For more than 2000 years, Jews lived among Arabs
January 25, 2016 8:50 PM   Subscribe

When asked to speak at certain Zionist functions, many Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa are asked to focus on the mistreatment they experienced under Arab rule—not the ways in which they successfully coexisted with Muslims, or the serious discrimination they have faced in Israeli society after arriving in the Promised Land. In anti-Zionist circles the situation inverts: the hosts are delighted to hear tales of Israeli malfeasance but are deeply hostile if the topic turns to the oppression and expulsion of Jews from Arab countries or if the Jews proclaim a proud connection to Israel. - An Intersectional Failure: How Both Israel’s Backers and Critics Write Mizrahi Jews Out of the Story
posted by beisny (29 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
The reality that Jews, Christians, and Muslims (the three most famous of the monotheists) lived in peace in so many places is something that most Americans could hardly believe. Not to mention that places like Jordan, Syria, Iran, and Iraq were--in the main--friendly to currents of Western-style modernism: consumerism, tolerance, and etc. It's true! Beirut used to be a cool place to go! (Like most of us, I could only be an armchair traveler.)

This article provides a much more focused lens on a particular Jewish identity/political issue, and reading it sheds light on the larger problems we read about every day--or every week, depending on how closely you track these issues...
posted by kozad at 9:39 PM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


The reality that Jews, Christians, and Muslims (the three most famous of the monotheists) lived in peace

Sources? As far as I know, the best case scenarios between Christians and Jews or Muslims and Jews had been 'uneasy tension'.

edit: I should clarify and say historical.
posted by durandal at 9:54 PM on January 25, 2016


The reality that Jews, Christians, and Muslims (the three most famous of the monotheists) lived in peace in so many places is something that most Americans could hardly believe.

Despite living perfectly well in peace in large concentrations in America in places like Brooklyn and Queens.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:55 PM on January 25, 2016 [12 favorites]


Sources? As far as I know, the best case scenarios between Christians and Jews or Muslims and Jews had been 'uneasy tension'.

edit: I should clarify and say historical.


So, erm, when specifically do you consider history to have ended?
posted by threeants at 10:46 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


We all live in uneasy tension upon boarding a crowded 3 train at flatbush and atlantic.
posted by smidgen at 10:48 PM on January 25, 2016 [18 favorites]


Pearl of the Middle East it was. A brief glance at the history of Kozhikode/ Calicut is of interest. Not as many Christians or Jews as one may need to support some demographic but we have lots other folk also.
Trade culture!
posted by clavdivs at 10:50 PM on January 25, 2016


Anyway, re the article itself-- I thought it was a bit odd. A powerful and valuable reminder about Jewish heterogeneity, grafted onto potshots at the BDS movement that felt like they needed a lot more fleshing out in order to make much sense. To my reading, the authors did a good albeit extremely brief job of illustrating the erasure to which Mizrahis are subject, but did not demonstrate very convincingly how BDS is apparently exacerbating or amplifying this problem. I was left scratching my head.
posted by threeants at 11:03 PM on January 25, 2016 [7 favorites]


The best place and time on earth for Muslim-Jewish-Christian co-existence is the San Fernando Valley right now. People can talk all the shit they want about the USA but it's got that at least.
posted by chaz at 11:18 PM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


I have to agree. It reads like jammed-together excerpts from a much longer work. Also, I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about a distinct Mizrahi culture during the Talmudic era. One of the authors fleshes his ideas out on his blog, with links to a couple of Ha'aretz articles that are worth reading - if you have a subscription or can get around the paywall.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:39 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


The reality that Jews, Christians, and Muslims (the three most famous of the monotheists) lived in peace

Sources? As far as I know, the best case scenarios between Christians and Jews or Muslims and Jews had been 'uneasy tension'.

AFAIK, there is a general consensus among orientalists that for most of the Muslim rule in Iberia and most of the Ottoman empire, the different religious groups lived in peace. During the Al-Andalus period, which is what I've studied most in depth, particularly Jews were often found in high positions. Less so Christians, maybe because the caliphate was in a constant state of war with France. But Christians were not persecuted. Sorry for not delivering links - my knowledge is from working with books on Islamic architecture, which I did more than ten years ago. I don't have acces to these books where I am right now.

Jews and Christians paid an extra tax, but there was nothing similar to the traditional anti-semitism of Christians.
posted by mumimor at 2:55 AM on January 26, 2016 [6 favorites]


This was very much not the case in the Middle East, particularly in the past few centuries. It wasn't even the case in "al-Andalus", particularly under the Almohadis. Jews had been second-class residents; after 1148 they were given the choice of conversion or death.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:36 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yes, Jews and Christians were second class citizens. And during some short periods, they were also persecuted. However, it was not similar to the situation under Christian rule (neither Catholic nor Protestant), where Jews and Muslims were almost consistently persecuted with very few local and time-limited exceptions. It makes absolutely no sense to compare medieval society with today's Western societies where all citizens have equal rights. Equal rights are a modern concept which was generally introduced during the first decades of the 20th century.

If Jews in general had been forced to convert all the years after 1148, there would not be any Sephardic Jews left, and there would be no history of Jews being driven from Spain, into North Africa and the Levant after 1492.

I did a little googling after writing my last comment and was rather astounded over the level of reporting and writing about this issue that has appeared during the last decade or so. It's like reading the "fair and balanced treatment" of climate change in the press. You know, (paraphrasing), "there is a consensus that climate change is real and that it is driven by human pollution, but some scientists believe…" The wording is almost exactly the same when it comes to the descriptions of Christian and Jewish experiences in the Levant, North Africa and al-Andalus. "there is a consensus that the religions lived peacefully side by side during most of the histories of the various Islamic empires, but some scholars believe…" Gosh.
Back when I studied Islamic architecture, Bernard Lewis was regarded a controversial figure. Now he is almost the voice of reason!
posted by mumimor at 4:55 AM on January 26, 2016 [9 favorites]


Thanks for clearing that up, mumimor. It's sad how history gets distorted to serve modern political debates, especially when it means that good things and good people in the past are forgotten.
posted by Alex404 at 5:04 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think this is a weird comparison. "Convert or die" always had the third option of leaving, if you had the wherewithal to escape. The reason there are Jews from so many nationalities today is that as time passed, if a choice was given between conversion or genocide (and conversion wasn't always an option), many left, and formed a new community somewhere else. Then that nation became less welcoming (or outright hostile) and they were forced to leave again. And again. "Christian Europe" wasn't a monolith either - Jews moved from country to country (more often from duchy to duchy or however the local governments were set up, as countries weren't quite so structured as they are now) as different rulers either invited them in or kicked them out. So making the point that there were longer stretches of peaceful interaction in individual locations in the Middle East than there were in Europe, sure. But that doesn't excuse that the Middle East also had pogroms (not called that, of course) and wholesale expulsions.

Painting this as some sort of Christians vs Muslims thing, as if one religion was better or worse to Jews and therefore intrinsically better or worse at coexistence (with the underlying context that this applies to Muslim nations' hostility toward modern-day Israel) seems to be sidestepping the point. A lot of Israel's critics on the left are trying very hard to paint the current conflict on "darkskinned vs white" racism, or "ashkenazi [European] Jews vs Arab [Middle Eastern]" geographic colonialism. When the truth is, Jews come in all races. Jews have lived in the Levant for centuries. More than half of Israel's population is Sephardic / Mizrachi. Which isn't to say that there's no racism in Israel (I wish that were true), but that one of the reasons this whole conflict is so complicated -- is that it's so damn complicated.

"Two Jews, three opinions" isn't just a joke - it's almost impossible to talk about Jews, let alone Israeli Jews - as if we're all the same by almost any metric. And when you're trying to discuss politics, especially Middle Eastern politics, it makes things a lot easier when you can squeeze everyone on each side into one clearly defined box. It just isn't that simple.
posted by Mchelly at 5:37 AM on January 26, 2016 [7 favorites]


Also on Tablet - How Intersectionality Makes You Stupid [I personally think this piece lays it on a bit thick, but it's related enough to be worth adding to the discussion].

Jews are an interesting example when it comes to intersectionality - we are tiny, we contain multitudes.
posted by Mchelly at 5:48 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


Israel, a country which (despite anti-Zionist erasures seeking to portray it as a colonial White imposition) possesses a Mizrahi Jewish plurality, is similarly battling this information and representation gap.

It may possess a Mizrahi Jewish plurality now, but it certainly did not in 1945, which I think is more relevant if we're arguing about Israel as a colonial imposition.
posted by enjoymoreradio at 7:09 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


Anyone interested in Mizrahi Jews should read Ammiel Alcalay; I wrote about his wonderful After Jews And Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture here and here. Other good books:

Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book

Nissim Rejwan, The Last Jews in Baghdad: Remembering a Lost Homeland
posted by languagehat at 7:25 AM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


It's very true that the "Jewish story" -- both as Jews tell it to themselves and, even more so, as the rest of the world thinks of it -- is heavily Eurocentric, and that this needs to change. But this article presents a strangely agency-less view of Mizrahim. There is a simple solution: empower these communities to speak with their own voice and take control of their own stories -- who's stopping them from doing this, and why do they need to be "empowered" by Jews with names like Friedman? And the point (in the next paragraph) that a pro-Zionist audience will want to hear certain types of narratives and an anti-Zionist one will want to hear others is true for all speakers, not just for Mizrahim.
posted by hoist with his own pet aardvark at 9:08 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Painting this as some sort of Christians vs Muslims thing, as if one religion was better or worse to Jews and therefore intrinsically better or worse at coexistence (with the underlying context that this applies to Muslim nations' hostility toward modern-day Israel) seems to be sidestepping the point.

That is an interpretation of my words. My intent was in no way to paint anything as a Christians vs Muslims thing. Nothing could be further from my understanding of history. My comment was based on the fact that when many modern observers interpret the history of the diaspora, they do it through the lens of modern European history, (including WASP anti-semitism in the US). So they imagine the medieval and even modern history of Jews in Muslim countries to be similar to that of the European countries. And it just isn't. It is a different history, and it is a-historical to imagine the lives of Jews in 12th century Cordoba or 16th century Aleppo as something even remotely similar to the lives of Jews in 15th century Frankfurt or 19th century Belarus.

I personally feel uncomfortable with the language and framing of the article. Particularly, I don't get the introduction of race in this context, to the degree that I find it somewhat offending. But anyone should be able to observe and reflect upon the fact that the history and experience of Jews from different parts of the world are different. And that this plays a role in Israeli internal and external politics, as well as in the American and European discourse on Israel. Surely, this must be entirely uncontroversial.

As far as I can understand from reading respected scholars, anti-Jewish sentiment among Arabs, Turks and Persians is mainly (with some exceptions) a modern phenomena - (modern beginning from the late 18th century and forward) - related to various nationalist, Pan-Arabic and Wahabist movements rebelling against the Ottoman empire. In that sense and in that historical period, it has definitely been similar to, and has shared ideologies with modern European and Russian anti-semitism. This affinity has been strengthened since 1949.

In relationship therapy, it is often emphasized that one must never say never. In the same vein, I worry when people talk about an inevitable clash of civilisations and how some religions cannot co-exist. Both because it is a hindrance for peace, and because it is flatly untrue. Sometimes, religions co-exist, as mentioned above: in Queens NY. And we need to research and understand why that is. We might also be curious about the intellectual renaissance of the Caliphate of Cordoba. Or about some people living together and intermarrying in Bosnia before the collapse. Or in Beirut before the civil war. Both why it worked, and why it collapsed.
posted by mumimor at 11:31 AM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


How Intersectionality Makes You Stupid

Wow, I really disagree that this article is worth adding to this conversation. It is dripping with contempt and derision for trans activists, misunderstands and misrepresents intersectionality (describing it as the study of "accumulation of various traits" as opposed to a way of studying and calling attention to the ways in which marginalized identities intersect and interact), and then implies that intersectionality means setting up a new hierarchy that rewards those with the most marginalization points. I'm sure there are a lot of interesting things to be said concerning LGBTQ issues in the context of the I/P conflict and Euro/American activism, but IMO, not in that article.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:26 PM on January 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


If Jews in general had been forced to convert all the years after 1148, there would not be any Sephardic Jews left, and there would be no history of Jews being driven from Spain, into North Africa and the Levant after 1492.

And yet they were. Maimonides, for instance, was one of the Jews who was forced to leave Cordoba. We have more personal accounts from the modern era, when people were better able to travel and publish their experiences, but the finality of "convert or die" implies persecution leading up to that. We know about isolated events - the massacre in Granada in 1066, for instance - but we don't usually know much about their daily life. What we do know, though, is often pretty bleak.

Back when I studied Islamic architecture, Bernard Lewis was regarded a controversial figure. Now he is almost the voice of reason!

I don't know what you're reading but a course in Islamic architecture is not a good foundation for studying the Jewish experience in the Muslim world. There were certainly times and places when Jews were not badly treated - but the same might be said for Jewish life under Christian rule.

As far as I can understand from reading respected scholars, anti-Jewish sentiment among Arabs, Turks and Persians is mainly (with some exceptions) a modern phenomena [...]

No. Even if persecution from the 1700s were ascribable to "nationalist, Pan-Arabic and Wahabist movements rebelling against the Ottoman empire" (just ... no) it would mean Jews in Muslim countries had been unreasonably persecuted for centuries. Writing off their experiences as a "modern" phenomenon is reductive, patronising, and more than a little offensive.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:00 PM on January 26, 2016


I'm not going into this - but just to clarify, I was not attending a course in Islamic architecture, but doing research in Islamic architecture as a senior scholar.

As stated above, I find the current debate on scholarly research entirely unfounded and also populist fodder for the uneducated and uneducable.
posted by mumimor at 2:07 PM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


On a milder note: One of the first Jewish communities in Europe to acquire equal rights was that of Denmark (paradoxical nowadays) in 1814. At first these rights were only awarded to Sephardic Jews. Even the Jewish population of Denmark was reluctant to extend their rights to the Ashkenazi.
Of course, at the time, all women and anyone without capital income were second class citizens.
And anti-semitism didn't end with the royal decree that granted equal rights.

History is complex. My family is mixed Sephardic, Ashkenazi, Fundamentalist Lutheran, reform Lutheran, Catholic, all-the-way-back to enlightenment atheist. All lines have different histories and they are all complex. There is no simple conclusion
posted by mumimor at 2:37 PM on January 26, 2016 [2 favorites]



Wow, I really disagree that this article is worth adding to this conversation.


Wow, yeah, that is a really embarrassing piece.
posted by threeants at 4:16 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Intersectionality is a useful way of understanding post-Enlightenment anti-Semitism. There was a repeated pattern in which Jews were granted civil rights as Germans, Hungarians, or whatever (including official recognition of Judaism among other State-recognised religions) but Jewish identity itself was popularly felt to be incompatible with an identity as a German, Hungarian, or whatever. Consequently, Jews were excluded from many military or governmental positions - their identity was ipso-facto evidence of divided loyalties. This didn't apply to other major religions: I don't think anyone objected to a Christian Workers' Party on the grounds that it was sectarian. On the other hand, other groups (particularly Socialist ones) were condemned specifically because they had a lot of Jews in them.

There's a similar pattern today with other intersectional Jewish identities. As in the articles above (please read David Schraub's take on the exclusion of LGBT Israelis instead), Jews' identity as Gay, POC, and so forth are frequently not recognised unless they suppress the other part of their identity - this cuts both ways, unfortunately. Consequently, as Schraub puts it:
Any LGBT organization in Israel, or any Jewish LGBT organization anywhere, that is not avowedly anti-Zionist (which is to say, any of substantial size) will simply be asserted to be part of a grand Zionist pinkwashing plot. At that stage, the "pinkwashing" charge has become anti-Semitic root to branch.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:28 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


so at the mlk day protests in Oakland, for a while I was walking behind a group of Jewish anti-Zionists wearing hoodies reading NEVER AGAIN TO ANYONE. which I thought was a hell of a message.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 7:08 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


A very substantial article on intersectional issues in US campuses: In the Safe Spaces on Campus, No Jews Allowed
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:22 AM on February 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


That's a horrifying article—I hope it gets some traction. "The ramifications of ignoring the normalization of anti-Semitism cannot be understated": no kidding. Thanks for posting it here.
posted by languagehat at 5:20 PM on February 7, 2016


A similar environment at Oxford has developed into a crisis:
Oxford University's Labour club embroiled in anti-Semitism row
Club chairman resigns in protest after claiming that members have 'some kind of problem with Jews' and sympathise with terrorist groups
I found Ha'aretz' writeup to be the most substantial, but it's paywalled so I'll just excerpt a bit:
(Each campus club sends delegates to the Labour youth conference, which selects a representative for the National Executive Committee, the party’s chief administrative body. Oxford is a particularly important battleground when it comes to such selections.)

“The motion [on IAW] was specifically designed to precipitate Alex's resignation to help solidify left control of the club,” the source alleged. “In other words, they used anti-Semitism for the election.”

Some argue that university politics have become dominated by a disproportionate and extreme focus on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, spilling over into expressions of anti-Jewish bigotry.

Eleanor Sharman, a theology and philosophy student at Oxford, said she was “not remotely surprised” by the allegations.

“The anti-Semitic abuse is astonishing, a lot of it on Facebook,” she said, stating that terms such as “white boy Zios” were bandied around by supposedly liberal groups.

“The farther left you go the more aggressively anti-Israel they are and the more they venture into anti-Semitic territory,” she said. “In practice, the way they speak and treat Jewish students, there’s no difference” between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:02 PM on February 21, 2016


« Older Hard Truths   |   Economic Class != Social Class, and why. Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments