Not long ago, I heard a sto­ry about why women car­ried stones up the moun­tain dur­ing Səgəd, the Ethiopi­an Jew­ish hol­i­day of renew­ing the covenant with God.

I grew up know­ing that peo­ple car­ried stones as they climbed the moun­tain. Ethiopi­an Jews ascend­ed dressed in white, hav­ing pre­pared through rit­u­als of purifi­ca­tion. The stones sym­bol­ized the sack­cloth described in the books of Ezra and Nehemi­ah, express­ing humil­i­ty before God as part of col­lec­tive repen­tance and renewal.

But the sto­ry I recent­ly heard offered anoth­er meaning.

At the top of the moun­tain women would place their stones in piles. These piles, I was told, helped peo­ple rec­og­nize how many had come to cel­e­brate Səgəd. If there were few­er stones than the year before, ques­tions followed.

What had happened?

Had drought struck a vil­lage? Had dis­ease tak­en lives? Had fam­i­lies suf­fered hard­ship? Had some drift­ed away from Jew­ish life, or had a vil­lage aban­doned its traditions?

Ask­ing about the well-being of oth­er vil­lages was a famil­iar part of Səgəd. Peo­ple exchanged news, lis­tened to accounts of hard­ship, and learned who need­ed mate­r­i­al assis­tance or spir­i­tu­al sup­port. What was new to me was the sug­ges­tion that the stones them­selves helped prompt those ques­tions. I have been think­ing about that sto­ry ever since.

The stones were not sim­ply count­ed. They invit­ed peo­ple to notice who was absent.

Səgəd is often described as a hol­i­day of long­ing for Jerusalem, a cel­e­bra­tion of Ethiopi­an Jew­ish faith and per­se­ver­ance. But it also car­ries a social mes­sage, that the well-being of an indi­vid­ual can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from that of the com­mu­ni­ty. The ques­tion was not only whether I had ful­filled my reli­gious oblig­a­tions, but whether my neigh­bors could ful­fill theirs, and whether some­one need­ed help.

This year, that under­stand­ing of Səgəd feels espe­cial­ly urgent.

Israel is expe­ri­enc­ing pro­found inter­nal divi­sions. Many Jews around the world feel increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed. Rela­tions between Israel and parts of the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty have become strained. Dis­agree­ments about Israel, war, jus­tice, and respon­si­bil­i­ty have some­times made it dif­fi­cult for Jews even to speak to one another.

What if, instead of ask­ing only who stands with us, we began ask­ing who is miss­ing, who is hurt­ing, and why?

I think of Haiman­ot Kas­sau, a nine-year-old Ethiopi­an-Israeli girl who dis­ap­peared from the grounds of an immi­grant absorp­tion cen­ter in Safed in Feb­ru­ary 2024. Near­ly three years lat­er, she is still miss­ing. Her fam­i­ly con­tin­ues to search for her and demand answers.

I have been involved in their strug­gle, and I won­der what it means for a soci­ety to con­tin­ue car­ing when time pass­es and atten­tion moves elsewhere.

If we were count­ing the stones today, would we notice hers was miss­ing? Would we ask what hap­pened? Would we keep ask­ing until we had an answer?

Sol­i­dar­i­ty is not sim­ply a feel­ing of togeth­er­ness. Nor does it mean defend­ing every­thing done in the name of our com­mu­ni­ty. Some­times it requires con­fronting painful truths about our­selves. It demands atten­tion, account­abil­i­ty, and action.

As a child in Ethiopia, I imag­ined the Land of Israel as a place where women, men, chil­dren, and elders lived togeth­er. No one pushed any­one aside. No one humil­i­at­ed any­one. Every­one had a place. There was abun­dance, but no one took more than they needed.

That was the Jerusalem I car­ried with me long before I arrived in Israel.

I still think about that imag­ined place. Not because I expect a world with­out con­flict, but because we need a moral vision against which to exam­ine the world we have built.

Per­haps this is the gift Səgəd offers us in 2026.

The covenant with God can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from our oblig­a­tions to one anoth­er. If the stones teach us to notice those miss­ing from our own com­mu­ni­ty, they must also teach us to rec­og­nize the suf­fer­ing of those beyond it. Oth­er­wise, sol­i­dar­i­ty risks becom­ing anoth­er name for loy­al­ty to our­selves. We live among oth­er peo­ples, not above them or apart from human­i­ty. Our future is bound to theirs.

The stones remind us to count dif­fer­ent­ly: not to mea­sure our strength by how many stand with us, but to notice who is absent, to ask why, and to take responsibility.

A covenant is not mea­sured only by those who gath­er to renew it. It is also mea­sured by what they do for those who can­not be there.