There are longings that do not belong to just one person. They go through family, community, language, prayer and looking to a place you’ve never seen – yet you know it’s a part of you.
For the Beta Israel community, the holiday of the Tsiggad was never just a time on the calendar. He was a language. A language of longing, of faith, of memory and of home. A language that said: Even if we are far from Jerusalem, Jerusalem is not far from us.
In my eyes, the mosque is not just a dream of one community. It is a gateway to a much broader Israeli conversation about the question: What is a home?
In a world that sanctifies fast forward movement, longing is sometimes seen as something inhibiting, as if the person who misses remains stuck in the past. But the holiday of the mosque teaches us that there are longings that do not seek to take us back – they seek to remind us of who we are.
The longing for Jerusalem was not only longing for a geographical place. He was longing for a bigger story, within which a person knows his place. It is a longing that keeps a person upright even when the road is long. A longing that becomes a compass.
The holiday of the mosque teaches us that memory is not only what we preserve from the past, but also the way in which we build the future. For generations, this memory was not only passed on in history lessons or books. He was burned through life itself.
As children, we were on the periphery of the world of praying adults. We were not the center, but we were there, on the side. Between the sounds of prayer, the smell of beaver and the continuous gaze of the elders towards Jerusalem, we absorbed the emotional map of the community.
This memory was assimilated into the body even before we knew how to call it by name. The mosque is a profound lesson in the power of a community to remember together – not only what happened, but where it belongs.
The Israeli challenge is not only to “live together”. The deeper challenge is to understand that identity is not a zero-sum game: bringing one root into the common house does not require the deletion of another.
At times, the Israeli story asked us to leave parts of our identity outside the door in order to come inside. But deep Israeliness is not built from erasure, but from the ability to hold plurality.
Hag Tsigd offers a model of complete success: the possibility of being part of the Israeli story not despite our roots, but through them.
Multi-rooted Israeliness is not a split identity – it is a richer identity. The shared house becomes more stable when everyone who enters it is not required to forget where they came from.
In an era where many feel torn or unmoored, the holiday of the Tsigd brings us back to a simple and profound question: what gives us an inner backbone?
The synagogue teaches that belonging is not created only by living in the same place. It is also created from the ability to share a memory, to listen to stories we have not yet known, and to agree that each community has its own way of carrying longing, faith and identity.
When one community’s holiday succeeds in opening a conversation about home, faith and identity – it stops being just a holiday of “others”. He becomes a mirror for all of us.
My preoccupation with the mosque and the story before the ascension was born from the same place from which my book was born “scarred stone”: The desire to return depth to a story that is sometimes only told from the outside.
Before the journey there was life. There were houses. There were strong women. There was a belief that permeated the air. There was a community that longed for Jerusalem not as an abstract idea, but as a force that organizes an entire life.
When we tell this story fully, we allow the next generation to understand that belonging does not just begin at the moment of arrival. It begins much earlier – with a memory that did not give up, a belief that was preserved, and a voice that was passed down from generation to generation even when it was not always said in words.
The holiday of the mosque reminds us that home is not only the place we arrive at, but also the place we carry inside us along the way. He is the unbroken memory. He is the longing that became power. He is the faith that kept going even when it didn’t see the end of the road.
And perhaps the time has come to ask ourselves: are we mature enough, as Israelis, to stop being afraid of the other’s longing? Can we open the listening doors of our society more, so that each person can bring his roots to the common house – without losing himself along the way?
This article is part of the content world of “scarred stone” – A novel about the women of Beta Israel in Ethiopia, about memory, roots and intergenerational female power.
Lecturer, writer and strategic consultant for identity-based leadership. Accompanying organizations, managers and communities in a process that transforms identity, roots and life experience from a source of concealment or friction - to a source of presence, belonging, leadership and impact.
צמיחה אמיתית לא נולדת מחיקוי, אלא מהאומץ לפגוש את עצמך - ולהביא לעולם את האני שלך באמת
אני מזמינה אותך ליצור איתי קשר
Fentay Maharat-Alamu's debut novel returns to the world of the women of the House of Israel in Ethiopia - to roots, memory, scars and female strength. Leave details to receive first updates on the release of the book, pre-purchase, premium edition and launch events.
