Special Newsletter: "Arab Jews"
David Shasha
Friends,
Of all the criticisms that I receive for the work that I do promoting the Sephardic heritage, perhaps none is so pointed than the barrage of attacks that I get for using the term “Arab Jew.”
Looking at the matter from a dispassionate point of view, the hysteria over the term has less to do with its accuracy – Jews have lived in the Arab world for many centuries and have assimilated into its culture – and more to do with the fact that Arabs are now viewed as the most bitter existential enemy of the Jewish people. This construct of Jew vs. Arab is dependent on a sense of cultural exclusion that simply does not apply to any other Jewish culture extant.
Jews can be called “German” in spite of the Nazi persecution of our people. Jews can be called “Russian” and “Polish” in spite of many centuries of oppression. Jews can be called “European” and “Western” in spite of the fact that Jews were expelled from European countries for many centuries.
It is only the term “Arab” that is contested.
This special edition of the newsletter contains a number of the articles we have previously published on the subject.
We begin with two articles from Philologos, the language “expert” who writes a column for the Forward. These two articles articulate the PILPUL over the term “Arab Jew” without ever getting into the whole Jew vs. Arab thing. It is an attempt to gloss over the real reasons for the discussion.
In my two responses to the Philologos articles, I have tried to lay out the Arab culture that is the foundation of Sephardic Jewish tradition.
In this vein, Sarina Roffe discusses the matter in her own article and concludes that indeed our culture is Arab and that we are Arab Jews.
After thinking over the matter of the word “Sephardic” I realized that there has been some confusion over what that term means. So I wrote an article explaining the two stages of Sephardic culture; the first is Arabic and the second is European-Latin. Sephardim have absorbed their culture from many different places and this Arabic-Latin issue was never looked at as separating Sephardim from one another. In the aftermath of the Spanish Expulsion in 1492, Jews who spoke Ladino came to the Ottoman Empire where they quickly integrated into what was a culturally Arab world.
The latest controversy over Arab Jewish culture has come from Andre Aciman’s vicious article which reduces all of Arab Jewish history to a 25 year period where Jewish life deteriorated in the wake of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In my response to Aciman’s embittered essay I attempt to point out the larger history of Arab Jews in the Middle East.
We then close with three of my essays on Arab Jewish history and culture.
First is my essay on Yehouda Shenhav’s excellent monograph The Arab Jews. Shenhav has examined the contested history of Arab Jews in Israel and their experiences as exiles from their old homes in the region. It is a particularly ugly story that explains to a great extent why the term “Arab Jew” is so contentious.
Next is my mediation of the culture of SUFFEH, the good breeding that was at one time the foundation of life in the Arab Jewish community. The less we are Arab Jews, the more we lose the morality and manners of our past. The great irony of my article is that I am forced to resort to using harsh arguments to defend the gracefulness and tolerance of SUFFEH. It again raises the question of how to be at the same time tolerant and yet intolerant of those who would reject tolerance.
Finally, we close with my recent article on Simon Shaheen’s epochal Aswat performance here in New York. Music being one of the last areas where Arab Jews can truly be Arab, Simon Shaheen’s art is particularly important for our culture. The connection between Shaheen’s music and the Arab Jewish world is pronounced and is a model for a future that is still possible.
David Shasha
Rejecting the ‘Arab Jew’
By: Philologos
On the Use of the Term “Arab Jew”
By: David Shasha
Arab Jew, Part II
By: Philologos
Further Reflections on the Use of the Term “Arab Jew”
By: David Shasha
Are We Arab Jews or Jews from Arab Lands?
By: Sarina Roffe
Arab Sephardim and Latin Sephardim: Illusory Shifts from the Afro-Asiatic to the Indo-European
By: David Shasha
The Exodus Obama Forgot to Mention
By: Andre Aciman
Andre Aciman, the New York Times and Arab Jewish Discourse
By: David Shasha
Review Essay: Contested Histories and Disembodied Voices: How to Speak of the Arab Jew
By: David Shasha
The Eclipse of SUFFEH
By: David Shasha
Songs of Wounded Kinship
By: David Shasha