Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Foreword by Robert Jay Lifton
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: Inscribing Trauma in Culture, Brain, and Body
- SECTION I NEUROBIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON TRAUMA
- SECTION II CLINICAL PERSPECTIVES ON TRAUMA
- SECTION III CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON TRAUMA
- 15 Trauma, Adaptation, and Resilience: A Cross-Cultural and Evolutionary Perspective
- 16 Bruno and the Holy Fool: Myth, Mimesis, and the Transmission of Traumatic Memories
- 17 Failures of Imagination: The Refugee's Predicament
- 18 Trauma, Culture, and Myth: Narratives of the Ethiopian Jewish Exodus
- 19 Posttraumatic Politics: Violence, Memory, and Biomedical Discourse in Bali
- 20 Terror and Trauma in the Cambodian Genocide
- 21 Trauma in Context: Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives
- Epilogue: Trauma and the Vicissitudes of Interdisciplinary Integration
- Glossary
- Index
- References
18 - Trauma, Culture, and Myth: Narratives of the Ethiopian Jewish Exodus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Foreword by Robert Jay Lifton
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: Inscribing Trauma in Culture, Brain, and Body
- SECTION I NEUROBIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON TRAUMA
- SECTION II CLINICAL PERSPECTIVES ON TRAUMA
- SECTION III CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON TRAUMA
- 15 Trauma, Adaptation, and Resilience: A Cross-Cultural and Evolutionary Perspective
- 16 Bruno and the Holy Fool: Myth, Mimesis, and the Transmission of Traumatic Memories
- 17 Failures of Imagination: The Refugee's Predicament
- 18 Trauma, Culture, and Myth: Narratives of the Ethiopian Jewish Exodus
- 19 Posttraumatic Politics: Violence, Memory, and Biomedical Discourse in Bali
- 20 Terror and Trauma in the Cambodian Genocide
- 21 Trauma in Context: Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives
- Epilogue: Trauma and the Vicissitudes of Interdisciplinary Integration
- Glossary
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter focuses on the way traumatic experience during a group's return from exile can turn into a social myth and on the role played by aspects within the group's culture in this mythologizing process. More specifically, the chapter deals with the journey of the Ethiopian Jews via Sudan to Israel during the 1980s and the meaning it acquired for the people who underwent this journey. I argue, on the basis of my clinical and ethnographic research (BenEzer, 2002), that migration journeys are unjustifiably ignored in migration and refugee studies, as well as in traumatology. Powerful processes occur on such journeys that affect the individual and community in life-changing ways and shape their initial encounter with, and adaptation to, their new society. In what follows, I shall discuss the transformation of the individual stories of the journey of Ethiopian Jews into a collective myth in Israel.
THE JOURNEY: FACTS AND MEANING
The exodus to Israel was motivated by an ancient, recurring dream of the Ethiopian Jewish community that “the time will arrive” in which they will return to their homeland, the land of their ancestors (BenEzer, 2002). In 1862, a respected elder of the community named Abba Mahari announced that “the time has arrived,” and thousands of members of the community started to walk with him from the Gondar area, near Lake Tana, toward Israel.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Understanding TraumaIntegrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives, pp. 382 - 402Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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