Search Results (4)

The socialization of the Ethiopian Jewish community, known as Beta Israel in Israeli society, is marked by performing cultural customs and rituals to establish its unique tradition and collective ethnic narrative. The Sigd is a holiday that is celebrated on the 29th of the Hebrew month of Heshvan, when the community marks its devotion to Zion by renewing the covenant between the Jewish people, God, and the Torah. This narrative of return to the homeland is also expressed and framed in a tragic context by observing a Memorial Day for the members of the Ethiopian Jewish community who perished during their journey to Israel from Sudan. These two commemorative dates support the narrative of Beta Israel and advance its public recognition. This ethnographic study examines why and how these practices were mentioned and performed in an Israeli Reform Jewish congregation, a community that does not include Ethiopians members, and has a religious and cultural character that is different from the traditions of Beta Israel. Both the Reform community and the Ethiopian community deal with stereotypes and institutional and public inequality in Israel. I argue that their solidarity is constructed and based on social perceptions and experiences of social alienation and immigration traumas. This political motivation to mark the narrative of the ‘other’, particularly as an excluded religious group that fights against the Orthodox Jewish monopoly in Israel, marks the Reform community as an egalitarian agent that gives voice to the marginalized. The fact that most Reform congregants are ‘sabras’ (native) Israelis sheds light on how their perception as a majority, and not only as a minority, produces a critical statement about Zionist immigration and acclimatization. Full article

Every year, diverse Jewish communities around the world observe Tashlich (casting off), a customary atonement ritual performed the day after Rosh Hashanah. This performative ritual is conducted next to a body of water to symbolize atonement and purification of one’s sins. Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in two egalitarian Jewish congregations in Tel Aviv and in New York City, I show how Tashlich performance is constructed as a political act to empower gender and sexual identities and experiences, as well as the socio-political positionality of LGBTQ Jews in various sites. By including new blessings, the blowing of the shofar by gay female participants, and by conducting the ritual in historical and contemporary queer urban spaces, the rabbis and congregants created new interpretations of the traditional customs. They exposed their feelings toward themselves, their community, and its visibility and presence in the city. The fact that the ritual is conducted in an open urban public space creates not only differing meanings and perceptions than from the synagogue, but also exposes queer politics in the context of national and religious identities. Furthermore, this comparative analysis illuminates tensions and trajectories of Jewishness and queerness in Israel and in the US, and sheds light on postmodern tendencies in contemporary urban religious communities as a result of the inclusion of the LGBTQ community. Full article

In Ashkenazi Jewish communities, it is customary to promise a donation to charitable causes after being called up to the Torah on Shabbat and on holidays—there is even a Yiddish term for it: shnodern. In our article, we will look at various synagogue objects related to this type of charity, focusing on Hungarian lands. First, we will look at signs and plaques, affixed to the bimah, which mention possible purposes for the charity. Second, since it is forbidden to make a note of, let alone fulfill the promise of a charitable donation on Shabbat, we will look at objects that show ways that these donations were recorded. Full article

The Seged is a pilgrimage holiday celebrated by the Jews of Ethiopia on 29 November. Its purpose is to reconstruct a renewal of the covenant between the Jewish People and God in Jerusalem and at Sinai and to strengthen their religious belief. The research is based on a qualitative research method and uses interviews with religious priests and members of Ethiopian communities. The findings show that normative communitas was created during the Seged, which afforded expression for the solidarity of the Jewish community and strengthened their identity as a minority group in a multi-national culture. The hierarchic structure remained, and I did not find evidence for competition and conflict. The liminality in the Seged encouraged a different reality, of undermined routine, but also continuity of the social structure and control by the elite. The reflectance of the social structure also shows that contrary to the model presented by Victor Turner, the communitas created during the Seged was normative from the onset and did not develop over the course of the holiday. Full article