Sigd – The Jewish Holiday You Might Not Know

Around Simchat Torah or shortly after, you may have heard Rabbi Bodney-Halasz, myself, or another Jewish leader share that Cheshvan is every Rabbi’s favorite month, because after the High Holidays of Tishrei, a month without a holiday is nice. 

Yet, for those with a meticulous eye, you might have noticed that there is a holiday marked on Hebrew calendars in Cheshvan: Sigd.  Sigd falls 50 days after Yom Kippur on the 29^th of Cheshvan.  While I could say being so close to the end of the month we still count it as if there’s a month between Simchat Torah and the next holiday, but the truth is, if you haven’t a clue what Sigd is, and thought the next Jewish holiday after Simchat Torah was Chanukkah… well, that’s what we meant when we said Cheshvan doesn’t have holidays.  The age-old joke didn’t account for Sigd.

In a very concise version of a complex history: In the mid-20^th century, Ethiopian Jewish communities became reconnected with the “main” Jewish community for the first time in about 1,500 years or more.  These Ethiopian Jewish communities, known as Beta Israel, likely arrived in Ethiopia between the 1^st and 6^th centuries – potentially while the 2^nd Temple still stood, and almost certainly before the final composition of the Babylonian Talmud!  Scholars have attempted to piece together the complicated history of Beta Israel, which proves a challenging task.  They likely came to Ethiopia as merchants or artisans from Northern Africa or Israel, but ended up living in increasingly isolated communities – both from the rest of the Jewish world and from other Beta Israel communities – each with their own leadership.  Like their counterparts in the rest of the world, Beta Israel experienced times of relative ease, and times of persecution from Ethiopian monarchies.  In the 1620’s many communities were captured by the ruling king’s army and forcibly baptized or killed – a narrative that parallels the Spanish Inquisition. 

The isolation of Beta Israel from worldwide Jewry meant that their Judaism developed separately too, although in many ways responding to variations of the same influences.  Their communal leadership did not follow the structures of Rabbinic Judaism as we know it, but Orientalist Joseph Halevy (not the medieval poet, Yehuda Halevy), visited the area in 1867 and described a community that followed the legal sections of the Hebrew Bible, observed the laws of purity around birth and death, observed Shabbat, and other familiar practices and values. 

Between persecution from within Ethiopian, pressures of European missionaries, attempts to escape to Israel, along with a famine from 1882-1892 in Ethiopia that claimed about one-third to one-half the Beta Israel population – the community has persevered through a lot.  In 1991, Israel completed Operation Solomon that brought almost 15,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in just 36 hours.   Initially settled in absorption centers, culture shock does not even begin to describe the experience of the new immigrants to Israel.  Even in 2010 while volunteering at an absorption center with youth, in very broken Hebrew all around, they taught us about their traditions from Ethiopia, and we pleased to “introduce” children to Chanukkah and other parts of Jewish history that occurred after the communities lost contact.

Sigd is a holiday that originates with Beta Israel – beginning with a fast, and transitioning midday to an afternoon feast and celebration, the day is supposed to mark the revelation of the Torah at Sinai (remember that biblically, Shavuot is an agricultural holiday).  Sigd became a national holiday in Israel in 2008, and has become in addition to its origins, a time to raise visibility to the story of the Ethiopian Jewish experience and teach about Beta Israel customs. 

In the absence of mass immigration of Ethiopian Jews to our areas, North American Jewish communities do not largely celebrate the holiday, but I like to join in the spirit of using this time to lift up the a piece of history and Jewish life that reminds us Judaism is more diverse than the Ashkenazic traditions that largely served as the foundation of North American Jewish communities.