Why Did the Kessim Laugh at Elijah’s Chair?

At the most recent session of Ono Academic College’s Beit Midrash of Bete Israel (Ethiopian Jewish) Rabbis and Kessim (traditional Bete Israel spiritual leaders), one of the Kessim looked around with a half-smile and asked: “What is this thing you have in the synagogue—a chair for Elijah the Prophet?” He was referring to the special chair traditionally set aside for Elijah the Old Testament prophet to sit in, at a brit milah (circumcision) ceremony. The chair symbolizes the prophet’s presence as a witness to the covenant into which the infant enters.

The question provoked laughter among the Kessim.

To them, the very idea of an “Elijah’s chair” was not merely unfamiliar. It was deeply puzzling. And behind their laughter lay two practices that seemed completely foreign to the religious world they had known in Ethiopia: performing a circumcision inside a synagogue and performing a circumcision on Shabbat.

In the tradition of Bete Israel, the synagogue is a sacred space into which ritual impurity should not be introduced. Circumcision, involving blood and taking place while the mother is still within her period of ritual impurity after childbirth, therefore belonged outside the synagogue. And when the eighth day fell on Shabbat, Ethiopian Jews traditionally postponed the circumcision rather than violate the sanctity of the Sabbath.

Rabbinic Jewish tradition developed in almost the opposite direction: the synagogue came to be regarded as an especially fitting and sacred setting for a brit milah, while a circumcision performed on the eighth day takes precedence over the prohibitions of Shabbat.

From the perspective of the Kessim, then, what they encountered in Israel represented not one innovation but two: circumcision inside the synagogue and circumcision on Shabbat. Both seemed to contradict their understanding of Torah, particularly the laws of purity and holiness found in Leviticus.

Their laughter left me wondering: How did Elijah’s chair become part of the circumcision ceremony in the first place? And how did circumcision come to be performed in the synagogue?

In searching for answers, I encountered the fascinating research of Dr. Chana Shacham-Rosby on Elijah’s chair and its place within Jewish communal space.

The association of Elijah with circumcision has ancient roots. Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, a midrashic work generally dated to the early medieval period, connects Elijah with the covenant of circumcision through the biblical story in which Elijah complains to God that the Israelites have abandoned His covenant. According to the midrash, God responds by requiring Elijah henceforth to witness every circumcision and see for himself Israel’s continued faithfulness to the covenant. From this tradition developed the custom of preparing a special seat for Elijah, the “messenger of the covenant,” as described in Malachi 3:1.

At the same time, another figure acquired an important ceremonial role: the sandak, translated today as the godfather, the person who holds the child during the circumcision. Ashkenazi sages compared the knees of the sandek to the Temple altar and the circumcision itself to the offering of incense. The sandak therefore assumed a symbolic and almost priestly role.

But this created a problem. If Elijah was invisibly present at the circumcision, and the chair was his, where was the sandek supposed to sit?

Different solutions developed. In some communities there was a double chair, with one seat for the sandek and an empty seat for Elijah. Elsewhere there were two separate chairs: an elaborate, elevated chair representing Elijah’s presence, upon which the infant might be placed at the beginning of the ceremony, and a simpler chair for the sandak.

Something else was changing as well. Circumcision, which had generally been a family ceremony performed in the home, increasingly became a communal ceremony associated with the synagogue. This reflected broader transformations in medieval Jewish communal life. Life-cycle rituals became more closely connected to communal and rabbinic institutions, and the synagogue provided a permanent public setting in which ceremonial objects such as an elaborate Elijah’s chair could be maintained.

But I suspect the permanent chair acquired an importance that went far beyond practicality.

For centuries, Ashkenazi Jews lived amid persecution, blood libels, insecurity and high infant mortality. In such a world, Elijah’s chair could become more than a piece of furniture brought out for a circumcision. Standing permanently in the synagogue, it offered a visible reminder that Elijah—the messenger of the covenant—remained with the community even when no circumcision was taking place.

The simple question of the Kessim therefore opened a window onto something much larger.

It revealed two Jewish understandings of holiness.

Bete Israel preserved a sharp distinction between sacred space and ritual impurity. Circumcision therefore remained outside the synagogue. Ashkenazi Jewish practice developed differently: the synagogue increasingly became a setting for the Jewish life cycle, while Elijah’s chair became a physical symbol of the continuing presence of the covenant within communal life.

Both traditions sought to honor the covenant. But they did so through different understandings of sacred space.

What happens when two such ancient Jewish traditions suddenly find themselves living in the same country?

That question reaches far beyond Elijah’s chair.

This week, someone asked me what I thought about harsh rulings directed against people who use smartphones—phones described as “impure,” with their owners sometimes treated as religiously suspect.

I answered that the smartphone is not really the problem. It is a symptom of a deeper problem.

I thought of the Netziv, Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, and his famous introduction to the Book of Genesis. He describes the generation of the destruction of the Second Temple as people who were “righteous and pious and labored in Torah,” yet “were not upright in their dealings with the world.”

Their tragedy was not that they lacked Torah. Their tragedy was that people became so certain that they alone represented the will of God that they regarded those who behaved differently as religiously suspect. Religious commitment, instead of producing greater responsibility toward other human beings, became capable of producing suspicion and hatred.

The problem was not halakha. The problem arose when meticulous attention to religious boundaries overwhelmed human uprightness and the ability to see the person standing on the other side of those boundaries.

Following an insight I learned from Rabbi Professor Daniel Sperber, I have come to think that our sages themselves understood this danger. They recognized that extreme concern with ritual purity could create social divisions so severe that different groups of Jews could no longer eat together. Rabbinic law therefore developed mechanisms that substantially limited the practical reach of biblical purity regulations in ordinary Jewish life.

Not because the sages took Torah less seriously, but because they understood that Torah must build life rather than dismantle it. The covenant should bind human beings together, not become a wall separating them.

A young Ethiopian Israeli yeshiva student once told me a story that made this painfully concrete.

After years of studying halakha, he found himself becoming increasingly distant from his parents. For religious reasons, he found it problematic to eat in their home. Gradually, what had begun as halakhic distance became emotional distance as well.

For instance, among Bete Israel, there was a simple family gesture. A father might tear off a piece of injera and hand it to his wife or children as an expression of affection, closeness and blessing. Due to the student’s increasing observance of halakah, this beautiful ritual now made the student religiously uncomfortable.

The student told me:

“I read your book From Sinai to Ethiopia, and it opened the door for me to enter my home again. After years, I sat beside my father. He gave me a piece of injera, and I felt that I had received my father back—and that I had received myself back. It brought down the wall that had stood between my father and me.”

His story moved me to tears.

Because the argument was never really about injera. It was not even ultimately about halakha. The deeper question was what our religious life was doing to the relationships for whose sake, in part, religious life exists.

Does our halakhic commitment bring us closer to our parents and children? Or can it sometimes, without our intending it, become a barrier between us?

The encounter of Ethiopian Jewry with Israeli halakhic culture raised precisely this challenge.

In Ethiopia, Bete Israel observed biblical laws of ritual purity as a central part of religious life. After giving birth to a boy, a woman remained in a special maternity dwelling (margam gojo) for forty days; after the birth of a girl, for eighty days. Circumcision therefore did not take place in the synagogue. It took place in the space where the mother was staying.

I remember this through the stories of my own grandmother, who was the circumciser in our village—and who circumcised me.

The maternity house stood outside the inhabited area of the village, surrounded by stones marking its boundary. In our community, my grandmother would enter the maternity house, perform the circumcision simply, without an elaborate ceremony or a large gathering, and remain there afterward because contact with the blood had rendered her ritually impure. Later she would immerse herself in the river and return home only after nightfall. Some Ethiopian communities remember circumcision on the seventh day and others on the eighth; practices were not identical everywhere.

Yet there is something crucial to understand.

The laws of purity in Ethiopia did not create walls between people.

Paradoxically, the temporary separation of the mother strengthened communal responsibility toward her. Villagers brought her food, assisted her family and regarded caring for her as a communal obligation. The boundary between purity and impurity did not mean social abandonment. It created obligations of care.

This helps explain the shock experienced by Kessim when they arrived in Israel and saw circumcision performed inside a synagogue.

They did not merely encounter a different custom.

They encountered what seemed to them an inversion of the religious world they knew. The place they regarded as the community’s most sacred space—a place protected from ritual impurity—had become the setting for a ceremony involving blood and connected to a mother still within the biblical period of impurity following childbirth.

For them, this could feel like bringing impurity into the very heart of holiness.

I recently encountered a testimony concerning the late Kes Amha Negat that I cannot forget. Invited to give a blessing at a circumcision in an absorption center, he watched practices surrounding the circumcision that were entirely alien to the religious world he knew. Horrified by what he saw, he cried out at the mohel: “You are a dog! You are a dog!”

And then he said something even more painful:

“What I miss most about Ethiopia is our pure religion.”

When I heard that story, tears came to my eyes.

Not because I believed that one man was right and the other wrong. What moved me was the tragedy of seeing two Jews sincerely trying to fulfill the will of God, while each could experience the religious practice of the other as the very opposite of holiness.

That, I believe, is the real challenge.

The question is not simply which tradition is correct. Before we judge another Jewish tradition, we must be willing to understand the religious logic from which it emerged.

I do not believe that the root of our problem is evil. Quite the opposite. Most religious people sincerely want to serve God.

The danger begins when fear becomes stronger than love.

When fear governs us, difference becomes threatening. Instead of listening, we become suspicious. Instead of relationships, we build walls.

When love and responsibility govern us, even profound disagreement can become an opportunity to learn.

Rabbanit Malka Puterkovsky once said that when people genuinely want to find a solution, they find one. Everything begins with the desire to do so.

During the coronavirus pandemic, we saw halakhic solutions emerge to problems that only weeks earlier might have seemed impossible to resolve. Halakha did not cease to be halakha. Rather, halakhic creativity was activated by responsibility toward an unprecedented human reality.

Perhaps this is one of the great purposes of the State of Israel.

Israel should not merely be the place in which the Jewish exiles have gathered geographically. It should become the place where ancient Jewish traditions learn to listen to one another. And this conversation should extend beyond Israeli society to the many Jewish communities and movements throughout the world.

The purpose is not to erase differences.

It is to discover that what binds us can be deeper than what separates us.

Ultimately, the question is not whether multiple Jewish traditions exist. They do. The question is what consciousness guides us when they meet.

Are we guided primarily by fear or by love?

Do we build walls or bridges?

Does our religious meticulousness bring us closer to the human being standing before us, or push that person farther away?

This is not merely a halakhic question. It is a question of religious consciousness—and perhaps one of the questions that will determine the future of Jewish society in Israel.

In this conversation, Bete Israel tradition should not be treated as part of a problem that Israeli Judaism must solve. It should be recognized as one of the Jewish traditions capable of enriching Judaism as a whole.

Its understanding of covenant, grounded in fidelity, responsibility and trust, offers a way of living with disagreement without eliminating difference. It teaches that we can remain deeply faithful to our own tradition while making room for another; that we can possess a clear identity without turning someone who is different into a threat.

And perhaps, after all, this helps us understand why Elijah’s chair became such a powerful symbol in rabbinic Judaism.

Elijah does not come to announce uniformity.

He comes to repair relationships.

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet… and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers” (Malachi 3:23–24).

Elijah’s task is not to erase the differences between fathers and children, between generations, or between Jewish communities. It is to turn their hearts toward one another.

He does not abolish difference. He lowers the walls that difference can create.

Perhaps that is also the task facing Jewish society today: not to create a uniform Judaism, and not to decide which Jewish tradition will defeat another, but to build a covenant of fidelity among our different traditions—a covenant that recognizes that each carries a distinctive voice, while all belong to the same story, the same responsibility and the same destiny.

Perhaps that is the message of Elijah the Prophet.

And perhaps it is also one of the unique gifts that Bete Israel brings to the Jewish people: not a way to abolish our differences, but a way to live with them in fidelity to the covenant—until what binds us becomes deeper than what divides us, and the hearts turn toward one another.