Parashat Toldot and the Sigd Festival
„Save, we pray, brothers, our brothers the Falashas from destruction and assimilation! Help, we pray, to return to us these outcast brothers! And let no tribe be blotted out from Israel beneath the heavens of God.”From A Proclamation on Behalf of the Jews of Abyssinia
In Parashat Toldot we meet Jacob at the moment when he takes upon himself a great responsibility for the future of the people, but is also forced to pay the price and flee from his home. This movement, of departure from a natural place of upbringing and out of danger, accompanies our history time after time, and has placed whole communities in a struggle to preserve their identity even when they are very far from the Land of Israel. One of the communities that Rav Kook took to heart was the community of the Jews of Abyssinia and Ethiopia. He wrote them letters, raised funds, and urged the Jewish world not to abandon them, out of an understanding that groups pushed to the margins of history can vanish. Today, as we mark the Sigd festival, let us remember and honor the deep prayer of a community that carried Jerusalem in its heart for hundreds of years, and also the call of the Rav that "no tribe be blotted out from Israel."
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From the community archive of Mishpetei HaRav Kook — studying Rav Kook's teachings since 2011.