8375: Timket, American Style.

From The Los Angeles Times…

Ethiopian community gathers to celebrate Timket

Immigrants reconnect with their cultural roots in marking Epiphany in the largest such ceremonies in the U.S.

By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times

Huddled beneath a large white tent, hundreds of people sang together in the early morning darkness. For hours, they repeated a single word: Hallelujah.

They were gathered last Sunday to mark Timket, the Ethiopian Orthodox celebration of the Epiphany. For the faithful, the holiday commemorates Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan and his revelation as the son of God.

Los Angeles’ Timket celebration is the largest in the United States. It takes place over a January weekend each year in a parking lot outside the Forum in Inglewood.

Ethiopian immigrants flock from across the country and Canada to receive blessings from church bishops who wear elaborate beaded cloaks and full gray beards. Organizers say it may be the largest gathering of Ethiopians outside that nation in the Horn of Africa.

The highlight takes place Sunday afternoon, when the bishops dip their crosses into a plastic pool of water and sprinkle it on the bowed heads of believers.

The feeling during the reenactment of the baptism is beyond words, said one participant, Tsehay Tseghun. “It blesses you the whole year,” she said.

Tsehay and some friends were sitting near the tent last Sunday, preparing lunch. They chatted as they trimmed slices of beef that would be cooked with chili peppers, rosemary and onions and piled onto sourdough flatbread.

The festival, she said, goes beyond religion. It’s a chance for Ethiopians to reconnect with their friends, family and culture.

Tsehay, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1980 and lives with her family in Baldwin Hills, grew up in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. She remembers the way Timket is celebrated there.

Schools and shops are closed during the weeklong festivities, she said. And there are splendid processions, in which bishops carry replicas of the Ark of the Covenant, venerated as the vessel that carried the Ten Commandments, on their heads.

In Los Angeles, organizers have made some adaptations. Timket lasts only two days, and replicas of the covenant are brought to the Forum not on bishops’ heads, but in limousines.

Read the full story here.