Thousands of African Jews Died Walking to Jerusalem. Today Israel Celebrates Sigd.
If someone tells you Israel is a country of white Europeans who took land from people of color, tell them about Sigd. Today, November 9, thousands of Ethiopian Israelis will gather on a hill overlooking Jerusalem to celebrate a holiday their ancestors kept in Africa for centuries, while they prayed toward a city they had never seen.
What is Sigd?
Sigd comes from a word in Ge'ez, the ancient language of Ethiopia, and it means bowing down in worship. The holiday falls on the 29th day of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, exactly fifty days after Yom Kippur. For generations, the Jews of Ethiopia, known as Beta Israel, marked this day by climbing a mountain to fast and pray, while their spiritual leaders, the kessim, read from the Scriptures and led the people in prayer facing toward Jerusalem. In the afternoon, the fast ended with a joyful meal.
Many in the community connect Sigd with the day the people of Israel gathered in Jerusalem in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah to renew their covenant with God. At its heart, Sigd is about longing for Zion and recommitting to God's law.
In 2008, Israel's Knesset made Sigd an official national holiday. Today the main celebration takes place on the Armon Hanatziv promenade in Jerusalem, where kessim in white robes, holding colorful umbrellas, lead the prayers with the Old City in full view.
For centuries, the Jews of Ethiopia lived in villages in the northern highlands, cut off from the rest of the Jewish world. Many outsiders did not even know they existed. They kept the Sabbath and the biblical festivals, and they passed down a deep longing for Jerusalem from parents to children.
Christians who read the prophets will recognize a verse in Zephaniah 3:10 that speaks of worshipers coming "from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia." Isaiah 11:11 also names Cush, the biblical name for the region of Ethiopia and Sudan, among the places from which God will gather His people.
The walk through the desert
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ethiopia suffered through civil war and famine. Thousands of Ethiopian Jews left their villages and set out on foot for Sudan, hoping to reach Israel from there. The journey took weeks, through desert and through areas controlled by bandits.
It was a deadly road. An estimated 4,000 Ethiopian Jews died on the way to Sudan or in the refugee camps there. Many died of hunger and disease, and some were murdered by bandits. Israel honors them with a memorial on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, designed to look like an Ethiopian village.
In late 1984, Israel launched Operation Moses, a secret airlift that brought about 8,000 Ethiopian Jews from Sudan to Israel over several weeks. When news of the operation leaked, it was halted, and around a thousand people were left behind. About half of them were rescued months later in an American led operation called Operation Joshua.
Then, in May 1991, as rebel forces closed in on Ethiopia's capital, Israel did something no country had ever done. In about 36 hours, 35 Israeli aircraft, including air force cargo planes and El Al jumbo jets, flew 14,325 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. This was Operation Solomon. One El Al flight carried more than a thousand people, a world record, and babies were born on board during the flights.
The people who call Israel a white colonial state almost never mention Operation Solomon.
Israel is home to Jews whose families came from Ethiopia and Yemen, from Morocco and Iraq, from India and Iran, and from every corner of Europe. Israeli government figures show that the descendants of Jews who came from Arab countries and Iran make up a majority of Israel's Jewish population. The Jews of Ethiopia are one more living answer to the claim that Israel is a European colony.
Ethiopian Israelis today serve as army officers, doctors, diplomats and members of the Knesset. Pnina Tamano Shata, who came to Israel as a child in Operation Moses, became Israel's first Ethiopian born cabinet minister.
The community also faces real struggles, including poverty and discrimination, and Ethiopian Israelis have protested loudly when they felt their country let them down. Israel debates these problems openly, as a democracy should. The basic fact remains that Israel sent its planes into a collapsing country to bring tens of thousands of Black African Jews home.
Celebrate Sigd with them
You do not need to be Ethiopian or Jewish to honor this day. Take a moment to read Zephaniah 3:10 and Isaiah 43:5 and 6, and pray for the Ethiopian Israeli community and for Jerusalem. Then share this story with a young person who has been told that Israel is a white colonial state.
At Torch of Truth, stories like this are at the heart of our Light the Church project. We give pastors and youth leaders the facts and the biblical background they need to answer the lies their young people hear online every day.
If you want more young Christians to know the story of Operation Solomon, help us bring it into their churches. A gift of $180 sponsors one church with the full Light the Church curriculum. Give at torchoftruth.org/donate.
Ethiopian Jews walked through a desert and buried their loved ones along the way to reach Jerusalem, and Israel flew into a war zone to bring the rest of them home. Anyone who calls that colonialism has never heard the story, and it is our job to tell it.
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