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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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The post Ethiopian Jewish holiday of Sigd gets a boost in the US with picture books and new resources appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Pentagon Preparing for Weeks of Ground Operations in Iran
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth holds a briefing with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, US, March 19, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Evan Vucci
The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran, the Washington Post reported Saturday, citing US officials.
The plans could involve raids by Special Operations and conventional infantry troops, the Post reported. Whether President Donald Trump would approve any of those plans remains uncertain, according to the Post.
The Trump administration has deployed US Marines to the Middle East as the war in Iran stretches into its fifth week, and also has been planning to send thousands of soldiers from the US Army’s 82nd Airborne to the region.
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America’s oldest synagogue closed. Then an unlikely group tended its cemetery.
In 1833, Herald of the Times, a Newport, Rhode Island, newspaper, reported that the remains of Mrs. Rebecca Lopez had been brought from New York by steamboat and placed inside Touro Synagogue.
Dedicated in 1763, the building is now recognized as the nation’s oldest surviving synagogue. Newport had once been home to a thriving colonial Jewish community, but after the Revolutionary War and the city’s economic decline, that community had largely faded. The cemetery remained, and so did the synagogue. It was during that long interval of near-absence that Lopez’s funeral briefly reopened Jewish ritual life in Newport.
After prayers were read by Rabbi Isaac Seixas of New York, the body was carried to the cemetery on Touro Street, with “the clergy, town council, and a numerous concourse of spectators” joining the funeral procession. The paper noted that a Jewish ceremony had not been performed there “for the space of forty years.”
Newport’s Jewish burial ground dated to 1677. In 1822, Abraham Touro left money for the upkeep of the cemetery, the synagogue, and the street on which they stood. The fund was placed under trustees appointed by the Rhode Island legislature, and Newport’s Town Council was later authorized to use the interest for repairs.
While Newport’s Jewish population declined, the endowment ensured that the synagogue building and cemetery grounds continued to be maintained. In 1826, the Town Council reported that it had tried to repair the synagogue using the Touro fund, but could not proceed because it had not been able to obtain the keys from Shearith Israel in New York. Many of Newport’s former Jewish residents had relocated there, and the congregations had longstanding ties.
In 1842, the council contracted to enclose the synagogue lot with a substantial stone wall and an ornamental cast-iron fence, modeled on the fence around the Jewish cemetery. The work included a Quincy granite base and a gateway on Touro Street designed to correspond with the synagogue’s portico. The project cost $6,835.
The synagogue’s doors rarely opened, and often only for moments of mourning. In June 1854, Newport received the body of Judah Touro, one of the most prominent American Jews of his era, a native of the town and brother of Abraham Touro. The Herald of the Times reported that “the streets was [sic] crowded with people, the stores all closed, and the bells tolled.”
The City Council assembled at City Hall and marched in procession to the synagogue, where “thousands remained outside” during the service. At the funeral, Newport’s mayor, William C. Cozzens, spoke of the trust that had long existed between the city and local Jewish families, recalling that the synagogue and cemetery had been left in Newport’s care and maintained there “with ample means for their preservation.”
When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited Newport’s Jewish cemetery that same year, he wrote of the graves as “silent beside the never-silent waves.” He noticed, too, what endured there: “Gone are the living, but the dead remain,” he observed, “and not neglected.”
Newport’s preservation of Jewish sacred space was shared. Jews endowed these places and returned to bury their dead there. Christian officials repaired, protected, and publicly honored them. In this way, a Jewish inheritance was carried forward until communal life returned.
In 1883, Touro Synagogue was rededicated and a new Jewish community established in Newport. But even in the window of years when the congregation was gone, the dead were not abandoned.
The graves were kept.
The post America’s oldest synagogue closed. Then an unlikely group tended its cemetery. appeared first on The Forward.
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Milwaukee rabbi and son ordered to pay $1,000 to muralist who reportedly praised Hamas in court
(JTA) — A retired rabbi and his son were sentenced Wednesday in Milwaukee for having destroyed a local mural in 2024 that depicted the Star of David transforming into a swastika.
Rabbi Peter and Zechariah “Zee” Mehler were ordered to pay $1,000 total in restitution to Ihsan Atta, the property owner who had put up the mural. Peter, who pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge for criminal damage, was also fined $50, while Zee, who had pleaded guilty in December, was given a withheld sentence of 25 hours of community service.
The sentencing hearing took another turn when Atta, who is Palestinian, praised Hamas and walked out of the courtroom before being brought back in by deputies to finish the proceedings, according to local news reporters who were present. A transcript of the exchange could not immediately be obtained.
Zee Mehler told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that, despite pleading guilty, he felt “vindicated.”
“What we did was illegal and needed to be answered for. But at the same time, what we saw was a very strong response from the city and the court that showed that they have no patience or time for this anti-Israel narrative,” he said. “They recognize the way that it has spread antisemitism, and they recognize the way that it’s caused so much global harm to the Jewish community.”
The case dates back to September 2024, when the Mehlers used a hammer and other tools to tear down Atta’s recently installed mural in full view of security cameras. They have long maintained that, while they understood it was illegal to destroy the mural, they did so out of concern for the safety of the local Jewish community.
Atta’s mural included the words “The irony of becoming what you once hated” surrounding a Star of David transforming into a swastika; the background of the mural appeared to depict scenes of destruction in Gaza. The Mehlers viewed the mural as incitement. At the time of their actions, it had already been condemned by local Jewish groups and the Milwaukee City Council.
In the courtroom, Zee, wearing long dreadlocks, escorted his father, who is 74 years old and has Guillain-Barre syndrome, in a wheelchair. Peter recently lost the ability to walk, his son said: “This has been a really rough few years for him.”
According to reports, circuit court judge Jack Dávila interrupted Atta when he began praising Hamas and instructed him not to make comments unrelated to the crime.
“We’re not going to solve the world’s problems with this hearing,” the judge reportedly told Atta, who apologized for his actions. In a video posted after the verdict, Atta called the proceedings a “kangaroo court” and stated, “We must have judges that are on the Epstein files, because we’ve got clowns running the courthouse.”
Atta’s actions in court, Zee Mehler said, meant “I didn’t really need to do much.”
“He was called to testify, and he absolutely buried himself,” Mehler said. “I can’t believe he said that he supports Hamas in a court, on the record. That’s a crazy thing to do.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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