African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African folklore 390
communities is the Sigd. The Sigd is an annual pilgrimage holiday observed in Ethiopia
on the twenty-ninth day of the eighth month of the Ethiopian calendar; it is treated as
equally important as the biblically proscribed holidays. As a unique Jewish Ethiopian
holiday, the Sigd is still observed by the group in Israel.
Life cycle rituals of the Beta Israel traditionally comprised two stages, a religious and
a more general, social part. While the first was conducted by religious leaders and
directed towards group members, the social part, particularly in weddings, funerals, and
memorial services, was open to guests invited from neighboring communities and in
many ways resembles celebrations held by the neighboring groups. During the social part
of each religious group’s celebrations, however, care was taken to separate the Beta Israel
and other groups in regard to eating, particularly the consumption of meat (Salamon,
1999).
Circumcision, a ceremony that is highly symbolic in Judaism as ritualizing the special
covenant between God and the Jews, was less significant in Ethiopia; Ethiopian
Christians, like the Jews, conduct the same ceremony on the same day, the eighth day
following the birth of a male child. An additional category of biblically based rituals is
the one comprised of rituals related to female fertility and birth. During their menstrual
period, Beta Israel women were confined to a separate hut (“the house of blood”),
situated at the periphery of the Jewish huts in the village. A fence of stones demarcated
the boundaries of this impure area as distinct from the rest of the village dwellings, and
only after performing a purification ritual, was the woman allowed to rejoin the
community. This practice was based on a verse from the Old Testament (Lev. 15:19).
Beta Israel also considered the postbirth period as impure (forty days for a boy, eighty for
a girl), in accordance with Leviticies, 12:2–6.
The Beta Israel specialized in specific crafts: blacksmithing and weaving for men,
pottery for women. While they traditionally prepared vessels for agricultural work and
cooking, over the past few decades, due to increased contact with international Jewry,
they also began producing small clay statues, usually of biblical figures, for tourists who
visited their villages.
The expressive folklore of Beta Israel is particularly rich, comprising genres similar to
those of its non-Jewish Ethiopian neighbors. One example is the use of complex spoken
expressions with multiple and hidden meanings known as “Wax and Gold” (Levine 1965)
that require a high level of language mastery and advanced use of symbol. Most of the
Beta Israel folktales overlap with pan-Ethiopian folktales such as trickster stories of Abba
Gabra-hanna or animal stories, but Beta Israel also have their own stories of historic
encounters and competitions between Jews and Christians, stories of Jewish martyrs, and
tales of Jewish holy sites (Alexander and Einat 1996).
The Beta Israel also have a rich repertoire of sayings and proverbs that combine
Amhara and Tigrinya material with particular expressions understood only by group
members, mostly regarding their Muslim and Christian neighbors (Salamon 1995).
The realm of magic is another shared, yet separate, folkloric realm. While the Jews of
Ethiopia fully share popular Ethiopian conceptions of magic, their neighbors have
accused them of possessing supernatural powers. Beta Israel specialization in
blacksmithing and pottery making was treated with ambivalence by neighboring groups,
who attributed supernatural powers to the Jewish artisans. They were perceived as Buda,
the mythical Ethiopian hyena, who possesses the power to transform into human form