Hagar Salamon
Biographic Data
| ID | 185234 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hagar Salamon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hagar |
| FAMILY NAME | Salamon |
| SIGNATURE | SALAMON H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6946-7800 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 38 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
They Came Upon a Certain Water: The Interflow of Bodies, Communities and Beliefs around ‘Ain el-Haniya Spring
This article examines the healing spring of ʿAin el-Haniya and its rapidly expanding pilgrimage among Ethiopian Israelis of diverse religious backgrounds. Although associated with the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch, the site attracts pilgrims who often do not identify as Christian yet attribute healing power to its waters. Based on more than a year of ethnographic fieldwork, the study shows that healing rituals at the spring are shaped not only …
Palestinian Embroidery in a Troubled Landscape: Reading Rachel Kainy's “Embroidered Village”
Palestinian embroidery is the subject of ongoing interest, much of it on the part of Palestinian collectors, artists, and researchers. The present article focuses upon the works of Rachel Kainy, a young Israeli artist, who paints to perfection worn-out remnants of embroidered Palestinian thaubs (traditional embroidered ankle-length dresses). Retaining the traces of wear and tear on the embroidered pieces, while transposing them to the medium of p…
June 1967 in Personal Stories of Palestinians and Israelis
The clash of June 1967, called by Israelis the Six-Day War and by Palestinians the Naksa (setback), is a critical milestone within the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite all the scholarly attention ever since, there remain unheard voices and untold stories. It is the personal stories of people in the region that are at the center of this book. How do they remember 1967? How were their lives affected, even changed dramatically as a…
From Hand to Mouth: Reflections on the Multivocality of Gursha in Ethiopia
The custom of feeding a person sitting at one’s table by placing a handful of sumptuous food in his or her mouth is a unique Ethiopian commensal practice, known as gursha. The present article aims at eliciting and examining a plethora of associations regarding this convivial, hospitable practice. Based on a wide range of sources, it examines gursha as a dynamic canvas for a wide spectrum of social, historical, and religious associations. The arti…
Israel in the Making: Stickers, Stitches, and Other Critical Practices
Meat lottery: A spectacle in transition from Ethiopia to Israel
Meat is a key idiom in the lives of the Ethiopian Jews, both private and collective. This paper focuses on meat lottery as a unique praxis in Ethiopia and in the move of the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) community, from Ethiopia to Israel. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the egalitarian divide of meat to be consumed by all partners and its accompanied lottery ritual is described and analyzed, directing the gaze to its socio-cultural and symbolic …
Spices for Thought: Salt, Chili Pepper, and Slaves in Ethiopian Amharic Proverbs
Even though slavery-related understandings are deeply embedded in the collective Ethiopian consciousness, they are seldom explicitly discussed. In the course of oral interviews carried out in rural northwestern Ethiopia with elderly men and women who still recall the practice of slavery, a rich corpus of Amharic proverbs related to this topic was collected. Focusing on a specific segment of this corpus, I invite the reader to visit Ethiopian folk…
Embroidered Palestine: A Stitched Narrative
Palestinian rich cross-stitch embroidery is considered the group’s “folk marker.” In the years following the dramatic events of 1948 and 1967, “Palestinian embroidery” gradually became a unifying form of grieving-creativity and national pride. The present article focuses on embroidered maps of Palestine, called Taṭrīz khārṭaṭ Falasṭīn, that are made by Palestinian women to be framed and hung on the walls of Palestinian homes.Based on in-depth int…
Goddesses of Flesh and Metal
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Tunisian Jewish female body was subjected to a dramatic fattening process in preparation for marriage. Immediately following the girl’s engagement, her body became the focus of an intense transformative regimen aimed at achieving the aesthetic ideals of dramatic weight gain and “shining and whitening” of the skin. This paper offers a critical reading of the representation of the female body in …
The Floor Falling Away: Dislocated Space and Body in the Humour of Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel
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 wi…
Goddesses of Flesh and Metal”: Gazes on the Tradition of Fattening Jewish Brides in Tunisia
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Tunisian Jewish female body was subjected to a dramatic fattening process in preparation for marriage. Immediately following the girl’s engagement, her body became the focus of an intense transformative regimen aimed at achieving the aesthetic ideals of dramatic weight gain and “shining and whitening” of the skin. This paper offers a critical reading of the representation of the female body in …
Misplaced Home and Mislaid Meat: Stories Circulating Among Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel
Misplaced Home and Mislaid Meat:Stories Circulating Among Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel Hagar Salamon (bio) I have been listening to stories that wander between Ethiopia and Israel for almost twenty-five years. The Beta Israel, Ethiopian Jews now living in Israel, have been the focus of my ethnographic research, and it is to their stories that I often turn to explore the complexity of their experience. Here, when attended to carefully, it is pos…
What goes around, comes around: Rotating credit associations among Ethiopian women in Israel
This article looks at how working-class Ethiopian women, who have migrated to Israel, have sought empowerment and economic control through the establishment of rotating credit associations known as iqqub. In the changing world of Ethiopian Israeli women, iqqub associations and their specific cultural manifestations constitute a highly meaningful experience, whose building-blocks incorporate the financial, the social, the ritualistic, and the symb…
Cow Tales: Decoding Images of Slavery in the Ethiopian Jewish Community
Based on life stories of ex-slaves from Ethiopia now living in Israel, the present article attempts to uncover complex relationships and conceptions of intimate domination and subjugation. The dramatic passage of masters and slaves from rural Ethiopia to the democratic State of Israel enables their stories to emerge. Hearing these personal stories became possible when continuous slavery taken for granted in one particular cultural context became …
The ambivalence over the Levantinization of Israel: “David Levi” jokes
The present article focuses on David Levi jokes—an Israeli joke cycle—as a catalyzing agent in the evolution of Israeli identity. Although the manifest referent in the jokes is a concrete political and ethnic figure, the article argues that the actual referent is the whole of Israeli society. The cumulative effect of composing, hearing, recalling and especially repeating these elements, all in a spirit of self-mockery, enables mediation of nation…
Blackness in Transition: Decoding Racial Constructs through Stories of Ethiopian Jews
The present article examines racial dynamics as portrayed in stories told, exchanged, and developed in an ever-changing dialogic process. The unique transition of Ethiopian Jews, from being Jews in black Ethiopia to blacks in Jewish Israel, highlights changing constructs of "blackness" in both the Ethiopian immigrant community and the Israeli host society. This research has uncovered a system of racial hierarchies among the Beta Israel, including…
Between Conscious and Subconscious: Depth-to-Depth Communication in the Ethnographic Space
The present article explores the ethnographic space through which conscious and subconscious communication travels, by focusing on two dreams, one of the researcher and one of the researched. This dream exchange, a revealing affirmation of a shared subtext in the ethnographic space, presented itself during the collection of life stories of Ethiopian Jews now living in Israel who had been slaves of Jewish masters back in Ethiopia. In the specific …
Political Bumper Stickers in Contemporary Israel: Folklore As An Emotional Battleground
Journal of American Folklore - Volume 114, Number 453, Summer 2001
Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism
Slavery among the ‘Beta‐Israel’ in Ethiopia: Religious dimensions of inter‐group perceptions
(1994). Slavery among the ‘Beta‐Israel’ in Ethiopia: Religious dimensions of inter‐group perceptions. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 72-88
Blackness in Transition: Decoding Racial Constructs through Stories of Ethiopian Jews
The present article examines racial dynamics as portrayed in stories told, exchanged, and developed in an ever-changing dialogic process. The unique transition of Ethiopian Jews, from being Jews in black Ethiopia to blacks in Jewish Israel, highlights changing constructs of "blackness" in both the Ethiopian immigrant community and the Israeli host society. This research has uncovered a system of racial hierarchies among the Beta Israel, including…
Between Conscious and Subconscious: Depth-to-Depth Communication in the Ethnographic Space
The present article explores the ethnographic space through which conscious and subconscious communication travels, by focusing on two dreams, one of the researcher and one of the researched. This dream exchange, a revealing affirmation of a shared subtext in the ethnographic space, presented itself during the collection of life stories of Ethiopian Jews now living in Israel who had been slaves of Jewish masters back in Ethiopia. In the specific …
Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism
Misplaced Home and Mislaid Meat: Stories Circulating Among Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel
Misplaced Home and Mislaid Meat:Stories Circulating Among Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel Hagar Salamon (bio) I have been listening to stories that wander between Ethiopia and Israel for almost twenty-five years. The Beta Israel, Ethiopian Jews now living in Israel, have been the focus of my ethnographic research, and it is to their stories that I often turn to explore the complexity of their experience. Here, when attended to carefully, it is pos…
The ambivalence over the Levantinization of Israel: “David Levi” jokes
The present article focuses on David Levi jokes—an Israeli joke cycle—as a catalyzing agent in the evolution of Israeli identity. Although the manifest referent in the jokes is a concrete political and ethnic figure, the article argues that the actual referent is the whole of Israeli society. The cumulative effect of composing, hearing, recalling and especially repeating these elements, all in a spirit of self-mockery, enables mediation of nation…
Goddesses of Flesh and Metal
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Tunisian Jewish female body was subjected to a dramatic fattening process in preparation for marriage. Immediately following the girl’s engagement, her body became the focus of an intense transformative regimen aimed at achieving the aesthetic ideals of dramatic weight gain and “shining and whitening” of the skin. This paper offers a critical reading of the representation of the female body in …
Meat lottery: A spectacle in transition from Ethiopia to Israel
Meat is a key idiom in the lives of the Ethiopian Jews, both private and collective. This paper focuses on meat lottery as a unique praxis in Ethiopia and in the move of the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) community, from Ethiopia to Israel. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the egalitarian divide of meat to be consumed by all partners and its accompanied lottery ritual is described and analyzed, directing the gaze to its socio-cultural and symbolic …
Embroidered Palestine: A Stitched Narrative
Palestinian rich cross-stitch embroidery is considered the group’s “folk marker.” In the years following the dramatic events of 1948 and 1967, “Palestinian embroidery” gradually became a unifying form of grieving-creativity and national pride. The present article focuses on embroidered maps of Palestine, called Taṭrīz khārṭaṭ Falasṭīn, that are made by Palestinian women to be framed and hung on the walls of Palestinian homes.Based on in-depth int…
The Floor Falling Away: Dislocated Space and Body in the Humour of Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel
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 wi…
Slavery among the ‘Beta‐Israel’ in Ethiopia: Religious dimensions of inter‐group perceptions
(1994). Slavery among the ‘Beta‐Israel’ in Ethiopia: Religious dimensions of inter‐group perceptions. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 72-88
Slavery among the ‘Beta‐Israel’ in Ethiopia: Religious dimensions of inter‐group perceptions
(1994). Slavery among the ‘Beta‐Israel’ in Ethiopia: Religious dimensions of inter‐group perceptions. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 72-88
Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism
Political Bumper Stickers in Contemporary Israel: Folklore As An Emotional Battleground
Journal of American Folklore - Volume 114, Number 453, Summer 2001
Between Conscious and Subconscious: Depth-to-Depth Communication in the Ethnographic Space
The present article explores the ethnographic space through which conscious and subconscious communication travels, by focusing on two dreams, one of the researcher and one of the researched. This dream exchange, a revealing affirmation of a shared subtext in the ethnographic space, presented itself during the collection of life stories of Ethiopian Jews now living in Israel who had been slaves of Jewish masters back in Ethiopia. In the specific …
Blackness in Transition: Decoding Racial Constructs through Stories of Ethiopian Jews
The present article examines racial dynamics as portrayed in stories told, exchanged, and developed in an ever-changing dialogic process. The unique transition of Ethiopian Jews, from being Jews in black Ethiopia to blacks in Jewish Israel, highlights changing constructs of "blackness" in both the Ethiopian immigrant community and the Israeli host society. This research has uncovered a system of racial hierarchies among the Beta Israel, including…
The ambivalence over the Levantinization of Israel: “David Levi” jokes
The present article focuses on David Levi jokes—an Israeli joke cycle—as a catalyzing agent in the evolution of Israeli identity. Although the manifest referent in the jokes is a concrete political and ethnic figure, the article argues that the actual referent is the whole of Israeli society. The cumulative effect of composing, hearing, recalling and especially repeating these elements, all in a spirit of self-mockery, enables mediation of nation…
Cow Tales: Decoding Images of Slavery in the Ethiopian Jewish Community
Based on life stories of ex-slaves from Ethiopia now living in Israel, the present article attempts to uncover complex relationships and conceptions of intimate domination and subjugation. The dramatic passage of masters and slaves from rural Ethiopia to the democratic State of Israel enables their stories to emerge. Hearing these personal stories became possible when continuous slavery taken for granted in one particular cultural context became …
What goes around, comes around: Rotating credit associations among Ethiopian women in Israel
This article looks at how working-class Ethiopian women, who have migrated to Israel, have sought empowerment and economic control through the establishment of rotating credit associations known as iqqub. In the changing world of Ethiopian Israeli women, iqqub associations and their specific cultural manifestations constitute a highly meaningful experience, whose building-blocks incorporate the financial, the social, the ritualistic, and the symb…
Goddesses of Flesh and Metal”: Gazes on the Tradition of Fattening Jewish Brides in Tunisia
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Tunisian Jewish female body was subjected to a dramatic fattening process in preparation for marriage. Immediately following the girl’s engagement, her body became the focus of an intense transformative regimen aimed at achieving the aesthetic ideals of dramatic weight gain and “shining and whitening” of the skin. This paper offers a critical reading of the representation of the female body in …
Misplaced Home and Mislaid Meat: Stories Circulating Among Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel
Misplaced Home and Mislaid Meat:Stories Circulating Among Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel Hagar Salamon (bio) I have been listening to stories that wander between Ethiopia and Israel for almost twenty-five years. The Beta Israel, Ethiopian Jews now living in Israel, have been the focus of my ethnographic research, and it is to their stories that I often turn to explore the complexity of their experience. Here, when attended to carefully, it is pos…
Goddesses of Flesh and Metal
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Tunisian Jewish female body was subjected to a dramatic fattening process in preparation for marriage. Immediately following the girl’s engagement, her body became the focus of an intense transformative regimen aimed at achieving the aesthetic ideals of dramatic weight gain and “shining and whitening” of the skin. This paper offers a critical reading of the representation of the female body in …
The Floor Falling Away: Dislocated Space and Body in the Humour of Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel
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 wi…
Embroidered Palestine: A Stitched Narrative
Palestinian rich cross-stitch embroidery is considered the group’s “folk marker.” In the years following the dramatic events of 1948 and 1967, “Palestinian embroidery” gradually became a unifying form of grieving-creativity and national pride. The present article focuses on embroidered maps of Palestine, called Taṭrīz khārṭaṭ Falasṭīn, that are made by Palestinian women to be framed and hung on the walls of Palestinian homes.Based on in-depth int…
Israel in the Making: Stickers, Stitches, and Other Critical Practices
Meat lottery: A spectacle in transition from Ethiopia to Israel
Meat is a key idiom in the lives of the Ethiopian Jews, both private and collective. This paper focuses on meat lottery as a unique praxis in Ethiopia and in the move of the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) community, from Ethiopia to Israel. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the egalitarian divide of meat to be consumed by all partners and its accompanied lottery ritual is described and analyzed, directing the gaze to its socio-cultural and symbolic …
Spices for Thought: Salt, Chili Pepper, and Slaves in Ethiopian Amharic Proverbs
Even though slavery-related understandings are deeply embedded in the collective Ethiopian consciousness, they are seldom explicitly discussed. In the course of oral interviews carried out in rural northwestern Ethiopia with elderly men and women who still recall the practice of slavery, a rich corpus of Amharic proverbs related to this topic was collected. Focusing on a specific segment of this corpus, I invite the reader to visit Ethiopian folk…
From Hand to Mouth: Reflections on the Multivocality of Gursha in Ethiopia
The custom of feeding a person sitting at one’s table by placing a handful of sumptuous food in his or her mouth is a unique Ethiopian commensal practice, known as gursha. The present article aims at eliciting and examining a plethora of associations regarding this convivial, hospitable practice. Based on a wide range of sources, it examines gursha as a dynamic canvas for a wide spectrum of social, historical, and religious associations. The arti…
June 1967 in Personal Stories of Palestinians and Israelis
The clash of June 1967, called by Israelis the Six-Day War and by Palestinians the Naksa (setback), is a critical milestone within the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite all the scholarly attention ever since, there remain unheard voices and untold stories. It is the personal stories of people in the region that are at the center of this book. How do they remember 1967? How were their lives affected, even changed dramatically as a…
Palestinian Embroidery in a Troubled Landscape: Reading Rachel Kainy's “Embroidered Village”
Palestinian embroidery is the subject of ongoing interest, much of it on the part of Palestinian collectors, artists, and researchers. The present article focuses upon the works of Rachel Kainy, a young Israeli artist, who paints to perfection worn-out remnants of embroidered Palestinian thaubs (traditional embroidered ankle-length dresses). Retaining the traces of wear and tear on the embroidered pieces, while transposing them to the medium of p…
They Came Upon a Certain Water: The Interflow of Bodies, Communities and Beliefs around ‘Ain el-Haniya Spring
This article examines the healing spring of ʿAin el-Haniya and its rapidly expanding pilgrimage among Ethiopian Israelis of diverse religious backgrounds. Although associated with the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch, the site attracts pilgrims who often do not identify as Christian yet attribute healing power to its waters. Based on more than a year of ethnographic fieldwork, the study shows that healing rituals at the spring are shaped not only …
Sociology (14 works) · History (13 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (12 works) · History (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Art (9 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · African history and culture analysis (8 works) · Gender Studies (8 works)