A Photography and Sound Project
in production 2007 - 2008
Seven Generations is a photography and sound series that explores the dying Ethiopian Jewish oral history tradition of counting a person’s ancestors back, up to seven generations, at key moments in life. Through portrait and documentary-style photographs spanning the youngest to the eldest generations of Ethiopian Jews in Israel today, alongside companion sound recordings of their counting, praying and music, the objective of this series is to document this endangered tradition, while also providing a critical glimpse into the contemporary state of Ethiopian Jewish assimilation in Israel.
The photographs and sound recordings are grouped into five thematic sections:
1) The daily life of Ethiopian Jews in various Israeli towns;
2) The counting ceremony during engagements, weddings, and times when elders wish to record their oral histories;
3) The elder generation;
4) 75-year-old Nyo Tarrekye, the leading Ethiopian practitioner of the counting tradition; and
5) The younger generation.
The tradition that this project focuses on honors and keeps alive the Ethiopian community’s past through the practice of counting off names of family members tracing back seven generations. It has been practiced mainly by kessim (Ethiopian rabbis) and elders for centuries in Ethiopia and now in Israel, where the Ethiopian Jewish community has relocated in waves since the 1970s and, most dramatically, in 1984 and in 1991, when thousands were brought from Sudan and Ethiopia to Israel in undercover airlifts. In Israel today, much of Ethiopian Jewish culture—including this oral history ritual--is becoming lost as the elder generation is dying. Furthermore, one of the main problems in this community is the issue of representation, in that they are often represented in ways that considered negative and inaccurate. This project, Seven Generations, offers a view from within the community into this ancient ritual in order to preserve it for future generations.
The counting ritual occurs primarily when two people intend to marry to ensure that there is no blood relationship between them; if a family relation is discovered, then marriage is forbidden. The counting is done by elders in a large gathering of family members, accompanied by a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony. The ritual takes place in other circumstances as well. As it is partially a tradition rooted in East African culture, it may occur by way of greeting--a person may ask the other the name of his father, and his father’s father, etc.(it is both patrilineal and matrilineal) to see if there is any family connection. Counting generations is also done when someone is near death, in order to preserve their histories. These moments, along with imagery of the young, more assimilated generation, will be presented together with sound installation elements featuring traditional Ethiopian music, wedding ceremony music, and Hebrew and Amharic Hip Hop.
