{"id":2280,"date":"2009-11-20T07:20:24","date_gmt":"2009-11-20T14:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=2280"},"modified":"2009-11-20T07:27:01","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T14:27:01","slug":"celebrating-sigd-in-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=2280","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Sig’d in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

How many people say \u201cnext year in Jerusalem\u201d and really mean it? For generations of Ethiopian Jews, the desire to return to Jerusalem was so strong that it became the focus of Sig\u2019d, a holiday celebrated 50 days after Yom Kippur. Today, when many Ethiopian Jews now live in Israel, the holiday is celebrated in Jerusalem, with the Kessim, the community\u2019s spiritual leaders, leading prayers. After years of effort, Sig\u2019d received recognition as a national holiday in August 2008.<\/p>\n

This year, President Shimon Peres embraced the holiday with two weeks of events, beginning with opening ceremonies at the presidential residence on November 2, and closing with the traditional ceremony on November 16th.<\/p>\n

\"Sig'd<\/a>
Sig'd Opening Ceremony\/Photo: Sinai Menahem<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Sig'd<\/a>
Sig'd Opening Ceremonies\/Photo: Sinai Menahem<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The heart of Sig’d remains the\u00a0ceremony with community prayers\u00a0led by the Kessim, which took place November 16th in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

\"Sig'd<\/a>
Sig'd Jerusalem 2009\/Photo: Avi Masfin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Sig'd<\/a>
Sig'd Jerusalem 2009\/Photo: Avi Masfin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Sig'd<\/a>
Sig'd Jerusalem 2009\/Photo: Avi Masfin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Kessim<\/a>
Kessim leading prayers Sig'd 2009\/Photo: Avi Masfin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Midnight East was not able to attend the ceremonies this year, but we were fortunate to have Sinai Menahem and Avi Masfin’s wonderful photos to enjoy. Next Sig’d — in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Top image credit: Sinai Menahem<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How many people say \u201cnext year in Jerusalem\u201d and really mean it? For generations of Ethiopian Jews, the desire to return to Jerusalem was so strong that it became the focus of Sig\u2019d, a holiday celebrated 50 days after Yom Kippur. Today, when many Ethiopian Jews now live in Israel, the holiday is celebrated in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}