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Revision as of 15:38, 26 December 2007

For the Religious Zionist Movement and other entities and people named "Mizrachi", please see the Mizrachi disambiguation page.
Mizrahi Jews
(יהדות מזרח Yahadut Mizrah)
A Jewish family in Damascus, pictured in their ancient Damascene home, in Ottoman Syria, 1901.
Regions with significant populations
 United States2,000,000-3,000,000
 Israel2,200,000-2,500,000
 France400,000
 Canada35,000
 Iran25,000
 Chile2,700
 Argentina2,170
Languages
Hebrew, Dzhidi, Judæo-Arabic, Gruzinic, Bukhori, Judeo-Berber, Juhuri and Judæo-Aramaic
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardi Jews, other Jewish ethnic divisions and Arabs.

Mizrahi Jews or Mizrahim, (Hebrew: מזרחים, Modern: Mizraḥim, Tiberian: Mizrāḥîm, "Easterners"), also referred to as Edot HaMizrach (communities of the East) are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Middle East. Included in the Mizrahi category are Jews from the Arab world, as well as other communities from other Muslim countries, including Georgian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Persian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Syrian Jews, Lebanese Jews, Mountain Jews, Yemenite Jews, Indian Jews (including many of Iraqi descent), Maghrebi Jews, Berber Jews and Kurdish Jews. Despite their heterogeneous origins, Jews from these areas generally practise traditional Sephardic Judaism, with some differences among the minhagim of the particular communities.

History and usage

"Mizrahi" is literally translated as "Eastern", מזרח (Mizrach) being 'East" in Hebrew. The original use of the terms "Mizrahi" and "Edot ha-Mizrach" was as a translation of the Arabic term Mashriqiyyun (Easterners), referring to the people of Syria, Iraq and other Asian countries, as distinct from those of North Africa (Maghrabiyyun).

In modern Israeli usage, it refers to all Jews from Arabic and Asian countries. The term came to be widely used by Mizrahi activists in the early 1990s, and since then has become a widely accepted designation.[1]

Many Mizrahim today reject this (or any) umbrella description and prefer to identify themselves by their particular country of origin, or that of their immediate ancestors, e.g. "Iraqi Jew", "Tunisian Jew", "Persian Jew", etc. Another description sometimes heard is "Oriental Jews". This term is still frequently used by people in the western hemisphere. Some find it demeaning given theorist and professor Edward Said of Columbia University criticism of "Orientalism" in his book by the same name.

Other designations

Jewish wedding in Aleppo, Syria, 1914.

Many speakers, especially in Israel, identify all non-Ashkenazi Jews as Sephardim. The reason for this classification is that most Mizrahi communities use much the same religious rituals as Sephardim proper. (In the same way, "Ashkenazim" is used for "Jews of the German rite", whether or not they originate from Germany.) This broader definition of "Sephardim" is common in religious circles, especially those associated with the Shas political party.

In many Arab countries, older Arabic-speaking communities distinguished between themselves and the newer arrivals speaking Judeo-Romance languages, that is, Sephardim expelled from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497. The Arabic-speaking Jews called themselves "Musta'arabim", while the newer Sephardi arrivals called them "Moriscos" (like "Moors" in English).

Language

Main article: Judeo-Arabic languages
Kurdish Jews in Rawanduz, northern Iraq, 1905.

Mizrahi communities spoke a number of Judeo-Arabic dialects such as Maghrebi, though these are now mainly used as a second language. Most of the many notable philosophical, religious and literary works of the Mizrahim were written in Arabic using a modified Hebrew alphabet.

Among other languages associated with Mizrahim are Judeo-Persian (Dzhidi), Gruzinic, Bukhori, Kurdish, Judeo-Berber, Juhuri, Judeo-Marathi, Judeo-Malayalam and Judeo-Aramaic dialects. Most Persian Jews speak standard Persian.

Aramaic is a close sister of Hebrew. It is identified as a "Jewish language", since it is the language of major Jewish texts such as the Talmuds and Zohar, and many ritual recitations such as the Kaddish. Traditionally Aramaic has been a language of Talmudic debate in yeshivoth, as many rabbinic texts are written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic. As spoken by the Jews of Kurdistan, Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects are descended from Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, as could be seen from its hundreds of reflexes in Jewish Neo-Aramaic. In addition to Judeo-Aramaic, some Kurdish Jews speak an unrelated language called "Judeo-Kurdish" which is a "Jewish" form of the Indo-European Kurdish language.

By the early 1950s, virtually the entire Jewish community of Kurdistan — a rugged, mostly mountainous region comprising parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Caucasus, where Jews had lived since antiquity — relocated to Israel. The vast majority of Kurdish Jews, who were primarily concentrated in northern Iraq, left Kurdistan in the mass aliyah (emigration to Israel) of 1950-51. This ended thousands of years of Jewish history in what had been Assyria and Babylonia.

See also Mizrahi Hebrew language.

Post-1948 dispersal

Main article: Jewish exodus from Arab lands

After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and subsequent establishment of the state of Israel, most Mizrahi Jews emigrated to the new state where they could become citizens.

Anti-Jewish actions by Arab governments in the 1950s and 1960s, including the expulsion of 25,000 Mizrahi Jews from Egypt after the 1956 Suez Crisis, led to the overwhelming majority of Mizrahim leaving Arab countries. They became refugees. Most went to Israel. Many Moroccan and Algerian Jews went to France. Thousands of Syrian and Egyptian Jews emigrated to the United States.

Today, as many as 40,000 Mizrahim still remain in communities scattered throughout the non-Arab Muslim world, primarily in Iran, but also Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey [2]. There are few remaining in the Arab world. About 5,000 remain in Morocco and fewer than 2,000 in Tunisia. Other countries with remnants of ancient Jewish communities with official recognition, such as Lebanon, have 100 or fewer Jews. A trickle of emigration continues, mainly to Israel and the United States. A number have been arrested, mostly for alleged connections with Israel and the United States. Some have been executed, with religious intolerance often cited as the main contributing factor. [3]

Mizrahim in modern Israel

Since their arrival in Israel, the Mizrahim have distinguished themselves from their Ashkenazi counterparts in culture, customs and language. Arabic dialects were the mother tongue of some—especially those from North Africa—Persian for those from Iran, English for the Baghdadi Jews from India and Gruzinic, Georgian, Tajik, Juhuri and various other languages for those who emigrated from elsewhere. Some Israeli Mizrahim still primarily use these languages. Hebrew was a language of prayer only for most Jews not living in Israel, including the Mizrahim.

The Mizrahim were at first accommodated in rudimentary and hastily erected tent cities and later sent to development towns. Settlement in Moshavim (cooperative farming villages) was only partially successful, because many Mizrahim had been craftsmen and merchants with little farming experience.

Mizrahi Jews do have specific cultural differences from Ashkenazi Jews and from each other which can make assimilation into Israeli society a difficult, decades-long process. Sociologists have noted many factors that influence the rate of integration, among them the amount of education a community possesses before it arrives and the presence or lack of a professional class within each community. However intermarriage between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim is now relatively common in Israel and the Hebrew language is so universal among the most recent generations that later newcomers, such as immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopians, consider Mizrahim to be a branch of Israeli society.

According to a survey by the Adva Center[4], the average income of Ashkenazim was 36 percent higher than that of Mizrahim in 2004[5], but this difference is declining as the communities integrate.

According to a study conducted by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Mizrahi Jews are less likely to pursue academic studies than Ashkenazi Jews, and the percentage of Arabs or Mizrahi Jews pursuing a doctorate is less than 10% of the total among doctoral students.[6][7].

Although most of the Mizrahi Jews in Israel are second-generation immigrants, the percentage who seek a university education remains low compared to second-generation immigrant groups of Ashkenazi origin, such as the Russians. According to the CBS study, Ashkenazi immigrants of post-high school age are up to 10 times more likely to study in a university than an Israeli-born Mizrahi.[8]

It is important to note, however, that discrimination against Mizrahim in modern Israeli society is common and has a historic tradition. The Zionist movement, initiated by European Ashkenazim, was often anti-"Orientalist" in nature, and thus self-consciously pro-Western. Modern Mizrahi Israelis have expressed discontent toward this cultural elitism, often in the form of ethnic protests. [9] Coupled with a tradition of segregation, especially in the area of housing, this has further impaired the ability of the Mizrahi Jews to integrate.[10]

Prominent Mizrahi figures

Politicians

Writers and Academics

Entertainers

Business people

Others

  Medicines Research Foundation

References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ The Jewish Population of the World, The Jewish Virtual Library
  3. ^ The Jews of Iran, The Jewish Virtual Library
  4. ^ Adva Center
  5. ^ Hebrew PDF [2]
  6. ^ [3]
  7. ^ [4]
  8. ^ [5]
  9. ^ [6]
  10. ^ [7]
  • Ella Shohat, "The Invention of the Mizrahim" in: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1. (Autumn, 1999), pp. 5-20.

See also

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