The Floor Falling Away: Dislocated Space and Body in the Humour of Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel

Abstract

The present paper analyses humorous stories circulating among Ethiopian immigrants now living in Israel. Typically told at community gatherings, these narratives articulate the drama of dislocation and the traumatic encounter with life in Israel, by focusing on the embarrassing clash of the quintessential “traditional” Ethiopian, with a new land-scape, time-scape, and body-scape. Characterised by an easy spirit, the revelation of innocence met with forgiving and accepting laughter, these stories enable internalisation and mediation of common ambivalences and vulnerabilities, converting them into elements of pleasure.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Mulugete Mahari and Yael Aizic for assisting in the collection of the humorous stories and the transcription of the recorded materials, as well as The Folklore Research Center at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem for financial support. The author is grateful to Ilana Goldberg, Galit Hasan-Rokem, and Anbessa Tefera, as well as to the two anonymous reviewers, for their insightful reading of earlier versions of this paper. Some of the stories were presented at the International Society for Folk Narrative Research conference held in Athens in June 2009, and at the XVII International Conference of Ethiopian Studies and the Society for the Study of Ethiopian Jewry meeting held in Ethiopia in November 2009. The author extends thanks to the participants of the panels at these conferences for the stimulating discussion.

Notes

 [1] For additional themes articulated in the humour of Ethiopian-Israelis—also appearing in five of the twenty-eight stories presented here—see Salamon (2010).

 [2] For studies on humour and assimilation to life in Israel, and to Israeli society, see Oring (1981; 2003), Zilberg (2001), Shifman and Katz (2005), Salamon (2007) and LeVine (2008).

 [3] A participant in such a meeting recounted: “So we drink, we chat, we talk … all kinds [of talk]. Who was where, who did what, all kinds of things. […] those who work in a kindergarten tell about the children at the Ethiopian children's kindergarten, or about the new immigrants, […] they talk, they laugh, about how they behave, that they don't know [how to behave], and then we also drink bun [coffee]. […] I take a shower, put on perfume, wear jewellery from here, not from Ethiopia. It gives a feeling of fun.” For a study of these gatherings, see Salamon, Kaplan and Goldberg (2009).

 [4] In the Northern Ethiopian culture in which immigrants to Israel previously lived, with its emphasis on respect and honour, such self-depreciation is rather rare. Therefore, one might suggest that it is perhaps the form and not only the content that is innovative in this corpus. I thank the anonymous reader for this remark. In addition, a new body of humorous stories, based on the well-known Ethiopian trickster, Abba Gevrehana, is now told among Ethiopian-Israeli soldiers of the Israeli Defence Forces. This emerging corpus of humour, which is still not fully established, seems to stand in opposition to the current body of humorous Ethiopian stories, and deserves a future study.

 [5] In most publications relating to the group while in Ethiopia, they were usually referred to as “Falasha.” They themselves employ the name “Beta Israel” (the House of Israel) when referring to their Ethiopian past and when referring to their new position in Israel. For an ethno-historical study, based on interviews with group members now living in Israel, see Salamon (1999).

 [6] Ancient Ethiopic, Ethiopia's Semitic liturgical tongue used by Jews and Christians alike.

 [7] The Torah-centred religious observance of the Beta Israel is a function of their existence as a Jewish community, distinct from other Jewish communities.

 [8] Much has been written on these two dramatic operations. For a general description of their progress and outcome, see Kaplan and Rosen (1993). On the centrality of the Exodus story in the immigration of the Jews from Ethiopia to Israel, see Ben Ezer (2002).

 [9] These newcomers are considered different from the immigrants who arrived in Israel up until Operation Solomon in 1991. On these groups, and especially on the Falashmura, see, for example, Kaplan (1993), Salamon (1994), Shabtay (2006) and, especially, Seeman (2009).

[10] For a summary description of the immigration to Israel (“aliyah”), including references to many other publications, see, for example, Kaplan and Rosen (1993) and Kaplan and Salamon (2003, 118–22). On basic aspects of their assimilation in Israel, see Westheimer and Kaplan (1992) and Kaplan and Salamon (2003).

[11] An attempt to obscure the impression of “otherness” was made by placing the Beta Israel's skin hue on a continuum with that of earlier Jewish immigrant groups; in particular, the Jews of Yemen and India. This corpus is characterised by jokes that are mainly “good-natured.” In the first stages of the Ethiopian immigration to Israel, the dominant jokes focused on categorising the Ethiopians in the spectrum of Jewish colours (see Salamon 2001; 2003). Jokes such as “What's the difference between an Ethiopian and a Yemenite? Five minutes' baking,” or “Why did they bring the Ethiopians to Israel? To become spare parts for the Yemenites,” emphasised the resemblance of the Ethiopians to the other Jews, and attempted to avoid their categorisation as racially other. At the time of writing, jokes about Ethiopians told by non-Ethiopian Israelis relate strongly to their colour by comparing Ethiopians with different types of chocolates. This highly generative cycle, fully accepts their blackness, as well as their “sweetness,” and their belonging in Israeli society.

[12] For these struggles, including especially the debate over their personal conversions, the blood scandal, see Seeman (1997). Regarding other race-oriented struggles, see Salamon (2003).

[13] Their everyday assimilation was, and still is, of course, a multi-faceted challenge consisting of issues concerning language, health, education, employment, and much more. The various ways in which humour participated in the assimilation of different ethnic groups to life in Israel, is still to be studied. Relevant examples are: Zilberg (2003), who dealt with humour as related to nostalgia, lost status, and longing for homeland and culture, among newcomers to Israel from the former Soviet Union; a study by Shifman and Katz (2005) on jokes told mainly by Eastern European Jews about the Yekkes (German Jews); Oring (1981; 2003, 97–115), on the chizbat of the Palmach; and LeVine (2008), who, in an unpublished paper, studied the in-group jokes told by Anglo-Saxon immigrants to Israel, which focused mainly on Israeli drivers, money, and lowered standards of living.

[14] And while Israel was prepared to absorb and accommodate its newcomers, the sheer number of Ethiopian immigrants inundated the state's absorbing capacity. For a study of the paternalistic attitudes of the absorption officials toward the Ethiopian newcomers, see Hertzog (1998).

[15] According to the immigrants, in rural Ethiopia all forms of sanitation took place in nature. No man-made products were used for sanitation purposes. On that topic, Reidolf Molvaer wrote: “Traditional sanitary practices survive over most of Ethiopia. Any reasonably hidden place in nature can be used as a ‘toilet’ […] this is a custom inherited from generations back, so few see any harm in it or feel any strong urge to change it, except in crowded towns where there are not enough open spaces” (Molvaer 2007, 97).

[16] Mistakes, both lexical and semantic, deriving from phonetic similarities between the Ethiopian languages Amharic or Tigrinya and Hebrew, are a source of many humorous anecdotes told within the Ethiopian Israeli community. Language and space intermingle: the linguistic affinity between Hebrew and Amharic, which underlies the slippage between the words bayit and bet, gar and agar, contributes to the confusion.

[17] On the term Beseder (“OK,” “all right,” “in order”) as a central humorous idiom of former Soviet Union immigrants in Israel, see Zilberg (2001).

[18] The title Abba denotes respectability and honour, usually connected with elders.

[19] Most of the immigrants were airlifted to Israel, a fact that is, of course, a focus of meaning in this discourse. Nevertheless, it is not part of their explicit humour. This may be due to the secrecy of the entire operation, but possibly also due to its being an isolated and extreme experience. The fact that this event remains outside the scope of the humour invites further study. In addition, although the immigrants' humour is far more concrete and physical, it is worthwhile to mention that the very concept of immigration to Israel is called aliyah, literally ascent or advancement, understood as both physical and spiritual, or moral. On the concept of absorption—the term used for assimilation—there is the sense of losing one's own former features and becoming undifferentiated. For an enlightening discussion of these concepts in Israel, see Golden (2002, 9).

[20] At the time of research, these were the only available examples of online jokes popular among young Ethiopian Israelis.

[21] The Beta Israel journey and struggle for recognition is the focus of an extensive amount of literature. For some of the main issues, see Corinaldi (1998), Ben Ezer (2002) and Kaplan and Salamon (2003).

[22] While Lowe (1986, 439) observed that “although minorities have often entered into full citizenship through long and arduous struggle, this procedure has sometimes been both shortened and sweetened when they have made up their minds to enter laughing,” the case of the Ethiopian Israelis' humour paints a much more complex picture. It shows that while they cathartically laugh in relation to certain issues, other issues—seemingly-traumatic struggles, for example—are completely absent from their humour. Two opposing speculations may emerge. One possibility is that what seems traumatic to non-Ethiopians is not in fact what is actually traumatic to them in reality; another possibility is that these struggles are so painful that they cannot be expressed in a humorous fashion at all. Yet another option is to look at this fact as part of a process: in the present stage of their assimilation journey, humour mediates mundane, intimate experiences. While they have surmounted these initial difficulties, the perspective required in order to be able to laugh about specific vulnerabilities, does not yet exist for the issues that are not yet fully resolved.

[23] This is a new concept in the study of immigration. Research on proprioceptive faculties (popularly known as the “sixth sense”) is occurring in the life sciences.

[24] The unique capacity of humour in containing and processing both individual and collective vulnerabilities, is highly apparent in the case of immigration and relocation. For a comparative study of humour among new settlers, including in Israel, see Oring (2003).

[25] It must be stressed here that it is not my intention to claim these stories are told in order to create shared bonds, or to process the traumatic experiences of these early days in a new land. Rather, through their humorous narration, Ethiopian immigrants are able to tell their stories, entertain and amuse their audience, and share simultaneously in the experience of the past and, in the bond that emerges from sharing a joke, laugh together.

[26] According to Turner (1969), Communitas is the communion of fellowship, which involves sentiments of close relations and structural likeness between individuals.