Foto Friday – Celebrating Ethiopian Ledet with Matanya Tausig

January 7, 2011 - 5:39 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, coexistence, design, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Holidays, News, Profiles, Religion, Travel 

Freelance photographer Matanya Tausig has always been fascinated by religion and religious subjects. For his final project at Jerusalem’s Hadassah College, Tausig chose to document the priests from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

The Ethiopian Church has two centers in Jerusalem: the historic Deir es-Sultan on the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Debre Gannet constructed in the 19th century on Ethiopia Street. On one hand, both locations are only a short walk from the college; on the other hand, they are worlds away.

The resulting series went on to win second prize in the Local Testimony exhibition of regional photojournalism, (which runs concurrently with the annual World Press Photo exhibition).

The series is part of a larger project of documenting religions and religious ceremonies all around the Holy Land. “I generally work on things that take a long time; they percolate for years,” he says.

So, for example, last night Tausig was in Bethlehem, continuing work on his ongoing project by documenting the Orthodox Church’s Ledet (Christmas) midnight mass.

Ledet falls on January 7 in the Gregorian calendar (which is December 29 in the Ethiopian calendar). It comes after 43 days of daytime fasting known as Tsome Gahad (Advent), with a and is celebrated with processions, the mass service and a breakfast meal of traditional Ethiopian fare: cooked meat and vegetables served on injera (flat, spongy buckwheat bread), and washed down with tella (beer) or tej (a sort of weak mead).

In two weeks, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church will celebrate its most important festival of the year, Timket (Epiphany; also Timkat), a three-day festival commemorating Jesus’ baptism by Saint John in the Jordan River. Again, there will be processions and feasting.

Tausig maintains contact with his subjects and is planning future projects with them as well. Meanwhile, there are more photos to enjoy of the Ethiopian Orthodox priests on the Local Testimony site. And Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has more information about the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem.

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Picture of the week: The Ethiopian journey comes to an end

November 18, 2009 - 2:31 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Holidays, Picture of the Week, Religion 

Ethiopians celebrate the holiday of Sigd in Israel.

It’s been a long journey for Israel’s Ethiopian Jews, airlifted out of Ethiopia to Israel in 1984 and 1991, but this week, many must have felt their travels were really and truly over.

Thousands of Ethiopian Jews descended on Jerusalem on Monday to take part in the prayer of the Sigd on a hill overlooking the Mount of Olives.

Ethiopians Jews, who are thought to be descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel, celebrate this holiday every year. Back in Ethiopia, they would climb a mountain called Amburver to pray and beg God to bring them to the Holy Land.

Now in Israel the 80,000 strong population continue to celebrate the holiday. This year, however, the whole of Israel celebrated with them. The holiday of Sigd has been declared a national holiday and mandatory educational programs will be initiated to teach children about the celebration.

It’s a significant step forward for a people who haven’t always found it easy to adapt to their new life, and who still face prejudice from some quarters. Keep an eye out on ISRAEL21c for our video on the holiday.

Photo by Miriam Alster/Flash90.

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Ostrich farming rollercoaster

March 6, 2009 - 1:47 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Business, Environment, Food, General, History and Culture 

Israeli ostrichWhat with mad cow disease fears, concern over the unhealthy effects of eating animal fats and reports on the environmental damage caused by cattle farms, “alternative meat” (not to be confused with “meat alternatives”) is a growth industry.

Compared to other meats, ostrich meat cooks faster, has richer flavor and contains less than half the fat that even chicken has. Hence the relatively heavy marketing efforts associated with the burgundy poultry meat, especially in England.

Here in Israel, the ostrich meat industry started to gain momentum in the Nineties, although in 2007, some new legislation was necessary in order to make it retroactively legal, when Environmental Protection Minister Gideon Ezra reclassified ostriches and crocodiles as “nurtured wildlife.”

Mike van Grevenbroek, a Dutch immigrant to Israel, and his wife Tsophia, have been farming ostriches for 27 years now in the western Negev’s Besor district. The van Grevenbroeks and their organization, called Exotic Crops, were recently profiled in depth in Ha’aretz. The farm keeps a living inventory of some 7000 ostriches currently, and its managers estimate that they export over 150 tons of meat annually – all to Europe. Soon they’ll start marketing to locals too.

Although the large birds were once an indigenous species here, they disappeared from Israel back in the Twenties. So in 1973, van Grevenbroek smuggled 50 chicks from Ethiopia:

This was no easy feat. “At the time, you weren’t allowed to take ostriches out of South Africa,” [he] explains. “The Africans knew they had a gold mine and didn’t want to share it. In those years, they were the only ones in the world who raised ostriches, primarily for feathers and the leather industry, and they didn’t want any competition. But we were already swept up in the fantasy, and felt there was no other way except to smuggle some eggs to Israel. And so one day, I put a few eggs that were almost ready to hatch in a carry-on bag – the chicks were really ready – and within a few hours we were on an African Airlines flight from Johannesburg to Tel Aviv.”

The industry endured a rocky road since then, with demand increasing in the Eighties and peaking in 2000, with 20 ostrich farms in operation in Israel, export laws changing all the time due to pressures from the kibbutz movement. But it wasn’t always about the meat – Exotic Crops only opened its slaughterhouse in the early Nineties – and even now, with ostrich meat booming in international popularity, competition has become stiff, with many firms around the world making for a crowded market.

Ostrich meat has even given new meaning to our nation’s ongoing conflict with the Iranians. But Israeli ingenuity seems to be up to the task. And another local ostrich farmer Reginald Michiels offers us many savory recipes beyond enormous sandwiches, if you’re interesting in trying it at home.

Image of an Israeli ostrich courtesy thenotbelonghereguy from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

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