Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru
WASHINGTON DC (Tadias) – A benefit concert featuring a live performance for the first time in 35 years by the Ethiopian Nun Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, a world reknowned classical pianist and composer, is taking place on Saturday, July 12, 2008, at The Washington DC Jewish Community Center (16th & Q streets NW).
Emahoy’s first record was released in Germany in 1967 with the help of Emperor Haile Selassie. Other recordings followed with the help of her sister Desta Gebru; the proceeds were used to help an orphanage for children of soldiers who died fighting at the Italo-Ethiopian war… Read more >>
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The Ethiopian Emahoys have given the Ethiopian Orthodox Church indispensable services for a number of years, and yet many of them have not been appreciated for their good work.
There are young Ethiopian Emahoys, and there are old Ethiopian Emahoys; there are ordained Emahoys, and there are Emahoys who are not ordained. The word Emahoy is a generic name for both the ordained and for those who are not.
Most Ethiopian Emahoys become nuns by conviction; others become nuns after their loved ones have passed away; still others become nuns because they have become very old, so they want the church to support them if they don’t have children to take care of them.
Emahoys come to church regularly and give their services freely; for example, a typical Ethiopian nun collects some grounded mills, bakes them, and bring them to church every Sunday morning. After the church service is over, the members of the church sit down in the church compound, and the bread (very sweet one) the nun has prepared would be blessed by the priest and be distributed to the people who have come to worship in the church.
This special bread is called “Thadike-Mebelet”; “Mebelet” in Geez language means a nun and “Thadik” means probably bread, so Thadike-Mebelet, the bread prepared by the nun.
The other important service a nun gives to the church is to separate the unwanted seeds (darnel) or pebbles from the wheat, wash the wheat, grind it, and then give it either to the deacon or to the priest of the church. Then the deacon or the priest prepares the wheat flour for the Holy Communion.
I don’t understand why the Ethiopian Orthodox Church does not allow a nun to prepare the Holy Bread for the Holy Communion in that small house called Bethlehem, where the priest and the deacons prepare the Holy Bread secretly? As a woman, isn’t a nun better than the deacon or the priest in preparing the Holy Bread? On this particular point, I do not agree with my Ethiopian Orthodox Church in diaspora or at home.
The Church allows the nun to wash the wheat, to clean it, and then to grind it but does not allow her to bake it for the Holy Communion. Is it because she is a woman? This is not right; I hope the Church will change her position on this minor issue.
I understand that the Church position on this particular issue is that when Jesus ate the Last Supper meal, he ate it with his disciples only; there was no woman who participated with him and the food and the wine had been prepared by his disciples only.
I don’t buy this kind of answer because when Jesus was at Lazarus’ home, Martha and her sister Mary served him very well, besides it was for Mary Magdalene that Jesus revealed himself after he was risen from the dead.
However, the Ethiopian nun, some times, stays by herself in the gate of peace (degieselam) for the rest of her life like the biblical prophetess, Anna who had never left the temple until she died. So that she does not have to travel from her village to the Church every morning to worship God.
When she is living in the degieselam, she is called akabit (Keeper of the gate), and some devoted people supply for her needs, and she in return takes care of their needs when they come to Church.
An Ethiopian nun is, most of the time, with her rosaries, praying every day to God; as her hands count the rosaries, she meditates to God in her heart silently; one can’t hear her when she prays. She is also a traveler: whenever there is a yearly festivity of St. Mary, she would travel either to Ambagishen-Mariam in Wollo or to Axum Zion Church in Tigray. When it is a Lalibela day, she would travel as a pilgrim to Lalibela Churches in Wollo. As she travels such a long distance, she carries nothing except her rosaries and her Mekomia – a stick, and perhaps a little hide to seat on or to sleep upon.
An Ethiopian nun is not like some of the Ethiopian monks: money collectors, drunk, prostitutes, cheaters, and greedy. She is exceptionally devoted to the services of The Most High; she does not have any ambition, like some Ethiopian Abas or monks, to be the head of any monastery. She does not collect money for her personal needs; she is completely taken away by the love of The Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:9), and she does not care whether she eats or goes hungry.
The old and as well as the young never call the nun by her real name because no one knows her real name, or no one bothers to know her real name but her services. They simply call her Emahoy, and that is her name until she dies, and when she dies, people who know her would say that the holy Emahoy has passed away.
In Waldiba, Wolkait, the Emahoys have their own monastery, and the Abahoys (monks) have their own too. The Abahoys are not allowed to go to the Emahoys’ monastery and the Emahoys to the Abahoys’. In other monasteries, such as Debre-Lebanos in Shewa, Emahoys and Abahoys can worship together in the same Church, the Abahoys and the Emahoys separated a little bit from each other.
Thus, the Ethiopian Emahoy is the spiritual mother of all the Ethiopian Christians, and we Ethiopian Christians should be proud of them for their dedications to the Almighty God.