to wrap tefillin with Jewish merchants. The attacker, Joseph told the website, was a woman who seemed to be following him prior to the stabbing.
The attack comes as Jewish New Yorkers have been targeted in more than half of the hate crimes committed in New York City this year, despite making up about 12% of the city’s population.
In July, an assailant stabbed two men on the Upper West Side, including one who was leaving a synagogue, while yelling “Allahu akbar,” and was charged with committing hate crimes.
Louis Keene contributed reporting.
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VIDEO: A Hasid gives us a tour of Morocco in Yiddish
דער ירושלימער יוטוב־שטערן וועלוול קירשנבוים האָט לעצטנס אַרויסגעשטעלט אַ ווידעאָ אויף ייִדיש פֿון אַ פּרעכטיקן וויזיט, וואָס ער האָט געמאַכט אין מאַראָקאָ. עס באַגלייט אים זײַן חבֿר אַבֿרהם פּרץ.
אינעם ווידעאָ זעט מען ווי קירשנבוים דאַוונט שחרית מיט די אָרטיקע ייִדן און באַזוכט אַ גוט אָפּגעהיטענעם בית־עולם, וווּ עס ליגן באַערדיקט גרויסע צדיקים ווי למשל הרבֿ חיים בן עתר (1696–1743), באַקאַנט ווי דער „אור החיים“. „מענטשן מיינען, אַז נאָר אין אייראָפּע זענען דאָ קבֿרים פֿון צדיקים!“ זאָגט קירשנבוים.
מיר זעען אַ גרויסע, שיינע שיל מיט אַ פֿײַנער אַרכיטעקטור אין קאַזאַבלאַנקאַ; דעם גרויסן אַראַבישן שוק, וווּ קירשנבוים קויפֿט זיך אײַן מלבושים פּונקט ווי די מאַראָקאַנער גייען אָנגעטאָן. ער באַוווּנדערט אויך די שיינע טיי־גלעזער און טשײַניקן, וואָס מע פֿאַרקויפֿט דאָרט, און באַקענט זיך מיט אַ ייִדישן סוחר וואָס האַנדלט מיט זילבער און גאָלד, פּונקט אַזוי ווי זײַן טאַטע און זיידע האָבן געטאָן פֿאַר דור־דורות.
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