When I arrived in Israel from Ethiopia as a lit­tle girl, I learned quick­ly that lan­guage can build a home and it can unmake one. Words from my home­land that car­ried mem­o­ry and dig­ni­ty were reshaped to fit a Hebrew-speaker’s ear. Our sounds were soft­ened, round­ed. And slow­ly, some­thing in us was dilut­ed too.

One of the first and most painful exam­ples was the name of the holi­est day in the Beta Israel tra­di­tion: Səgd (ስግድ).

In Amhar­ic and Ge’ez, Səgd is almost a whis­per: sə + gə + d with­out inter­ven­ing vow­els. It means to bow in humil­i­ty, to sur­ren­der before God with rev­er­ence, to renew the covenant. It is a day of fast­ing, con­fes­sion, prayer, and awe far clos­er to Yom Kip­pur in spir­it than to anoth­er festival. 

But in Israel, the word became ​“Sigd.” A vow­el was added that does not exist in our lan­guages. A small shift, but one that revealed a larg­er pat­tern: a belief that our sounds were too sharp, too for­eign, too Ethiopi­an to belong ful­ly to the Jew­ish story.

And I must admit: we par­tic­i­pat­ed in that soft­en­ing too.

When peo­ple pro­nounced my fam­i­ly name Mola as Mula I didn’t cor­rect them. When my rel­a­tive, whose Amhar­ic name Məhrət (ምህረት) means heal­ing and com­pas­sion, was called ​“Mahret,” stripped of mean­ing, we let it pass. We want­ed to fit in, not make trouble.

But lan­guage is not cosmetic.

It is memory.

It is ownership.

It is the place where cul­ture either lives or fades away​.In Ethiopia, Səgd was a day of immense spir­i­tu­al pow­er. At dawn, dressed in white, the entire com­mu­ni­ty climbed the moun­tain. We bowed with our fore­heads to the earth, fac­ing Jerusalem. It was a day of reck­on­ing with our mis­takes, long­ing, and hope. A day when the com­mu­ni­ty hum­bled itself together.

When we arrived in Israel — the dream we car­ried for gen­er­a­tions — Səgd changed. It ceased to be a prayer toward Zion and became a prayer for uni­ty with­in Zion. A plea for heal­ing frac­tures, for jus­tice, for recog­ni­tion. Not sym­bol­ic belong­ing, but real belonging.

As chair­woman of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Ethiopi­an Jews, in the ear­ly 2000s, we fought for Səgd to be rec­og­nized as a state hol­i­day. I was unsure at first in our mis­sion; racism in schools and inequities in bud­gets felt more urgent­ly in need of our atten­tion. But our direc­tor gen­er­al and one per­sis­tent lob­by­ist walked the halls of the Knes­set day after day, refus­ing to give up.

When the law passed in 2008, I under­stood. Recog­ni­tion is not sym­bol­ic. It is oxygen.

There is a deep­er lay­er, often for­got­ten. Səgd reflects the struc­ture in Nehemi­ah 9:3: ​“A quar­ter of the day they read from the Torah,/ A quar­ter they con­fessed and bowed before God.” 

For cen­turies, we pre­served this exact rhythm through our hol­i­day com­mem­o­ra­tion: Three quar­ters of the day devot­ed to fast­ing, prayer, con­fes­sion, and pros­tra­tion and the final quar­ter devot­ed to joy.

For me, this final quar­ter is the most mov­ing moment of all. A the­ol­o­gy that says: We prayed with all our hearts; we con­fessed; we bowed; and now we cel­e­brate, with equal sincerity.

Because we trust that God, com­pas­sion­ate and mer­ci­ful, has heard us. This arc from sup­pli­ca­tion to joy is the liv­ing heart of Səgd.

And in that final joy­ful quar­ter of the day, some­thing else appears: bread.

Spe­cial bread, baked only for holy days. In Ethiopia it was baked in the earth in a pit oven dug into the ground. Today, in Israel, we make it in the oven, but the bless­ing it invokes remains.

Here is the ver­sion I make for Səgd:

Səgd Hol­i­day Bread (Ethiopi­an-Style Sacred Loaf)

- 4 cups all-pur­pose flour

- 1 tbsp yeast (or sour­dough starter)

- 1 tsp salt

- 2 Tbsp organ­ic honey

- 1 Tbsp olive oil

- 1 – 2 tsp ground hilbeh (fenu­greek), not too fine

- 1 tsp whole nigel­la (black cumin)

- Warm water as needed

Mix, knead well, and let rise until it falls.

Knead again.

Trans­fer the dough into an oven-safe pot lined with cab­bage leaves.

Cov­er with more leaves.

Bake at medi­um-high heat for 60 – 80 minutes.

This act of preser­va­tion is not only culi­nary. It echoes a broad­er revival tak­ing place in this moment. Today, a beau­ti­ful restora­tion is unfold­ing among young Ethiopi­an Israelis. They insist on accu­ra­cy not as pedantry, but as recla­ma­tion. They revive mean­ings, cor­rect pro­nun­ci­a­tions, and hon­or our ancient sounds. They say Səgd (ስግድ) with intention.

And when we restore that sound, we restore more than a syllable.

We restore our history.

Our dig­ni­ty.

And our full place in the Jew­ish people.