Trauma, Culture, and Myth: Narratives of the Ethiopian Jewish Exodus

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511500008.024

18 - Trauma, Culture, and Myth: Narratives of the Ethiopian Jewish Exodus

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009

Gadi Benezer

Edited by

Laurence J. Kirmayer ,

Robert Lemelson and

Mark Barad

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Gadi Benezer: Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer Department of Behavioral Sciences, College of Management, Tel Aviv, Israel
Laurence J. Kirmayer: Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
Robert Lemelson: Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Mark Barad: Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles

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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.

Type: Chapter
Information: Understanding Trauma
Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives
, pp. 382 - 402

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511500008.024 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2007

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18 - Trauma, Culture, and Myth: Narratives of the Ethiopian Jewish Exodus

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