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"Ashkenazim Israel"
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The Conditions for Creating the Varying Image of Middle Eastern and North African Jews in Israel in the 1950s
This article examines the personal diary of Dr. Michael Simon, the first chief of protocol for Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that he wrote in April 1955 during his visit to Morocco. The diary raises questions about the beliefs, perceptions, stances, and images that prevailed among European Jews in Israel vis-à-vis Middle Eastern and North African Jews during the first decade of the State of Israel's existence. I propose that Simon's outlook on Moroccan Jewry was complex, integrative, and free of stereotypes. Analyzing Simon's case enables an exploration of the conditions that informed his views of Morocco's Jews, conditions that were manifested in different ways by most of the Israelis of European heritage whose writings dealt with Middle East and North Africa Jews and their descendants in Israel.
Journal Article
The Jewish “East” and its Restricted Agencies
In the aftermath of the October 7th 2023 bloodbath, which ignited pervasive academic discourse surrounding Israel and its position within the Middle East and North Africa region, longheld dichotomies between \"oppressing Westerners\" and \"oppressed Easterners\" have resurfaced with renewed force. The current debate echoes longstanding discussions that utilize critical race theory to analyze Ashkenazi Jewish settlers from East and Central Europe as \"White\" while occasionally labeling Jews from Islamic lands as \"Black.\" A prevalent argument among some historians of the Yishuv has held that Israel operates as a \"settlercolonial\" venture in which Ashkenazi Jews colonized Palestine, taking it from the indigenous Palestinians, and were consistently backed by British imperialism and, after 1948, by American influence. Here, Moreno and Karkason aim to highlight an even more substantial bias in the examination of the agency of MENA Jewish communities when viewed through such hierarchical lenses of a perceived East and West. This bias becomes most evident in the intersection of historical power dynamics between Muslims and Jews and the Jewish pursuit of self-determination and diaspora networks.
Journal Article
Two Patterns of Modernization
While acknowledging the decisive contribution of conflict sociology to our understanding of the (Jewish) ethnic issue in Israel, this article focuses on the actual political behavior of the Mizrahi population. Instead of developing radical social protest movements as might be expected, the Mizrahim have largely supported right-wing parties and policies. The article argues that in response to their exclusion from full membership in the Jewish-Israeli collective that the veteran Ashkenazim constructed, and from the material and symbolic goods that such membership entails, the Mizrahim have built a counter-collectivity. Using the cultural tool kit that they acquired in their experience of modernization in North Africa and the Middle East, the Mizrahim have created a (semi-) traditional ethno-religious Jewish collectivity from which they have excluded veteran left-wing Ashkenazim, accusing them of disloyalty and delegitimizing their Jewish identity.
Journal Article
The Academic Middle-Class Rebellion
In The Academic Middle-Class Rebellion, Bareli and Cohen expose the attempts of nascent Israel's European professional elite to maximize wage gaps between themselves and the new Oriental Jewish proletariat, and the successful resistance of the socialist ruling party, Mapai, to those ambitions.
eBook
The Unexplored History of Ashkenazi Integration in Late Ottoman Palestine
To what extent did Ashkenazi Jews integrate and acculturate into the local society, culture, and politics of late Ottoman Palestine? This question has been almost entirely ignored by the voluminous scholarship on the migration of Jews from central and eastern Europe to Palestine. This article challenges the widely held assumption that such integration was nonexistent and impossible. Building on recent work on Ashkenazi adoption of Arab clothes, Arabic language, and urban encounters and cohabitation, I argue that Ashkenazi integration in Ottoman Palestine was a very real process, which took on significant dimensions. I focus on civic participation and local politics, military service in the Ottoman army, and deep economic interdependence. Integration was uneven and did not follow a single pathway; rather, there were diverse avenues of integration through Jewish Sephardi society, the Arab elite, Ottoman institutions, and more.
Journal Article
Liberalism in Israel
In the 1950s, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Muslim countries arrived in Israel. These Mizrahi immigrants were resented by the Ashkenazi ‘veteran public’, whose desire for normalcy outweighed the state’s call for sacrifice. A geographical separation between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim was created, and more recent processes of integration between the two have only partially succeeded, as is attested by much socio-economic data. The failure to integrate the Mizrahim has had an effect on the basis of support for liberalism in Israel. Israeli liberalism is backed mainly by the veteran public, while lower-class Mizrahim appear to offer little support for it.
Journal Article
The Two Israels Revisited
The picture that emerges from 1960s Israel is a society that was new, raw, contentious, at certain moments proudly ambitious and idealistic, and at others, angry and conflicted. For some, particularly the First Israel, the established European-origin Israelis, it was a heroic period of joint national purpose and successful state-building, whereas for others, particularly the Second Israel, new immigrants from Middle Eastern countries and the large number of post-1948 European immigrants, it was a harsh, frustrating time that demanded painful personal adjustments and that was frequently marked by disappointment. The European-origin Israelis were occupationally secure as government officials, army colonels, merchants, and professionals, and the immigrants were mainly laborers, non-coms, or clerks. Here, Weingrod compares Israeli ethnicity in the present with the past, and consider the meanings and practices attributed to ethnicity especially among the second and third Israeli-born generations, the children and grandchildren of the post-1948 mass immigration.
Journal Article
Like a Phoenix: The Renaissance of Sephardic/Mizrahi Identity in Israel in the 1970s and 1980s
During Israel's first decades, conflict between immigrants from Islamic countries and the Israeli establishment focused on questions regarding equality. The immigrants protested against discrimination in the labor market, against poor housing conditions, and against police brutality. The question of Mizrahi culture and identity was barely mentioned. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, the ethnic discourse in Israel shifted from economic issues to cultural issues. Different groups challenged the school curriculum, asking for more attention to the history and literature of Jews from Islamic countries. Mizrahi music started to develop on the fringe of the Israeli musical scene and moved slowly into the mainstream. Political parties (Tami and Shas) identified with Mizrahi identity and emphasizing it, started to appear and to achieve success. This article provides examples of the expression of identity and culture in different fields and analyzes the causes of this change.
Journal Article
The 1956 Strike of Middle-Class Professionals
This article assumes, first, that during the 1950s the government, the trade union Histadrut, and the political party Mapai situated themselves in an intermediate position between the Ashkenazi public and the recently arrived Mizrahi immigrants. Second, it assumes that the right and center-right public forces, such as the General Zionist and Herut parties, and the influential liberal-oriented newspaper Ha’aretz played key roles in the evolution of ethnic relations during this period and impacted the political orientation of the Ashkenazi middle class. It examines these assumptions by considering the part played by the right, the center-right, and the Mapai government during a prolonged conflict between the Ashkenazi academic middle class and the government during the mid- 1950s. This dispute centered on the appropriate extent of the wage gaps set between the salaries of the new Ashkenazi academic middle class and those of the new Mizrahi proletariat.
Journal Article