Meat Lottery: A Spectacle Moving from Ethiopia to Israel

Authors

Keywords:

Meat, Ethiopian Jewry, Meat Lottery as a Socio-Symbolic Practice

Abstract

Meat is a key idiom in the lives of the Ethiopian Jews, both collective and private. The present paper focuses on meat lottery as a unique praxis of the community, both while in Ethiopia and following their immigration to Israel.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the egalitarian division of meat to be consumed by all partners and its accompanying lottery ritual, is described and analyzed, directing attention to its socio-cultural and symbolic meanings. Beyond the mitigating aspects of the lottery from a social perspective, i.e., circumventing potential rivalries in the distribution of the meat of a single animal among several partners, it is connected at heart with the notion of sacrifice and transformation.

Published

2012-12-01

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Meat Lottery: A Spectacle Moving from Ethiopia to Israel. (2012). IYUNIM: Multidisciplinary Studies in Israeli and Modern Jewish Society, 22, 204-224. https://iyunim.bgu.ac.il/index.php/iyunim/article/view/354