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Mizrahi Jews (), also known as Mizrahim (מִזְרָחִים) in plural and Mizrahi (מִזְרָחִי) in singular, and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or Edot HaMizrach (עֲדוֹת־הַמִּזְרָח, ), are terms used in Israeli discourse to refer to a grouping of Jews that lived in the Muslim world. Mizrahi is a political sociological term that was coined with the creation of the Israel. It translates as "Easterner" in Hebrew.
The term Mizrahi is almost exclusively applied to descendants of Jewish communities from North Africa, Central Asia, West Asia, and parts of the North Caucasus. This includes Iraqi Jews, Iranian Jews, Bukharan Jews, Kurdish Jews, Afghan Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, and the small community of Bahraini Jews. The aforementioned groups are believed to derive their ancestry in large part from the Babylonian captivity.The Wellspring of Georgian Historiography: The Early Medieval Historical Chronicle The Conversion of Katli and The Life of St. Nino, Constantine B. Lerner, England: Bennett and Bloom, London, 2004, p. 60 Yemenite Jews are also Mizrahi Jews, though they differ from other Mizrahim, who have undergone a process of total or partial assimilation to Sephardic law and customs.
Syrian Jews, Egyptian Jews, Tunisian Jews, Moroccan Jews, Algerian Jews, and Libyan Jews (also known as Musta'arabi Jews or Maghrebi Jews) are often labeled as Mizrahim, though these groups largely merged with the mass arrival of Sephardic Jews from the Iberian peninsula, following their expulsion in the late 15th century from Spain and Portugal. Magrebi is an Arabic term which translates to "Westerners". Indian Jews (Paradesi Jew, Cochin Jews and Bene Israel) are sometimes labeled as Mizrahi, though members of the community have identified themselves as a separate category, as South Asian.
These various Jewish communities were first officially grouped into a singular identifiable division during World War II, when they were distinctly outlined in the One Million Plan of the Jewish Agency for Israel, which detailed the methods by which Jews of the diaspora were to be returned to the Land of Israel (then under the British Mandate for Palestine) after the Holocaust.: "The principal significance of this plan lies in the fact, noted by Yehuda Shenhav, that this was the first time in Zionist history that Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries were all packaged together in one category as the target of an immigration plan. There were earlier plans to bring specific groups, such as the Yemenites, but the "one million plan" was, as Shenhav says, "the zero point", the moment when the category of Mizrahi Jews in the current sense of this term, as an ethnic group distinct from European-born Jews, was invented."
An earlier cultural community of southern and eastern Jews were the Sephardi Jews. Before the establishment of the Israel in 1948, the ancestors of various current communities of Mizrahi Jews did not identify themselves as a distinctive Jewish subgroup, and many considered themselves Sephardis, as they largely followed the Sephardic customs and traditions of Judaism with local variations in . The original Sephardi Jewish community was formed in Spain and Portugal, and after their expulsion in 1492, many Sephardim settled in areas where older Jewish communities already existed. This complicated ethnography has resulted in a conflation of terms, particularly in official Israeli ethnic and religious terminology, with Sephardi being used in a broad sense to include Mizrahi Jews, as well as Sephardim proper from southern Europe around the Mediterranean Basin. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel has placed of Mizrahi origin in Israel under the jurisdiction of the Sephardi chief rabbis.
Following the First Arab–Israeli War, over 850,000 Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews left Arab and Muslim-majority countries between 1948 and the early 1980s. A 2018 statistic found that 45% of Jewish Israelis identified as either Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews.
During the 1940s, before Israel's establishment, the demographer Roberto Bachi used the categories of "Mizrahim" and "Ashkenazi Jews" in his ethnic classification of the Yishuv.Anat Leibler, "Disciplining Ethnicity: Social Sorting Intersects with Political Demography in Israel's Pre-State Period," Social Studies of Science 44, no. 2 (2014), p. 273. In the 1950s, the Jews who came from the communities listed above were simply called and known as Jews (Yahud, يهود in Arabic). To distinguish them in the Jewish sub-ethnicities, Israeli officials, who themselves were mostly Eastern European Jews, transferred the name Mizrahi to them, though most of these immigrants arrived from lands located further westward than Central Europe. "The Settling of Western Jews in Jerusalem", Official Israeli Ministry of Education paper for high school students about North African Jews who prior were called "Western Jews" to as &/ "Mugrabi Jews" as opposed to "Mizrahi/Eastern Jews". For God's Sake: Why Are There So Many More Israelis with the Surname "Mizrahi" Than "Friedmans"?, by Michal Margalit, 17 January 2014, Ynet. Mizrahi is subsequently among the surnames most often changed by Israelis, The Surname that Israelis Change the Most: "Mizrahi", Ofer Aderet, Haaretz, 17 February 2017. and many scholars, including Avshalom Kor, claim that the transferring of the name Mizrahim was a form of OrientalismAlon Gan, " Victimhood Book", Israel Democracy Institute, 2014. Pp. 137–139. towards the Oriental Jews, similar to the ways in which Westjuden had labeled Ostjuden as "second class" and excluded them from possible positions of power.Dina Haruvi and Hadas Shabbat-Nadir, " Have You Ever Met A Streotypical Mizrahi?"" (in Hebrew), Ohio State University.Haggai Ram, " Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession", Stanford University Press.
The usage of the term Mizrahim or Edot Hamizraḥ (עדות־המזרח), Oriental communities, grew in Israel as a result of the settlement of Jewish immigrants from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, along with followers of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Yemenite Jews (Yemenite) rites. In modern Israeli usage, it refers to all Jews from Central and West Asian countries, many of them Arabic-speaking Muslim-majority countries. The term came to be widely used by Mizrahi activists in the early 1990s. Since then in Israel it has become an accepted semi-official and media designation.
Before the establishment of the state of Israel, Mizrahi Jews did not identify themselves as a separate Jewish subgroup. Instead, they generally characterized themselves as Sephardi, as they follow the customs and traditions of Sephardi Jews (but with some differences among the minhag "customs" of particular communities). That has resulted in a conflation of terms, particularly in Israel and in religious usage, with " Sephardi" being used in a broad sense and including Mizrahi Jews, North African Jews as well as Sephardim proper. From the point of view of the official Israeli rabbinate, any of Mizrahi origin in Israel are under the jurisdiction of the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel.
Sami Michael rejects the terms Mizrahim and Edot HaMizrach, claiming it is a fictitious identity advanced by Mapai to preserve a "rival" to the Ashkenazim and help them push the Mizrahim below in the social-economic ladder, so they won't ever be in line with the Israeli elites of European Jewish descent. "There Are People who Want to Keep Us in the Bottom", Sami Michael's 1999 interview with Ruvik Rozental. He also speaks against the Mapai manner of labeling all the Oriental Jews as "one folk" and erasing their unique and individual history as separated communities. Instead, he wonders why the real Easterners of his time, who were the Eastern European Jewish peasants from the villages, weren't labeled as " Mizrahi" in Israel, despite this term being more appropriate than for the Oriental Jews who were labeled that way. Michael is also against the inclusion of Oriental Jewish communities who do not descend from Sepharadic Jews, as " Sepharadim" by Israeli politicians, calling it "historically inaccurate". He also claims that his work as an author is always referred to as "ethnic", while European Jews' work, even if historic in theme, is not, as a result of racism.
Most of the Mizrahi activists actually originated from North African Jewish communities, traditionally called "Westerners" (Maghrebi), rather than "Easterners" (Mashreqi). The Jews who emigrated to Palestine from North Africa in the 19th century and prior started their own political and religious organization in 1860 which operated in Jerusalem and was called "The Western Jewish Diaspora Council" (). Many Jews originating from Arab and Muslim countries today reject Mizrahi (or any) umbrella description, and prefer to identify themselves by their particular country of origin, or that of their immediate ancestors, such as "Moroccan Jew", or prefer to use the old term Sephardi in its broader meaning.Yochai Oppenheimer, "Mizrahi fiction as a minor literature", in Dario Miccoli eds., Contemporary Sephardic and Mizrahi Literature: A Diaspora, 2017. pp. 98–100.
The reason for this classification of all Mizrahim under Sephardi rite is that most Mizrahi communities use much the same religious rituals as Sephardim proper due to historical reasons. The prevalence of the Sephardi rite among Mizrahim is partially a result of Sephardim proper joining some of Mizrahi communities following the 1492 Alhambra Decree, which expelled Jews from Sepharad (Spain and Portugal). Over the last few centuries, the previously distinctive rites of the Mizrahi communities were influenced, superimposed upon or altogether replaced by the rite of the Sephardim, perceived as more prestigious. Even before this assimilation, the original rite of many Jewish Oriental communities was already closer to the Sephardi rite than to the Ashkenazi one. For this reason, "Sephardim" has come to mean not only "Spanish Jews" proper but "Jews of the Spanish rite", just as "Ashkenazi Jews" is used for "Jews of the German rite", whether or not their families originate in Germany.
Many of the Sephardi Jews exiled from Spain resettled in greater or lesser numbers in the Arab world, such as Syria and Morocco. In Syria, most eventually intermarried with, and assimilated into, the larger established communities of Musta'rabim and Mizrahim. In some North African countries, such as Morocco, Sephardi Jews came in greater numbers, and so largely contributed to the Jewish settlements that the pre-existing Jews were assimilated by the more recently arrived Sephardi Jews. Either way, this assimilation, combined with the use of the Sephardi rite, led to the popular designation and conflation of most non-Ashkenazi Jewish communities from Western Asia and North Africa as "Sephardi rite", whether or not they were descended from Spanish Jews, which is what the terms "Sephardi Jews" and "Sfaradim" properly implied when used in the ethnic as opposed to the religious sense.
In some Arabic countries, such as Egypt and Syria, Sephardi Jews arrived via the Ottoman Empire would distinguish themselves from the already established Musta'rabim, while in others, such as Morocco and Algeria, the two communities largely intermarried, with the latter embracing Sephardi customs and thus forming a single community.
In Kurdistan, a region which includes parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, the language of the Mizrahim is a variant of Aramaic. As spoken by the Kurdish Jews, Judeo-Aramaic languages are Neo-Aramaic languages descended from Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. They are related to the Christian Aramaic dialects spoken by Assyrian people, which are Syriac Christians who claim descent from Assyria, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, dating back to 2500 BC in ancient Mesopotamia.
As Islam started to spread in the 7th century CE, Jews who were living under Muslim rule became . Because Jews were seen as "People of the Book", they were allowed to practice their own religion, but they had an inferior status in an Islamic society.Jamie Stokes (ed.): Encyclopedia of The Peoples of Africa and the Middle East, p. 343. Facts on File, 2009. Even though Jews in the Middle East and North Africa formed strong attachments to the areas in which they lived,Daniel J. Schroeter: A Different Road to Modernity: Jewish Identity in the Arab World, in Howard Wettstein (ed.): Diasporas and Exiles: Varieties of Jewish Identity. University of California Press. 2002. they were seen as a community which was clearly distinct from other communities.Nicholas de Lange: Atlas of the Jewish world, p. 79. Equinox, 1991. For example, while Musta'arabi Jews in the Arab world were influenced by the local culture, e.g. they started speaking variants of the Arabic languageLowenstein, Steven M.: The Jewish Cultural Tapestry: International Jewish Folk Traditions, p. 60. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. and ate their own versions of the same food,Lowenstein, Steven M.: The Jewish Cultural Tapestry: International Jewish Folk Traditions, pp. 123–124. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. they did not adopt Arab identity. Instead, Jews in the Arab world saw themselves (including the ones with family background of converts) and were seen as fundamentally a part of the wider collective of the Jewish people, and they maintained their identity as the descendants of the ancient Israelites tribes.
Some Mizrahim migrated to India, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.
Anti-Jewish actions by Arab governments in the 1950s and 1960s, in the context of the founding of the State of Israel, led to the departure of large numbers of Mizrahi Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. The exodus of 25,000 Mizrahi Jews from Egypt after the 1956 Suez Crisis led to the overwhelming majority of Mizrahim leaving Arab countries. They became Jewish refugees. Most went to Israel. Many Moroccan and Algerian Jews went to France. Thousands of Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian Jews emigrated to the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and other countries in the Americas.
Today, as many as 40,000 Mizrahim still remain in communities scattered throughout the non-Arab Muslim world, primarily in Iran, but also Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. The Jewish Population of the World, The Jewish Virtual Library There are few Maghrebim remaining in the Arab world. About 3,000 remain in Morocco and 1,100 in Tunisia. Other countries with remnants of ancient Jewish communities with official recognition, such as Lebanon, have 100 or fewer Jews. A trickle of emigration continues, mainly to Israel and the United States.
The text on the Memorial reads;
"With the birth of the State of Israel, over 850,000
Jews were forced from Arab Lands and Iran.
The desperate refugees were welcomed by Israel.
By Act of the Knesset: 30 Nov, annually, is the
Departure and Expulsion Memorial Day.
Memorial donated by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation,
With support from the World Sephardi Federation, City of Jerusalem and the Jerusalem Foundation"
The sculpture is the interpretive work of Sam Philipe, a fifth generation Jerusalemite.
Mizrahi immigrants arrived speaking many languages:
Mizrahim from elsewhere brought Georgian, Judaeo-Georgian and various other languages with them. Hebrew had historically been a language only of prayer for most Jews not living in Israel, including the Mizrahim. Thus, with their arrival in Israel, the Mizrahim retained culture, customs and language distinct from their Ashkenazi counterparts. The collective estimate for Mizrahim (circa 2018) is at 4,000,000.
Although social integration has increased, disparities persist. According to a study conducted by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS), Mizrahi Jews are less likely to pursue academic studies than Ashkenazi Jews. On the other side, Israeli-born Ashkenazim are up to twice as likely to study in a university as Israeli-born Mizrahim. Furthermore, the percentage of Mizrahim who seek a university education remains low compared to second-generation immigrant groups of Ashkenazi origin, such as Russians. According to a survey by the Adva Center, the average income of Ashkenazim was 36 percent higher than that of Mizrahim in 2004. Hebrew PDF
In 2023, journalist Shany Littman argued the dynamics of inequality had reversed, with most Israeli cabinet ministers and city mayors being Mizrahi Jews. She also stated that middle-class Mizrahi women earned more than their Ashkenazi counterparts.
The A-WA song "Hana Mash Hu Al Yaman" highlights the discrimination of Mizrahim, especially Yemenite Jews, faced in the 1940s, when they entered Israel as refugees. The song's lyrics depict a reality of cultural assimilation, low income jobs, and a pressure to leave their Yemeni traditions behind.
In autosomal analyses, the Iraqi Jews, Iranian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Kurdish Jews, Mountain Jews, and Georgian Jews form a close genetic cluster. When examined at a more detailed level, the groups can be separated from each other. This cluster plots between Levantine and Northern West Asian populations. Syrian and North African Jews are separate from it and closer to the Sephardi Jews.Brook, Kevin Alan: "Eastern and Central European Jews after the Tenth Century". In The Jews of Khazaria. Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. Yemenite Jews are distinct from other Jewish groups and cluster with the non-Jewish population of the Arabian Peninsula (although connection has been established between them and other Jewish diaspora communities).
Persian and other languages and dialects
Among other languages associated with Mizrahim are Judeo-Iranian languages such as Judeo-Persian, the Bukhori dialect, Judeo-Tat, and Kurdish languages; Georgian; Judeo-Marathi and Judeo-Malayalam. Bukharan from various countries in Central Asia and the Mountain Jews living in Azerbaijan are also widely fluent in Russian language due to several of those countries' former status as republics of the Soviet Union.
History
The Jewish diaspora in the Middle East outside the Land of Israel started in the 6th century BCE, during the Babylonian captivity,Jamie Stokes (ed.): Encyclopedia of The Peoples of Africa and the Middle East, p. 337. Facts on File, 2009. which also caused some Jews to flee to Egypt.Nicholas de Lange: Atlas of the Jewish world, p. 22. Equinox, 1991. Other early diaspora areas in the Middle East and North Africa were Persia, Yemen and Cyrene.Nicholas de Lange: Atlas of the Jewish world, p. 23. Equinox, 1991.
Post-1948 dispersal
After the establishment of the State of Israel and subsequent 1948 Arab–Israeli War, most Mizrahim were either expelled by their Arab rulers or chose to leave and emigrated to Israel. According to the 2009 Statistical Abstract of Israel by Israel Central Bureau of Statistics; 2,043.8 thousand Israeli Jews were Israel-born (father born in Israel), 681.4 thousand were from other Asian countries (including 95.6 thousand from India and Pakistan), 859.1 thousand were from African countries (including 106.9 thousand from Ethiopia), and 1,939.4 thousand were from Europe, America or Oceania.Statistical Abstract of Israel, 2009, CBS. "Table 2.24 – Jews, by country of origin and age" (PDF). Retrieved 22 March 2010.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Archived
Memorialization in Israel
On 9 May 2021, the first physical memorialization in Israel of the Departure and Expulsion of Jews from Arab land and Iran was placed on the Sherover Promenade in Jerusalem. It is titled the Departure and Expulsion Memorial following the Knesset law for the annual recognition of the Jewish experience held annually on 30 November.
Absorption into Israeli society
Refuge in Israel was not without its tragedies: "In a generation or two, millennia of rooted Oriental civilization, unified even in its diversity", had been wiped out, writes Mizrahi scholar Ella Shohat.Ella Shohat: "Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims", Social Text, No. 19/20 (1988), p. 32 The trauma of rupture from their countries of origin was further complicated by the difficulty of the transition upon arrival in Israel; Mizrahi immigrants and refugees were placed in rudimentary and hastily erected tent cities (ma'abarot) often in development towns on the peripheries of Israel. Settlement in (cooperative farming villages) was only partially successful, because Mizrahim had historically filled a niche as artisan and merchants and most did not traditionally engage in farmwork. As the majority left their property behind in their home countries as they journeyed to Israel, many suffered a severe decrease in their socio-economic status aggravated by their cultural and political differences with the dominant Ashkenazi community. Furthermore, a policy of austerity was enforced at that time due to economic hardships.
Disparities and integration
The cultural differences between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews impacted the degree and rate of assimilation into Israeli society, and sometimes the divide between Eastern European and Middle Eastern Jews was quite sharp. Segregation, especially in the area of housing, limited integration possibilities over the years. Intermarriage between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim is increasingly common in Israel and by the late 1990s 28% of all Israeli children had multi-ethnic parents (up from 14% in the 1950s).Barbara S. Okun, Orna Khait-Marelly. 2006. Socioeconomic Status and Demographic Behavior of Adult Multiethnics: Jews in Israel. It has been claimed that intermarriage does not tend to decrease ethnic differences in socio-economic status, however, that does not apply to the children of inter-ethnic marriages.
Genetics
The Middle Eastern Jewish populations have a connection to the Jewish communities of Europe and North Africa in their paternal gene pool, suggesting a common Middle Eastern origin between them.
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