Iran’s Attack on Israel
Jewish Geography
Jewish Geography
8 min read
The Mizrahi, or Eastern, Jewish community is the most ancient Jewish diaspora community, with roots dating back to Biblical times. Today they make up about half of Israel’s Jewish population.
Mizrahi, or “Eastern,” Jews are Jews from North Africa and the Middle East, and represent the most ancient diaspora communities, with—in some cases—roots dating back to biblical times, although the term itself is somewhat new.
The state of Israel first started using the label, “Mizrahi,” in the early years of the state as an official, if condescending, way to refer to the waves of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Muslim lands. Before that, those Jews were generally identified with the places they lived—sometimes for centuries—and had their unique traditions, foods, styles, histories, and minor holidays. But upon settling in Israel, they were labeled Mizrahi, or Eastern—or more specifically, “not Western”—Jews, by the more powerful and established Ashkenazi Jews of European descent.
The family of Iraqi Chief Rabbi Hakham Ezra Dangoor in Baghdad, 1910
In recent years, the term Mizrahi has taken on a more positive meaning, and although tensions within Israeli society still exist, Mizrahi heritage is celebrated. In Israel, Mizrahi music and foods are ubiquitous, and Jews of Mizrahi descent make up about half the nation’s population.
Mizrahi, from the word, mizrah (מזרח), means “eastern.” As noted above, it is a term that makes a sociological—as opposed to a geographical—distinction, and refers to Jews from places as disparate as Morocco, Yemen, Syria, Iran, and India. It was coined in the 1950s by Israel’s then secular, socialist, Ashkenazi (or European) establishment, although the more traditional, religious, conservative “Eastern” Jewish immigrants soon applied the term to themselves as well. Nowadays, it is no longer seen as a pejorative.
The term “Mizrahi” is often conflated with the term, “Sephardi.” “Sephardi” technically refers to Jews from Spain, but in modern usage refers to Jews who follow Sephardic religious practice and customs, which applies to most of the Jewish world that didn’t develop in Europe. In 1492, following hundreds of years known as the “Golden Age of Spanish Jewry”—a time of significant scholarly, literary, and cultural development—Spanish Jews were expelled from Spain, with most of those exiles resettling in North Africa, and throughout the Ottoman Empire. Over the centuries, those Spanish refugees were absorbed into their host communities, further blurring distinctions between what would now be considered “native Mizrahi” Jews and Jews of Spanish descent.
Transit camp in Israel, 1950, from National Photo Collection of Israel
In other words, a Jew from Iraq, for example, is both Mizrahi, in terms of his cultural heritage, but Sephardi in terms of the religious laws and traditions he follows. However, since “Mizrahi” is a term that carries more socio-political weight in Israel, that same Jew—who identifies as “Mizrahi” in Israel—is more likely to identify as “Sephardi” if he was raised somewhere else.
Although Jews lived throughout North Africa and the Middle East for thousands of years, they were generally identified with the places they lived, and often developed distinct traditions and customs. A more specific “Mizrahi” history begins with the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands—part of the Arab world’s response to Israel’s War of Independence—and continues with Mizrahi immigration and resettlement in modern Israel.
Starting in 1948, about 850,000 Jews from throughout the Muslim world were forced to flee their homes—often leaving behind most of their possessions, property, and community buildings—in the face of anti-Jewish riots, pogroms, and government policies, with the bulk of the evacuees immigrating to Israel during the state’s first two decades.
Immigrant from Morocco with her children in a refugee tent camp in Israel, 1949 (From the collection of the Israel National Photo Archive)
The earliest arrivals were settled in Ma’abarot, or transit camps, which the new state—reeling from war, a massive influx of survivors of the Holocaust, as well as refugees from the Arab world—set up to accommodate the new immigrants. Conditions in the Ma’abarot were poor, with most of the residents living in canvas tents and small wooden shacks. Poverty was rife, and by 1953, most of the European Jews had left the Ma’abarot, while Mizrahi Jews continued to live in them. Issues of crime, forced secularization, and violence were part of the Ma’abarot experience as well.1 Most of the Ma’abarot were dismantled by the early 1960s, or transformed into development towns, which today include the Israeli cities of Kiryat Shmona, Sderot, and others.
Discrimination against Mizrahi Jews is an unfortunate feature of Israel’s early history. In 1971, protests organized by Israel’s Black Panthers (הפנתרים השחורים)—their name and inspiration taken from America’s Black Panthers—helped shed light on the problems. In 1977, Menachem Begin was elected Prime Minister, ending nearly 29 years of the exclusive, elitist, socialist Ashkenazi hold on power. Much of his support came from the marginalized Mizrahi community, and his victory marked a major turning point in Israeli politics. Israel has still not elected a Mizrahi prime minister, and Mizrahi Jews, in general, don’t fare as well as Ashkenazi Jews do economically, although Israeli society is changing, and the lines between the disparate communities are becoming blurred.
A popular, ahistorical narrative amongst anti-Zionists is the contention that Mizrahi identity is a Zionist invention. The claim, based on the reality of Mizrahi immigration, the hardships they faced, and the discrimination they endured, attempts to cynically reframe their story as a way to libel Israel as an illegitimate, colonial oppressor.
The false narrative infers that since Mizrahi Jews, prior to immigrating to Israel, identified with the places they lived—and not as “Mizrahi”—were in reality, “Arab Jews,” or welcomed and equal members of the societies they called home, and ignores the sordid history of Jews in the Arab world.
While Jews did at times live in peace with their Arab neighbors, they also suffered myriad indignities and horrors. Under Islamic law, Jews were considered dhimmi, or de facto second-class citizens: they had to pay a special tax, called jizya, that demonstrated their subordination; they couldn’t testify against a Muslim in court; they had to yield to a Muslim in public; their homes and places of worship could not be taller than those of Muslims; and more. Jews also suffered centuries of persecution including being forced to wear items that distinguished them as Jewish; government-decrees calling for the destruction of synagogues; arbatry confiscations of property; forcible attempts to convert them to Islam; anti-Jewish riots; and pogroms.
The false Mizrahi narrative also claims that Jewish immigration to Israel was provoked by propaganda and false flag terror campaigns, and ignores, or downplays, Islamic violence against Jews like the Farhud in Iraq; mob violence in Syria, Libya, Morocco, Egypt, and Algeria in the 1940s and 50s; the forced expulsion of Jews from Libya and Iraq; Arab violence in Israel during British Mandatory rule; and numerous other examples, which were the real reasons Jews fled their homes, abandoning their possessions, property, and wealth.
A Yemenite family walking through the desert to a reception camp set up by the American Joint Distribution Committee near Aden (Copyright: Israel National Photo Archive)
The claim also somehow asserts that Mizrahi Jews were both “Arab Jews,” yet made no contribution to Arab culture, and that popular Middle Eastern foods like falafel, shawarma, and hummus; as well as Mizrahi music, dances, and clothing were stolen, or appropriated, by nefarious colonialist Israelis.
Mizrahi, or “Eastern,” Jews are Jews from North Africa and the Middle East, and represent the most ancient diaspora communities, with roots dating back to biblical times. However, prior to 1948, they were associated with the places they lived and not called “Mizrahi.” The term “Mizrahi” is often conflated with the term, “Sephardi,” which nowadays refers to religious practice and customs and not necessarily an ethnic identity. Mizrahi Jews experienced discrimination in Israel, although that is hopefully changing. Jewish people may share a common spiritual heritage, but over the years, centuries of diaspora living has forged separate, hyphenated identities, which include Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Mountain, Yemeni, Persian, and many other sub-groupings of Jews.
Jewish people are Middle Eastern and indigenous to Israel. Jews are called “Jews” because they come from a place called “Judea," which had various boundaries in what is now modern-day Israel. In ancient times (more than 3,000 years ago), the Jewish nation was divided into 12 tribes—Judah, and their territory, Judea, being one of the 12—but subsequent division, conquest, and dispersal confused the issue, and the name, eventually, came to refer to all Jewish people.
The Israeli government does not keep statistics that categorize Israelis as Mizrahi (or Ashkenazi, etc), although the Mizrahi community is estimated to comprise about half of Israel’s current population. Worldwide, Mizrahi Jews are outnumbered by Ashkenazi Jews, who make up, according to estimates, as much as 70% of the total Jewish population.
I remember my law professor who was a non-practicing or secular Jew telling our class what a shock it was to him when he discovered as a young adult that Jews divided themselves between Ashkenazi and Sephardim and sometimes even discriminated between one another. That was the first that I'd ever heard of such a thing myself. What a fascinating, albeit sometimes unfortunate or, even, tragic history! Thank you for further informing me and the world, both Jew and Gentile, about all of this rich cultural history that you have as a people.
I was raised Orthodox in a large Jewish community. It wasn't until I was about 30 years of age and stationed in the Army at Atlanta GA was the first time I had heard of Sephardim and the disdain the Ashkenazi had for them. Ten years later my roommate who was from Seattle also raised the issue of Sephardim. He told me his mother almost threw him out of the house because he dated a Sephardim.