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Arab Jews (Arabic: اليهود العرب al-Yahūd al-ʿArab; Hebrew: יהודים ערבים Yehudim `Aravim) is a term for Jews living in or originating from the Arab world. Many left or were expelled from Arab countries in the decades following the founding of Israel in 1948, and took up residence in Israel, Western Europe, the United States and Latin America. The term is controversial and politically contested in Israel, where the term "Mizrahi Jews" was adopted by the early state instead. However, some anti-Zionist Jews of Arab origin actively elect to call themselves Arab Jews.[1][2][3][4]
Jews living in Arab-majority countries historically mostly used various Judeo-Arabic dialects as their primary community language, with Hebrew used for liturgical and cultural purposes (literature, philosophy, poetry, etc.). Many aspects of their culture (music, clothes, food, architecture of synagogues and houses, etc.) have commonality with local non-Jewish Arab populations. They usually follow Sephardi Jewish liturgy, and are (counting their descendants) by far the largest portion of Mizrahi Jews.
Though Golda Meir, in an interview as late as 1972 with Oriana Fallaci, explicitly referred to Jews from Arab countries as "Arab Jews",[5] the use of the term is controversial, as the vast majority of Jews with origins in Arab-majority countries do not identify as Arabs, and most Jews who lived amongst Arabs did not call themselves "Arab Jews" or view themselves as such.[2][3][6][7] A closely related, but older term denoting Arabic-speaking Jews is Musta'arabi Jews.
In recent decades, some Jews have self-identified as Arab Jews, such as Ella Shohat, who uses the term in contrast to the Zionist establishment's categorization of Jews as either Ashkenazim or Mizrahim; the latter, she believes, have been oppressed as the Arabs have. Other Jews, such as Albert Memmi, say that Jews in Arab countries would have liked to be Arab Jews, but centuries of abuse by Arab Muslims prevented it, and now it's too late. The term is often used by post-Zionists and Arab nationalists.
The term can also sometimes refer to Jewish converts of Arab birth, such as Baruch Mizrahi or Nasrin Kadri, or people of mixed Jewish-Arab parentage, such as Lucy Ayoub.[8]
- ^ Schroeter, Daniel J. ""Islamic Anti-Semitism" in Historical Discourse". The American Historical Review. 123 (4): 1179. Archived from the original on 2021-09-20. Retrieved 2021-09-21.
While a small group of anti-Zionist Mizrahi intellectuals and activists who defined themselves as "Arab Jews" reject the portrait of eternal anti-Semitism in the Islamic world, the idea that the flight of Middle Eastern and North African Jews from Islamic countries was primarily a consequence of the longer history of Muslim anti-Semitism has continued to shape discussions in the public sphere, and has influenced representations of Muslim anti-Semitism outside of Israel.
- ^ a b Tal, David (2017). "Between Politics and Politics of Identity: The Case of the Arab Jews". Journal of Levantine Studies. 7 (1). Archived from the original on 2021-09-20. Retrieved 2021-09-19.
proponents of the Arab Jew seek to separate the ethnic from the national, the Jew from the Zionist, and realign ethnic identities: Arabs, who include Jews and Muslims, vs. Ashkenazim/Zionists. They do so by creating an "imagined community," by rejecting an ascriptive identity based on an ethnic/national juxtaposition, and by suggesting their own kind of identity, a self-ascriptive identity that separates the ethnos from the nation. They have failed in their mission, as the majority of Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin reject the Arab Jew definer as representing their own identity."
- ^ a b Shenhav, Yehouda; Hever, Hannan (2012). "Arab Jews' after structuralism: Zionist discourse and the (de) formation of an ethnic identity" (PDF). Social Identities. 18 (1): 101–118. doi:10.1080/13504630.2011.629517. S2CID 144665311. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-09-20. Retrieved 2021-09-20. quote:"it is not surprising that very few Jews of Arab descent, in Israel, would label themselves ‘Arab Jews’. It has turned out to be the marker of a cultural and political avant-garde. Most of those who used it, did so in order to challenge the Zionist order of things (i.e., ‘methodological Zionism’; see Shenhav, 2006) and for political reasons (Levy, 2008)
- ^ Salim Tamari. "Ishaq al-Shami and the Predicament of the Arab Jew in Palestine" (PDF). Jerusalem Quarterly. p. 11. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2007-08-23.
- ^ Yehouda A. Shenhav, The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity, Archived 2023-01-21 at the Wayback Machine Stanford University Press, 2006 ISBN 978-0-804-75296-1 p.9
- ^ Edith Haddad Shaked. "The Jews in Islam – Tunisia". Presentation at the 19th International Congress of Historical Sciences, University of Oslo, Norway. Archived from the original on 4 February 2012. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
- ^ "There Is More to the 'Arab Jews' Controversy Than Just Identity". The Forward. 28 February 2008. Archived from the original on 18 October 2019. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
- ^ "Jewish-Arab Slam Poet a Hit in Person and on YouTube". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 2022-10-18. Retrieved 2022-10-18.