Ethiopian Jews celebrate Sigd in Jerusalem, hope to share the holiday with all Israelis

ByNINA POGREBNAYANOVEMBER 9, 2026 18:07

Impatient drivers honk along partially closed streets in Jerusalem. A stream of people dressed in white crosses the road toward the Armon Hanatziv promenade. Prayers blaring from loudspeakers can be heard hundreds of meters away. Sigd, the most important holiday for Ethiopian Jews, began less than an hour ago.

Festive clothing is already visible at the Yitzhak Navon Station. On bus No. 78 heading toward the promenade, nearly half the passengers are either dressed in white or carry their ceremonial clothes in bags. Some speak Hebrew, others Amharic. Yet the bus is only half full.

An hour after the prayer grounds open, around 500 people have already gathered on the promenade. After several rainy days, the morning is sunny. A light breeze carries the faint scent of incense.

Women raise their hands toward the sky, while some bow to the ground. A soft, rhythmic ringing accompanies the prayers. Occasionally, a loud ululation, known as ililta, rises above the crowd. The high-pitched, trilling cry, produced by rapidly moving the tongue back and forth, is part of Ethiopian cultural traditions. It swells quickly, briefly drowning out the amplified prayers, then fades.

The sea of white worn by the tightly packed worshippers ends in a splash of brightly colored ceremonial umbrellas. They glitter in the sunlight above the heads of the kessim, the spiritual leaders of the Beta Israel Ethiopian Jewish community. The kessim lead the prayers from a raised platform. Beyond them: the Temple Mount.

Ben-Dor researches Ethiopian Jewish traditions

One woman stands out in the morning crowd: among those wearing traditional festive clothing, there are no other visitors of non-Ethiopian origin. She is Shoshana Ben-Dor, a researcher of Ethiopian Jewish religious traditions and former Israel director of the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry (NACOEJ).

Ben-Dor, however, has no intention of giving an interview before arranging her netela properly. The conversation is repeatedly interrupted as passersby approach her, embrace her, wish her Chag Sameach and ask to take photographs together.

Ben-Dor has studied Sigd since the 1980s. She recalls how the ceremonies were initially held on Mount Zion before moving to the Armon Hanatziv promenade when the original site could no longer accommodate the growing crowds.

Sigd is observed 50 days after Yom Kippur. In Ethiopia, Jews traditionally climbed a mountain, fasted and prayed for their return to Jerusalem. But Ben-Dor disagrees with descriptions that reduce the holiday to that prayer alone.

"It is much, much more," she says.

Sigd celebrates renewal of covenant between Jewish people and God

The central meaning of Sigd, she explains, is the renewal of the covenant between the Jewish people and God. The kessim recite passages from Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Nehemiah. The prayers are conducted in Ge'ez, the ancient liturgical language of Ethiopian Jews.

Ben-Dor learned Ge'ez herself and spent years translating the prayers. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, she ran an educational tent at the celebrations where visitors could learn what the prayers meant. Today, she says, many participants do not understand the language in which the kessim pray.

She believes these traditions should be familiar not only to Ethiopian Jews but to Jews from other communities as well.

"I absolutely believe that this is a holiday that should be observed by all," she says.

The idea is not new. In 2007, hundreds of Ethiopian Jews signed a petition calling for Sigd to be included in the wider Jewish religious calendar. The following year, Sigd was officially recognized as a national holiday. Nearly two decades later, the holiday remains predominantly a celebration of the Ethiopian Jewish community.

Ben-Dor gives an example: Recently, during a class on North African Jewish liturgical poetry, one participant asked why Ethiopian Jews needed a separate holiday and why they could not simply be like everyone else,

She recalls that Jews from Morocco and other North African countries once faced similar demands to abandon their customs in favor of those of the Ashkenazi majority.

"It's very sad," Ben-Dor says of the recent encounter.

She believes Sigd could become a holiday bringing together Jews of different backgrounds. She would like to see more coverage in schools and the media, and more people from other Jewish communities taking part in the celebrations.

"Jews returned to Israel from the whole world," she says. "All of us come together, and we can contribute to creating a combination of the new and the old."

Non-Ethiopian Israelis are more often seen watching than participating. Many film the ceremony on their phones or cameras, while others have come with friends. A few ultra-Orthodox men walk briskly across the grounds without stopping at the prayer area.

Among the visitors is a group of schoolgirls accompanied by a high school teacher who asks not to be named. The girls are not from the Ethiopian Jewish community, and the visit is the teacher's personal initiative.

Her students are studying sociology and working on a school project about culture. Rather than limiting their studies to the classroom, she wants them to experience Sigd firsthand.

"To actually come and see it and be part of it," she explains.

Afterward, the students will have to answer questions about what they have observed.

A few steps from the worshippers, another side of the celebration unfolds. Friends embrace, kiss, and exchange holiday greetings. Young women take photographs, teenagers scroll through their phones, and children play among the adults.

One young couple stays in the corner of the prayer area. A man of Ethiopian descent shows his companion, dressed in ordinary clothes, how to move her hands during the prayers. She watches him and repeats the movements.

Sigd about tradition as well as religion

For Yitzhak, a young father born in Israel, Sigd is above all about togetherness and remembering the journey his family made to reach the country: "I'm not the most religious person, but I honor my roots," he says. "We'll continue celebrating at home."

Near the entrance to the prayer grounds stand displays bearing the photograph of Haymanot Kasau. Her face also appears on stickers worn by many of those attending, particularly teenagers and children.

Haymanot was nine years old when she disappeared on February 25, 2024, near an absorption center in Safed, where her family was living after immigrating from Ethiopia. More than two and a half years later, she remains missing. Her parents have repeatedly complained that the authorities have not done enough to find their daughter.

During the ceremony, the kessim raise a large poster bearing Haymanot's photograph from the prayer platform. Below them, small stickers showing the same face can be seen among the white garments. Haymanot's disappearance has become another cause uniting the Ethiopian Jewish community, even as her case has faded from public attention beyond it.

On the return journey, bus No. 78 is no longer half empty. The vehicle is packed with passengers, still dressed in their white festive clothes.

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