From the ARCHIVE in Tribute to Tikvah Fund White Jewish Supremacist Hillel Philologos Halkin Newsletter Special: Arab Jew
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.” And since I prepared a special newsletter devoted to the topic a few years ago, the matter of Arab Jews has become that much more contentious because of the ongoing intensity of the official Israeli government attempt to link the plight of Arab Jews to that of the Palestinians. Drawing from the work done by a number of Jewish institutions such as Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, the current Israeli initiative has taken on a life of its own and has become a major stumbling block in the impasse between Israel and Palestine.
At the heart of the issue remains the culture and history of Arab Jews and how their identity is seen – by themselves and by others. After many years of seeing their culture and history suppressed for its Arab component, Middle Eastern Jews now find themselves at the center of attention given how Israel – which has consistently suppressed knowledge of Arab Jewish culture and history – has now seen fit to deploy this history in a way that fits the Zionist sense of Jewish fatalism.
Back in 2009 I produced a special newsletter to look at the “Arab Jew” issue from a number of perspectives. The newsletter collects a bunch of articles from the SHU that address to the matter in a forceful and direct manner.
Looking at it from a dispassionate point of view, the hysteria over the term “Arab Jew” 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 the series of articles from Philologos published in The Forward which started the discussion off. Philologos is the “expert” who writes a column on language for that paper. The articles articulate the PILPUL over the term “Arab Jew” without ever getting into the whole Jew vs. Arab issue. It is an attempt to gloss over the real reasons for the discussion.
In my 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 writer Andre Aciman has been a prominent voice attacking the Arab identity of Middle Eastern Jews. In one of his more vicious articles published back in June 2009 he 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 continue with my review essay Yehouda Shenhav’s excellent monograph The Arab Jews. Shenhav has examined the complicated 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.
The newsletter closes with a group of articles relating to what is currently the most contentious facet of the discussion – Israel’s promotion of the Arab Jewish refugee issue as a counterweight to Palestinian claims.
Nathan Guttman of The Forward lays out the case as it has now become manifest in American politics, showing the vast reach of Israel and its allied institutions in this country. This is followed by three articles written by Yehouda Shenhav that explore the various aspects of the matter and the deeply political overtones that have become prominent in the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. This section is rounded off by an interview with Almog Behar, further analysis by Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, and a personal take on the matter from our dear friend Joyce Zonana who wrote a deeply insightful and moving piece at my urging.
It is my hope that as the discussion of Arab Jewish history continues we will be able to see the matter in a deeper and more honest way than is currently the case. This collection of articles has been prepared with this in mind.
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
Arab Jew, Part III
By: Philologos
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
On the Arab Jewish Refugee Controversy
Congressional Bill Mandates Discussion of Sephardic Refugees
By: Nathan Guttman
Arab Jews, Palestinian Refugees, and Israel’s Folly Politics
By: Yehouda Shenhav
What is there between the Mizrahi Issue and Palestinian Nationalism?
By: Yehouda Shenhav
Spineless Bookkeeping: The Use of Mizrahi Jews as Pawns against Palestinian Refugees
By: Yehouda Shenhav
Almog Behar: Iraqi Jews Reject the ‘Cynical Manipulation’ of their History by Israel
By: Ali Abunimah
The Truth about the Expulsion of Arab Jews
By: Esther Meir Glitzenstein
Telling Tales: Personal Thoughts on the Arab-Jewish Refugee Question
By: Joyce Zonana