Journal articles by Aviad Moreno
Iyunim, 2024
During the period of mass immigration from 1948 to 1951, over 34,000 Jews migrated to Israel from... more During the period of mass immigration from 1948 to 1951, over 34,000 Jews migrated to Israel from Turkey, constituting about five percent of all immigrants arriving in Israel during that period and about one-tenth of all immigrants from Asia and Africa. During those years, the State of Israel was engaged in absorbing Jewish immigrants on an unprecedented scale and attempting to integrate ethnic groups perceived as non-modern into an Israeli melting pot. From the establishment's perspective, the connection of immigrants from Asia and Africa to their home countries was often viewed negatively due to their perception as pre-modern or developing and because of the definition of most of these countries as “enemy states.” Against this backdrop, immigrants from these regions were widely considered to be passive agents in the formation of state governance mechanisms and even as a burden on the "absorbing establishment." In March 1949, however, Turkey became one of the only countries to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel. This development not only enabled Turkish immigrants to maintain cultural, political, and even national ties to their country of origin—unlike most MENA countries—but also allowed them to position themselves as strategic players in promoting Israel’s foreign affairs. In this article, we examine the efforts of prominent leaders of the Turkish Jewish community in Israel to leverage their unique position as part of an internal struggle among these leaders over the community’s status and identity. We identify two separate systems of self-representation: one -- led by Shabtai Dinar, a Foreign Ministry official and local Turkish leader affiliated with Mapai -- aligned with the Labor Movement and the Mapai establishment narrative; the other --represented by the journalist Yitzhak Yaish (Yaech)--was relatively democratic reflecting a variety of grassroots voices, including opposition perspectives. To examine these diverse and contrasting images, we identify, for the first time, two types of sources: material from the "Major Archive," (the Israel State Archives), which primarily deals with the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey and the involvement of Turkish Jews in that process; and material from the "Minor Archive," namely community newspapers in Israel, which reveal elements not documented by the establishment. Drawing on the case of Turkish Jews in Israel, we propose a reevaluation of the intricate interplay between grassroot voices and "establishment" voices in the formation of new ethnic communities in Israel.
Jewish Quarterly Review , 2024
What is the relationship between the Israeli fascination with the "Far East" and the Mizrahi stru... more What is the relationship between the Israeli fascination with the "Far East" and the Mizrahi struggle for inclusion within Israeli society? This essay examines Reuben Kashani’s The Jewish Communities in the Far East (Jerusalem, 1982) as a critical lens for understanding this connection. Published by prominent Sephardi organizations, Kashani’s book challenged the dominance of Ashkenazi narratives by celebrating the diverse histories and agency of non-Ashkenazi Jewish communities across Asia. It also highlighted their intertwined experiences with global cultures and colonial modernity, presenting a counternarrative to portrayals of these communities as passive or reliant on Ashkenazi leadership.
The essay situates Kashani’s work within broader Sephardi-Mizrahi intellectual activism, tracing its roots to early Zionist marginalization and the establishment of Sephardi-led institutions like the World Sephardi Federation. It argues that The Jewish Communities in the Far East exemplify efforts to redefine Jewish historical discourse, fostering a more inclusive narrative that acknowledges the contributions and resilience of Mizrahi Jews both within and beyond Israel.
Religions , 2024
Drawing on life-story interviews and ethnography conducted in Israel from 2009 to 2023,
this arti... more Drawing on life-story interviews and ethnography conducted in Israel from 2009 to 2023,
this article examines how members of the Spanish-speaking Moroccan–Jewish diaspora in Israel
recalled their habits of eating non-kosher food in Morocco. We explore how these memories emerged
in response to commonplace discourses that depict Moroccan Jews as a distinctly religious-traditional
ethnic group, untouched by European secular influences, and dichotomous with modern secular
cultures in Israel. Contrary to this image, members of the community whom we interviewed
highlighted a Jewish Moroccan life that was deeply connected to Spanish colonialism and the broader
Hispanic and Sephardi worlds. We focus specifically on the concept of selkear, a Haketia (Judeo-
Spanish) term meaning to let something go, make an exception, or turn a blind eye. Our analysis of
our participants’ memories provides a nuanced understanding of Jewish religiosity in the context of
colonialism and of how Mizrahi–Sephardi immigrants in Israel reclaimed their Judaism. Highlighting
the practice of eating non-kosher food is thus a strategy used to challenge dominant notions of rigid
religious commitment within the Sephardi diaspora and their interpretation in Israel.
Israel Studies , 2024
Over the decades, the power dynamics between Jews and Muslims, Israelis and other MENA nations an... more Over the decades, the power dynamics between Jews and Muslims, Israelis and other MENA nations and societies, have shifted. However, within the global paradigm that distinguishes oppressors from the oppressed, certain Islamic entities—like Iran and its global proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Yemeni Houthis—are frequently conceived and depicted as marginalized “Eastern” underdogs, starkly contrasting with the depiction of the sovereign Jewish state, which is perceived as a distinct “Western” entity. This portrayal undermines the independent agency of these “Eastern” actors in determining their aspirations and historical trajectory and implies limited responsibility for their actions and statements while they confront Western hegemonic powers. Instead, “Easterners” are predominantly portrayed as reactive elements navigating within hierarchical power structures imposed by the West, a dynamic that is seen primarily through the lens of resistance. Such terminologies and perpetuated analytical concepts, we argue, overlook significant aspects of the historical context that define the hierarchies between Jews and non-Jews within and outside of the contemporary context. To start, the founders of Israel, as Jews, were never categorized in racial terms as “White” (to say the least), but rather were perceived as a religious and ethnic subgroup, a distinct “other”—even considered “Oriental”—within the European context. But our essay goes well beyond that. We aim to highlight an even more substantial bias in the examination of the agency of MENA Jewish communities when viewed through such hierarchical lenses of a perceived East and West. This bias becomes most evident in the intersection of historical power dynamics between Muslims and Jews.
American Jewish History, 2024
This article explores Sephardi community development in Quebec, Canada through the lens of emergi... more This article explores Sephardi community development in Quebec, Canada through the lens of emerging Moroccan Jewish diaspora networks between 1969 and 1975. In Quebec, the Anglo-dominated Canadian public and Ashkenazi-dominated Jewish spheres created major difficulties for the successful integration of many newly arrived Moroccan Jewish migrants who had anticipated a more Francophone environment. In light of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, Moroccan Jewish community activists seized on the province’s program of francization to articulate a “Sépharade” identity adapted to Quebec’s changing public and private spheres. At the same moment in Israel, decades of protests stemming from discontent with their economic and political marginalization by Ashkenazi elites culminated in the 1971 Black Panther demonstrations launched by Moroccan and other MENA Jews. As they sought to build or reform institutions, solidarity with MENA Jews in Israel became a powerful register evoked by community activists to understand social and ethnic difficulties in Quebec.
Thus far, the desire for Moroccan Jews in Quebec to distill a cohesive “Sépharade” identity has largely been studied through a local lens. By analyzing a snapshot of Moroccan communal development, particularly through their own newspaper “Présence,” this study demonstrates the significance of the global context for this local process. What it meant for Moroccans to be Canadian and Quebecois developed in conversation with what it meant for them to be Sephardi and Israeli elsewhere. Correspondingly, this article points to Israel an important context for the study of MENA Jews beyond narratives of “mass immigration”. It also demonstrates that MENA diaspora networks are a key source for analyzing the construction of local “Sephardi” or “Mizrahi” identities. More generally, we propose bridging the scholarly partition by which MENA Jews have tended to be studied within or outside of Israel, with a particular dynamic of “departure” and integration towards Israel, which obscures important evolutions in community-building that transcend national borders.
[ההיסטוריה הארוכה של המזרחים: כיוונים חדשים בחקר יהודי ארצות האסלאם- בהוקרה לירון צור] The Long History of Mizrahim: New Directions in the Study of Jews from Muslim Countries--In tribute to Yaron Tsur, 2021
![Research paper thumbnail of Hisul, ʻAkira, Hagira: The Semantics of Jewish Migration from Arab Countries in Israel’s Academic and Popular Discourses [חיסול, עקירה, הגירה: הסמנטיקה של ה'עליות' מארצות ערב בשיח האקדמי והציבורי בישראל]](/jarvisscript/passion-https-web.archive.org/web/20250114232248im_/https://attachments.academia-assets.com/64315966/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Zion Quarterly for research in Jewish History, 2020
In recent years, scholars working in the humanities have become more sensitive to the way our lex... more In recent years, scholars working in the humanities have become more sensitive to the way our lexicon shapes and informs our research. This article expands on David Engelʼs “Away from a Definition of Antisemitism,” in which he criticizes historians’ sweeping use of the term “antisemitism” as a ready-made category that encompasses the many different varieties of anti-Jewish hatred and prejudice across time and space.
I highlight how the causes of Jewish migration from Arab lands after 1948 have been treated in a similar fashion in both the academic and the popular discourses in Israel. To this end, I examine the enduring cultural, social, and political uses of the word ʻaliya and other canonical Zionist concepts including hithaslut (self-liquidation), yetziʼa (Exodus), ʻakira (uprooting), and—since the 1970s—plitim (refugees) and gerush (expulsion). I also look at the use of concepts borrowed from the European Jewish context, such as pogrom, ghetto, antisemitism, and Shoah. All of these terms tend to generalize and reduce the causes and particularities of Jewish migration from the Middle East and North African countries after 1948. Publicists and activists, as well as scholars, I argue, tend to disregard the contexts in which these concepts emerged, including the ways that they shaped events in advance of their actual occurrence. I then address the implications of this terminology for the current state of research. I show how generalizing semantics continue to restrict the analysis of certain forms of migration and their multi-faceted local, communal, biographical, and social determinants. This is the case even among prominent scholars who challenge the oversimplifications of the Zionist paradigm by using the universal category of hagira (migration) to describe Jewish immigration to Israel. By employing the term alongside the commonplace political lexicon, they inadvertently imbue it with polemical meaning.
I conclude with a call to expand critical research in Hebrew on post-1948 Jewish migration from the Middle East and North African countries outside of the Israeli context—a frame of reference that promises to elicit more nuanced characterizations of the causes and dilemmas of migration.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2020
The post-1948 mass migration of Jews from Arab Muslim countries to Israel is widely seen by schol... more The post-1948 mass migration of Jews from Arab Muslim countries to Israel is widely seen by scholars as a direct result of decolonization and rising nationalism across the Middle East and North Africa, coupled with the emigration and immigration policies of regional powers. In this article I draw on local histories of northern Morocco to critique the existing literature. I apply new methods to reconceptualize that migratory experience as shaped by social and cultural processes, albeit ones that interacted with nationalist state policies. I provide a multilayered macro- and microanalysis of the process of Jewish emigration from northern Morocco and point to the transregional, interpersonal, communal, and institutional networks that jointly shaped the dynamic character and pace of migration to Israel (and to Europe and the Americas) among local Jews.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/beyond-the-nationstate-a-network-analysis-of-jewish-emigration-from-northern-%20morocco-to-israel/E0566B3901E8404BCC82EB40F0303256
http://www.hesperis-tamuda.com/index.php/numero-2017
Almost a century before the “mass emigration” of Jews from Morocco during the mid-twentieth centu... more Almost a century before the “mass emigration” of Jews from Morocco during the mid-twentieth century, to Israel and to destinations in the West, Moroccan Jews had been engaging in long-distance emigrations, typically from the Spanish-dominated northern part of that country to Latin America. This article surveys the state of research pertaining to this long-lasting migratory episode. I point at the conspicuous lack of interest among MENA-and Israel-Studies scholars in the topic, and conclude by suggesting that this migration episode has potential contribution to the aforementioned areas of study.
ملخص: الهجرة اليهودية المغربية إلى أمريکا اللاتينية: أوضاع البحوث
والاتجاهات الجديدة
قرابة قرن قبل ”الهجرة الجماعية“ لليهود من المغرب خلال منتصف القرن
العشرين إلى إسرائيل وجهات أخرى في الغرب، انخرط اليهود المغاربة في الهجرة
لمسافات طويلة، ومعظمهم من الجزء الشمالي من البلاد الذي كان يهيمن عليه
الإسبان إلى أمريکا اللاتينية. وترک هؤلاء الرواد الأوائل بصمات على الثقافات
اليهودية المغربية الدائمة في هذا المحتوى، حتى في الأيام الحالية. وتفحص هذه
المقالة وضع البحوث المتعلقة بهذه الهجرة طويلة الأمد. وهنا أود الإشارة إلى
الاهتمام الکبير بين الباحثين الناطقين بالإسبانية والبرتغالية من حقول الدراسات
الأمريکية والايبيرية اللاتينية، من جهة؛ وإلى غياب واضح لهذه الدراسات في
العالم العربي وإسرائيل من جهة أخرى، وهذا فضلا عن الباحثين الذين ير زون ک
على الهجرة المغربية المعاصرة. ما أن تاريخ الهجرة المحلي لديه إسهامات محتملة ک
في مجالات الاهتمام المذ ورة أعلاه، وأنه يمکن أن تعمل على تفکيک الروايات ک
الشائعة عن رحيل اليهود الموجه سياسيا من الأراضي المسلمة العربية.
Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies , 2023
The writing of “Yizkor books” (Yizker bikher, יזכור ביכער)—memorial books for European Jewish com... more The writing of “Yizkor books” (Yizker bikher, יזכור ביכער)—memorial books for European Jewish communities that were destroyed in the Holocaust—has developed and expanded as the remnants of these lost communities scattered around the globe in the post-war era. The motives for writing comparable books among non-European Jewish communities—which experienced different circumstances of dispersal but were still influenced by Holocaust memory—and the way these books nourished the intentional creation of immigrant communities, are understudied. This article focuses on the related genre of what we define as community-oriented autobiographical memoirs penned by Moroccan Jews who migrated to Israel in the 1950s. Within these books, we trace patterns of narration and memory construction utilized by Moroccan leaders in an effort to cope with the stereotyping and exclusion of their communities from mainstream culture by the Ashkenazi-European elite in Israel. We explore how these narratives by Moroccan immigrants were, on the one hand, inspired by commonplace Israeli Holocaust memories depicting the traumatic annihilation of Jewish life in Morocco, and, on the other hand, accounts of Moroccan marginality in Israel.
Societies, 2023
The methods that communities exploit to cope with national hegemonies that dispossess and exclude... more The methods that communities exploit to cope with national hegemonies that dispossess and exclude them have attracted the interest of migration scholars who emphasize the development of transnational strategies as community-building vehicles. Some scholars focus on migrant communities, whereas other studies analyze the “stayers”—those who remain in the countries of origin—in their analyses of the impacts of transnational trends on these groups. Yet how such transnational dynamics influence the “stayers” among ethnonational communities whose members rapidly “repatriate” en masse to their perceived nation-state, such as the migration of Middle Eastern Jews to Israel in the era of regional decolonization and nationalization, remain understudied. This article focuses on the community of “stayers” among Turkish Jews, whose leaders sought methods to cope with the effects of rising nationalism on their community structure and the intensity of an emigration crisis that engulfed them due to the vacuum they faced after losing 40 percent of their members in 1948–1949 to Israel. We analyze Şalom, the most important newspaper that Turkish Jewry continued to publish well after 1948. To escape marginalization and to re-establish their base in Turkey, one of Şalom’s main strategies, we find, is conveying to its readership in Turkey the advantage of connecting and twinning the two national centers that had become the focal points of most of the community by 1950—the Turkish Republic and the State of Israel.
Nations and Nationalism, 2023
Between 1948 and 1956, 36,302 Jews migrated from Turkey to Israel, forming the largest Turkish di... more Between 1948 and 1956, 36,302 Jews migrated from Turkey to Israel, forming the largest Turkish diaspora hub at that time. Drawing on the nine newspapers published by Turkish Jews in Israel in their vernacular, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), this article sheds light on the complex nature of the migrants' transnational affinity to the Turkish Republic and on how it coexisted with their Jewish nationalism. In addition to situating this development within the broader context of post-WWII Turkish transnationalism, we also delineate their unique historic status as ethnic Jewish communities or millet. Examining the post-Ottoman era, we show how they leveraged their political, commercial and leisure-related ties with Turkey-deemed more developed in those terms than Israel-to empower themselves as an ethnic community and to facilitate their integration into the Jewish state. In so doing, this study bridges some of the gaps in the analyses of Muslim and non-Muslim migrations, and it suggests that we rethink the languages used to explore Turkish transnationalism as well as its geographical borders and underlying characteristics.
THE JOURNAL OF NORTH AFRICAN STUDIES, 2022
Analyses of the migrations from Morocco in the second half of the twentieth century tend to view ... more Analyses of the migrations from Morocco in the second half of the twentieth century tend to view them as part of a larger pattern of South-to-North postcolonial circular migration, while Jewish Moroccan migration is deemed an exceptional national phenomenon, unrelated to the study of these global developments. Yet, Jewish migration from northern Morocco to Venezuela was characterised and influenced by a number of sub-regional, ethno- religious, linguistic, and even racial peculiarities, whose analyses may broaden our perspective on the global dynamics of Moroccan postcolonial migration: for example, the status of northern Morocco and Venezuela as a hub for Spanish settlers, Venezuela’s post-1945 open-door policy toward European immigration, and the Judeo-Spanish backgrounds of immigrants from Morocco. In the absence of bilateral migration agreements between Morocco and Venezuela, examining Moroccan Jewish migration to the latter can also shed light on the prominent role of informal networks in shaping global migration from North Africa, and explain why Muslim Moroccans did not immigrate to Venezuela even as many were migrating elsewhere. A focus on grassroots histories of this sort may help advance the scholarship beyond the narratives of mass minority departure, labour migration, and integration that usually treat Morocco and other countries of emigration as homogeneous national units.
Jewish Culture and History, 2021
The intra-urban mobility of Jewish minorities in modernizing spaces in colonial North Africa and ... more The intra-urban mobility of Jewish minorities in modernizing spaces in colonial North Africa and beyond is often associated with a linear process of upward social and economic mobility and a related disengagement from the community's 'traditional' spaces, which are associated with pre-modern underdevelopment and cultural segregation. Drawing on spatial theories that pay specific attention to how urban space is experienced and imagined, this article offers a different perspective on intra-urban mobility among a modernizing Jewish society: as dialectical and contextual mental transitions between the oppositional experiences of 'modern-colonial' and 'traditionalcommunal' spaces that mutually shape modern Jewish life across their real and imagined townscapes. Focusing on one of the most vibrant sites of urbanization in North Africa-the international city of Tangier and nearby Tetuan, from the early 20 th century until the 1960s-I show how this dynamic transition was essential in shaping ethnic identity among a mobile Jewish middle class.
El Prezente, 2020
During the first two decades following the establishment of Israel, most of the Jews who lived i... more During the first two decades following the establishment of Israel, most of the Jews who lived in Muslim countries migrated to the new state. Accordingly, the research describes Jewish migration from Islamic countries in general and Morocco in particular, as part of the Zionist enterprise. Until now, the research literature has paid little attention to the nuanced interrelationship between migration to Israel and to other destinations in the Americas and Europe. The latter was deemed methodologically unrelated to the study of Zionism. This study focuses on the example of Spanish Morocco to expose the complex mutual affinities between the development of Zionism and processes of global migration as early as the mid-nineteenth century.
Ofir Abu, Tanya Zion-Waldoks (eds.), Through Israeli Eyes: Images, Representations, and Boundaries of the Jewish World, Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism, Sde Boker Campus 2020, 2020
An examination of the methods adopted by Israeli scholarship to study ethnic Jewish communities i... more An examination of the methods adopted by Israeli scholarship to study ethnic Jewish communities in Israel (Edoth) and its main foci—at least from the 1960s until the early 1990s—yields two main results: (a) the role of this scholarship in creating a homogeneous community-level consciousness of the past, nourished on images of an authentic “heritage” worthy of “preservation,” and (b) its function in creating physical spaces of encounter that allowed historical communities to converge in Israel on the basis of this singular consciousness.
In this article, I survey the research process that brought these images into being and trace its interrelations with ad hoc community encounters. I focus on the community of Jews of Spanish-Moroccan origin, consisting of first-generation immigrants who wished to distinguish themselves from the Arabic- and French-speaking Moroccan-Jewish communities during the period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. I show how they dispersed among seventy different localities in Israel, but nonetheless were brought together with the support and encouragement of Israeli research by means of academic lectures, ethnographic exhibitions and interactions, “roots tourism”(tiyulei shorashim) and other points of contact. In these frameworks, they fine-tuned the shared ethos that provided the scaffolding for the homogeneous image of their unique legacy.
The article enhances the criticism of the traditional model of the Israel-Diaspora dichotomy, which views both ends of the binary as entities differentiated ab initio on a physical-geographical basis. Nonetheless, rather than reducing the role of physical space, as some critical studies do, I examine the creation of spatial diasporic images in interaction with the physical spaces in which members of a historical diaspora re-encountere each other.
European Judaism, 2019
Homeland/diaspora dichotomies are emblematic of the Zionist philosophy and, as a consequence, als... more Homeland/diaspora dichotomies are emblematic of the Zionist philosophy and, as a consequence, also in the common critical annals of long-lasting diasporic ethnicities among Jewish immigrants to Israel. This observation applies in particular to Jewish immigrants from Islamic countries, whose Eastern pre-immigration cultures conceivably contrast with the Western character of the national-Zionist venture. In this article, I focus on MABAT, an Israel-based hometown association of Jews from the former Spanish-dominated area in northern Morocco which, from its founding in 1979, embraced the Zionist notion of homecoming. I show how they came to form their own singular network in Israel, while appealing to their former hometowns, as well as to their emerging centres of diffusion in the Americas and Europe, thereby challenging commonly held assumptions of Israel/diaspora, East/West dichotomies in the annals of Jewish ethnicities in Israel.
https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/european-judaism/52/2/ej520211.xml
Journal of Jewish Studies
This study is based on the analysis of some rare audio recordings from the first organized group ... more This study is based on the analysis of some rare audio recordings from the first organized group tour of olim (Jewish immigrants in Israel) from northern Morocco, to their former hometowns in Morocco. The tour was organized in 1987 by MABAT, the principal émigré association of northern Moroccans in Israel during the 1980s. I compare this
‘free-style’-oral audio source with related printed-edited narratives, written by MABAT before and after the tour, showing an evolving tension between two forms of narration:
the expected ethnic-oriented narration among individuals travelling together as MABAT members; and other ‘extra-ethnic’ narratives, encompassing contrasting spontaneous
recollections from their childhood in Morocco. The conclusions reveal the often organized nature of vocally expressed ethnic voices; and the dynamic social environments that such voices represent, both before and after aliyah (immigration). The study offers a methodological and theoretical contribution to scholarship on ethnicity formation in Israel.
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Journal articles by Aviad Moreno
The essay situates Kashani’s work within broader Sephardi-Mizrahi intellectual activism, tracing its roots to early Zionist marginalization and the establishment of Sephardi-led institutions like the World Sephardi Federation. It argues that The Jewish Communities in the Far East exemplify efforts to redefine Jewish historical discourse, fostering a more inclusive narrative that acknowledges the contributions and resilience of Mizrahi Jews both within and beyond Israel.
this article examines how members of the Spanish-speaking Moroccan–Jewish diaspora in Israel
recalled their habits of eating non-kosher food in Morocco. We explore how these memories emerged
in response to commonplace discourses that depict Moroccan Jews as a distinctly religious-traditional
ethnic group, untouched by European secular influences, and dichotomous with modern secular
cultures in Israel. Contrary to this image, members of the community whom we interviewed
highlighted a Jewish Moroccan life that was deeply connected to Spanish colonialism and the broader
Hispanic and Sephardi worlds. We focus specifically on the concept of selkear, a Haketia (Judeo-
Spanish) term meaning to let something go, make an exception, or turn a blind eye. Our analysis of
our participants’ memories provides a nuanced understanding of Jewish religiosity in the context of
colonialism and of how Mizrahi–Sephardi immigrants in Israel reclaimed their Judaism. Highlighting
the practice of eating non-kosher food is thus a strategy used to challenge dominant notions of rigid
religious commitment within the Sephardi diaspora and their interpretation in Israel.
Thus far, the desire for Moroccan Jews in Quebec to distill a cohesive “Sépharade” identity has largely been studied through a local lens. By analyzing a snapshot of Moroccan communal development, particularly through their own newspaper “Présence,” this study demonstrates the significance of the global context for this local process. What it meant for Moroccans to be Canadian and Quebecois developed in conversation with what it meant for them to be Sephardi and Israeli elsewhere. Correspondingly, this article points to Israel an important context for the study of MENA Jews beyond narratives of “mass immigration”. It also demonstrates that MENA diaspora networks are a key source for analyzing the construction of local “Sephardi” or “Mizrahi” identities. More generally, we propose bridging the scholarly partition by which MENA Jews have tended to be studied within or outside of Israel, with a particular dynamic of “departure” and integration towards Israel, which obscures important evolutions in community-building that transcend national borders.
I highlight how the causes of Jewish migration from Arab lands after 1948 have been treated in a similar fashion in both the academic and the popular discourses in Israel. To this end, I examine the enduring cultural, social, and political uses of the word ʻaliya and other canonical Zionist concepts including hithaslut (self-liquidation), yetziʼa (Exodus), ʻakira (uprooting), and—since the 1970s—plitim (refugees) and gerush (expulsion). I also look at the use of concepts borrowed from the European Jewish context, such as pogrom, ghetto, antisemitism, and Shoah. All of these terms tend to generalize and reduce the causes and particularities of Jewish migration from the Middle East and North African countries after 1948. Publicists and activists, as well as scholars, I argue, tend to disregard the contexts in which these concepts emerged, including the ways that they shaped events in advance of their actual occurrence. I then address the implications of this terminology for the current state of research. I show how generalizing semantics continue to restrict the analysis of certain forms of migration and their multi-faceted local, communal, biographical, and social determinants. This is the case even among prominent scholars who challenge the oversimplifications of the Zionist paradigm by using the universal category of hagira (migration) to describe Jewish immigration to Israel. By employing the term alongside the commonplace political lexicon, they inadvertently imbue it with polemical meaning.
I conclude with a call to expand critical research in Hebrew on post-1948 Jewish migration from the Middle East and North African countries outside of the Israeli context—a frame of reference that promises to elicit more nuanced characterizations of the causes and dilemmas of migration.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/beyond-the-nationstate-a-network-analysis-of-jewish-emigration-from-northern-%20morocco-to-israel/E0566B3901E8404BCC82EB40F0303256
ملخص: الهجرة اليهودية المغربية إلى أمريکا اللاتينية: أوضاع البحوث
والاتجاهات الجديدة
قرابة قرن قبل ”الهجرة الجماعية“ لليهود من المغرب خلال منتصف القرن
العشرين إلى إسرائيل وجهات أخرى في الغرب، انخرط اليهود المغاربة في الهجرة
لمسافات طويلة، ومعظمهم من الجزء الشمالي من البلاد الذي كان يهيمن عليه
الإسبان إلى أمريکا اللاتينية. وترک هؤلاء الرواد الأوائل بصمات على الثقافات
اليهودية المغربية الدائمة في هذا المحتوى، حتى في الأيام الحالية. وتفحص هذه
المقالة وضع البحوث المتعلقة بهذه الهجرة طويلة الأمد. وهنا أود الإشارة إلى
الاهتمام الکبير بين الباحثين الناطقين بالإسبانية والبرتغالية من حقول الدراسات
الأمريکية والايبيرية اللاتينية، من جهة؛ وإلى غياب واضح لهذه الدراسات في
العالم العربي وإسرائيل من جهة أخرى، وهذا فضلا عن الباحثين الذين ير زون ک
على الهجرة المغربية المعاصرة. ما أن تاريخ الهجرة المحلي لديه إسهامات محتملة ک
في مجالات الاهتمام المذ ورة أعلاه، وأنه يمکن أن تعمل على تفکيک الروايات ک
الشائعة عن رحيل اليهود الموجه سياسيا من الأراضي المسلمة العربية.
In this article, I survey the research process that brought these images into being and trace its interrelations with ad hoc community encounters. I focus on the community of Jews of Spanish-Moroccan origin, consisting of first-generation immigrants who wished to distinguish themselves from the Arabic- and French-speaking Moroccan-Jewish communities during the period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. I show how they dispersed among seventy different localities in Israel, but nonetheless were brought together with the support and encouragement of Israeli research by means of academic lectures, ethnographic exhibitions and interactions, “roots tourism”(tiyulei shorashim) and other points of contact. In these frameworks, they fine-tuned the shared ethos that provided the scaffolding for the homogeneous image of their unique legacy.
The article enhances the criticism of the traditional model of the Israel-Diaspora dichotomy, which views both ends of the binary as entities differentiated ab initio on a physical-geographical basis. Nonetheless, rather than reducing the role of physical space, as some critical studies do, I examine the creation of spatial diasporic images in interaction with the physical spaces in which members of a historical diaspora re-encountere each other.
https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/european-judaism/52/2/ej520211.xml
‘free-style’-oral audio source with related printed-edited narratives, written by MABAT before and after the tour, showing an evolving tension between two forms of narration:
the expected ethnic-oriented narration among individuals travelling together as MABAT members; and other ‘extra-ethnic’ narratives, encompassing contrasting spontaneous
recollections from their childhood in Morocco. The conclusions reveal the often organized nature of vocally expressed ethnic voices; and the dynamic social environments that such voices represent, both before and after aliyah (immigration). The study offers a methodological and theoretical contribution to scholarship on ethnicity formation in Israel.
The essay situates Kashani’s work within broader Sephardi-Mizrahi intellectual activism, tracing its roots to early Zionist marginalization and the establishment of Sephardi-led institutions like the World Sephardi Federation. It argues that The Jewish Communities in the Far East exemplify efforts to redefine Jewish historical discourse, fostering a more inclusive narrative that acknowledges the contributions and resilience of Mizrahi Jews both within and beyond Israel.
this article examines how members of the Spanish-speaking Moroccan–Jewish diaspora in Israel
recalled their habits of eating non-kosher food in Morocco. We explore how these memories emerged
in response to commonplace discourses that depict Moroccan Jews as a distinctly religious-traditional
ethnic group, untouched by European secular influences, and dichotomous with modern secular
cultures in Israel. Contrary to this image, members of the community whom we interviewed
highlighted a Jewish Moroccan life that was deeply connected to Spanish colonialism and the broader
Hispanic and Sephardi worlds. We focus specifically on the concept of selkear, a Haketia (Judeo-
Spanish) term meaning to let something go, make an exception, or turn a blind eye. Our analysis of
our participants’ memories provides a nuanced understanding of Jewish religiosity in the context of
colonialism and of how Mizrahi–Sephardi immigrants in Israel reclaimed their Judaism. Highlighting
the practice of eating non-kosher food is thus a strategy used to challenge dominant notions of rigid
religious commitment within the Sephardi diaspora and their interpretation in Israel.
Thus far, the desire for Moroccan Jews in Quebec to distill a cohesive “Sépharade” identity has largely been studied through a local lens. By analyzing a snapshot of Moroccan communal development, particularly through their own newspaper “Présence,” this study demonstrates the significance of the global context for this local process. What it meant for Moroccans to be Canadian and Quebecois developed in conversation with what it meant for them to be Sephardi and Israeli elsewhere. Correspondingly, this article points to Israel an important context for the study of MENA Jews beyond narratives of “mass immigration”. It also demonstrates that MENA diaspora networks are a key source for analyzing the construction of local “Sephardi” or “Mizrahi” identities. More generally, we propose bridging the scholarly partition by which MENA Jews have tended to be studied within or outside of Israel, with a particular dynamic of “departure” and integration towards Israel, which obscures important evolutions in community-building that transcend national borders.
I highlight how the causes of Jewish migration from Arab lands after 1948 have been treated in a similar fashion in both the academic and the popular discourses in Israel. To this end, I examine the enduring cultural, social, and political uses of the word ʻaliya and other canonical Zionist concepts including hithaslut (self-liquidation), yetziʼa (Exodus), ʻakira (uprooting), and—since the 1970s—plitim (refugees) and gerush (expulsion). I also look at the use of concepts borrowed from the European Jewish context, such as pogrom, ghetto, antisemitism, and Shoah. All of these terms tend to generalize and reduce the causes and particularities of Jewish migration from the Middle East and North African countries after 1948. Publicists and activists, as well as scholars, I argue, tend to disregard the contexts in which these concepts emerged, including the ways that they shaped events in advance of their actual occurrence. I then address the implications of this terminology for the current state of research. I show how generalizing semantics continue to restrict the analysis of certain forms of migration and their multi-faceted local, communal, biographical, and social determinants. This is the case even among prominent scholars who challenge the oversimplifications of the Zionist paradigm by using the universal category of hagira (migration) to describe Jewish immigration to Israel. By employing the term alongside the commonplace political lexicon, they inadvertently imbue it with polemical meaning.
I conclude with a call to expand critical research in Hebrew on post-1948 Jewish migration from the Middle East and North African countries outside of the Israeli context—a frame of reference that promises to elicit more nuanced characterizations of the causes and dilemmas of migration.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/beyond-the-nationstate-a-network-analysis-of-jewish-emigration-from-northern-%20morocco-to-israel/E0566B3901E8404BCC82EB40F0303256
ملخص: الهجرة اليهودية المغربية إلى أمريکا اللاتينية: أوضاع البحوث
والاتجاهات الجديدة
قرابة قرن قبل ”الهجرة الجماعية“ لليهود من المغرب خلال منتصف القرن
العشرين إلى إسرائيل وجهات أخرى في الغرب، انخرط اليهود المغاربة في الهجرة
لمسافات طويلة، ومعظمهم من الجزء الشمالي من البلاد الذي كان يهيمن عليه
الإسبان إلى أمريکا اللاتينية. وترک هؤلاء الرواد الأوائل بصمات على الثقافات
اليهودية المغربية الدائمة في هذا المحتوى، حتى في الأيام الحالية. وتفحص هذه
المقالة وضع البحوث المتعلقة بهذه الهجرة طويلة الأمد. وهنا أود الإشارة إلى
الاهتمام الکبير بين الباحثين الناطقين بالإسبانية والبرتغالية من حقول الدراسات
الأمريکية والايبيرية اللاتينية، من جهة؛ وإلى غياب واضح لهذه الدراسات في
العالم العربي وإسرائيل من جهة أخرى، وهذا فضلا عن الباحثين الذين ير زون ک
على الهجرة المغربية المعاصرة. ما أن تاريخ الهجرة المحلي لديه إسهامات محتملة ک
في مجالات الاهتمام المذ ورة أعلاه، وأنه يمکن أن تعمل على تفکيک الروايات ک
الشائعة عن رحيل اليهود الموجه سياسيا من الأراضي المسلمة العربية.
In this article, I survey the research process that brought these images into being and trace its interrelations with ad hoc community encounters. I focus on the community of Jews of Spanish-Moroccan origin, consisting of first-generation immigrants who wished to distinguish themselves from the Arabic- and French-speaking Moroccan-Jewish communities during the period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. I show how they dispersed among seventy different localities in Israel, but nonetheless were brought together with the support and encouragement of Israeli research by means of academic lectures, ethnographic exhibitions and interactions, “roots tourism”(tiyulei shorashim) and other points of contact. In these frameworks, they fine-tuned the shared ethos that provided the scaffolding for the homogeneous image of their unique legacy.
The article enhances the criticism of the traditional model of the Israel-Diaspora dichotomy, which views both ends of the binary as entities differentiated ab initio on a physical-geographical basis. Nonetheless, rather than reducing the role of physical space, as some critical studies do, I examine the creation of spatial diasporic images in interaction with the physical spaces in which members of a historical diaspora re-encountere each other.
https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/european-judaism/52/2/ej520211.xml
‘free-style’-oral audio source with related printed-edited narratives, written by MABAT before and after the tour, showing an evolving tension between two forms of narration:
the expected ethnic-oriented narration among individuals travelling together as MABAT members; and other ‘extra-ethnic’ narratives, encompassing contrasting spontaneous
recollections from their childhood in Morocco. The conclusions reveal the often organized nature of vocally expressed ethnic voices; and the dynamic social environments that such voices represent, both before and after aliyah (immigration). The study offers a methodological and theoretical contribution to scholarship on ethnicity formation in Israel.
Drawing on an array of communal sources from across this diaspora, Aviad Moreno explores how narratives of ancestry in Spain, Israel, Morocco, and several Latin American countries interconnected the diaspora, empowering its hubs across the globe throughout the twentieth century and beyond.
By investigating these mechanisms of diaspora formation in a small community that once shared the same space in Morocco,Entwined Homelands, Empowered Diasporas challenges national accounts of the broader Jewish diasporas and adds complexity to the annals of multilayered ethnic communities on the move.
لتشكيل المبنى الموصوف أعلاه في الخطاب البحثي في إسرائيل، يقدم بعضها منظورًا مختلفًا ومتجددًا عن العلاقات بين الأشكناز والشرقيين باعتبارهما فئات مظلة ثقافية واجتماعية لتحليل العلاقات الإثنية في إسرائيل، وتتحدى حتى تقسيم العمل التقليدي بين مختلف مجالات المعرفة في الأكاديمية الإسرائيلية. تتناول الدراسات الست المقدمة لاحقًا بناء منظور جديد حول هجرة اليهود في المنطقة وخارجها وتتحدى فهم ظروف هذه الهجرة فقط كسيرورة "انشقاق" على خلفية قيام دولة إسرائيل واستقلال الدول العربية في منتصف القرن العشرين، بالإضافة إلى تحديها للإطار الزمني الذي خصِّص لها في البحث الإسرائيلي وتناول تنوع هويات يهود البلدان الإسلامية. تطرح الدراسات السبع التي تختم هذه المجموعة أسئلة عن الحدود التاريخية والجغرافية للمنطقة التي يطلق عليها اسم "الشرق الأوسط"، أو "البلدان الإسلامية"، أو "البلدان الشرقية"، كموضوع فرعي إقليمي ضمن التاريخ العام للشعب اليهودي في العصر الحديث أو باعتباره دراسة الأقليات في دراسات الشرق الأوسط.
يرغب جميع كاتبي المقالات أعلاه بتحدي التقسيمات الشائعة التي تعكس تبلور البحث في هذا المجال، ويسعى بعضهم لفهم نشوئها بشكل أوضح. يحدث ذلك في بعض الحالات بمقالات كتبها مؤرخون مخضرمون مثل يوسف يوفال توفى. يعيد هؤلاء تقييم أعمالهم المبكرة أو يكتبون بروح جديدة تتناسب مع الموضوع العام أمامنا.
تهدف هذه المجموعة لزيادة الوعي لعواقب الانفصال. نقدم وجهة نظر متزامنة وغير متزامنة عن تاريخهم من خلال بحوث جديدة في مختلف مراكز الزمان والمكان في المائتي عام الماضية. إلى جانب غالبية المؤرخين المشاركين في هذا المشروع، تضم المجموعة باحث فولكلور، علماء أنثروبولوجيا واثنين من علماء الاجتماع بالإضافة إلى باحث أدبي. يسلط هؤلاء الضوء من وجهة نظرهم على المبنى والمشاكل الكامنة فيه.
شارك في هذه المجموعة باحثون من عوالم معرفية مختلفة، يتخذون مناهج مصطلحية مختلفة لفهم عمليات التحضّر والهجرة والقومية.
يختتم تمير كركسون المجموعة بتساؤل عن التغيير والاستمرارية مشيرًا إلى الحساسية المتزايدة لدى المؤرخين في المجال للأسئلة المكانية التي تكسر من داخلها المبنى الخاضع لمنطق تاريخي زمني خالص. هذه مراجعة مهمة لتغيير مفاهيمي يوضح في الوقت نفسه، وبشكل غير مباشر، استمرارية المشكلة الكبرى التي تشير إليها مجموعة المقالات هذه. دون أن يتطرق كركسون إلى هذه القضية، توضح مراجعته أن المؤرخين الذين تناولوا المكان وضعوا حدود أبحاثهم في دراسة "الماضي" في "الشتات" - في تفكيك التاريخ المحلي - لكن كونهم مؤرخين هم بالكاد "يتزلقون" لفهم نقطة التحول في فهم الواقع الإثني في إسرائيل، فهو حيّز مخصص لعلماء الاجتماع. في الشرق الأوسط العثماني. يميز بن-نإي بين نوع موحد من "يهود الحكم"، وهو ما يذكرنا بالأطر التي مكنت ارتفاع وسقوط نظيرته السريع في أوروبا المركنتيلية - "يهود البلاط"، ويركز على اليهود في بلاط السلطان الذين كانوا جزءًا من المجتمع اليهودي وتدخلوا بالسياسة المجتمعية عن بعد، ولكن في نفس الوقت كان أسلوب حياتهم وثقافتهم أكثر شبهاً بالنخبة العثمانية المسلمة.
Both individually and collectively, the twenty-three articles that comprise this rich collection offer new insights on the formation of inter-ethnic relations in Israel. Some authors reexamine Jewish migration from and within Middle- Eastern and North-African countries, while others broaden the geo-cultural borders that structure the Jewish experience in modern Muslim contexts. What emerges is a historical narrative inclusive of Mizrahi Jewry and a much broader framing of the topic within the academic realm of Israel studies and beyond.
With inquiries undertaken by veterans in the field complemented by the gaze of a subsequent generation of scholars, this edited volume seeks to caps a recent growing interest in the vicissitudes of Jews from Muslim countries, a diversification of research trends, and especially multi-ethnic group formations in Muslim countries that have enabled Jews to develop a wide range of identities.
This book is dedicated to Yaron Tsur, who pioneered the straddling of the study of the history of Jews from Muslim countries with that of Mizrahim in Israel. This volume fittingly outlines the path Tsur has trail blazed and steers it yet further.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Aviad Moreno and Noah S. Gerber
Studying Jews from Muslim Countries in Israel – Developments
and Splits Divergences 7
Part I: Inter-ethnic Relations in Israel
Harvey E. Goldberg and orit Abuhav
The Contribution of Anthropological Fieldwork to the Long
History of Jews in Muslim Countries 43
Nissim Leon and Uri Cohen
From the Mizrahi Middle Class Rehabilitated to the Israeli Center Renewed: Rethinking Center and Periphery 67
Hila Shalem Baharad
Ethnic Identity and Social Structure in the Ma’abarot 88 Daniel J. Schroeter
Moroccan Jews and the Idea of Moroccan Exceptionality in Israel 105
Amos Noy
When Mizrahim were ‘Modern’: Non-Orientalist Representations
of Mizrahi Jews in Israel during the 1950s and 1960s 127
Malka Katz
Religious Zionism and Mizrahi Immigrants, between Positive
and Negative Labeling: A Case Study from the First Years
of the State 145
Yuval Haruvi
The ‘Long History’ of Sephardi Rabbinic Moderation in Israeli
Academic and Public Discourse 165
Avi Picard
Colonialism, Nationalism and an in deep Perspective: Insights
into Israel Ethnicity in the Wake of Carnival Fears 186
Almog Behar
Between Jewish Literatures in the East and Mizrahi Literature
in Israel: Continuities and Ruptures during the last Two Centuries 211
Abstracts v
vi Abstracts
Part II: Migration as a Border Line?
Gur Alroey
Unknown Immigrants: The Third and Fourth Aliyot in the
Long History of Jews from Muslim Countries 235
Bat-Zion Eraqi Klorman
Jewish Emigration from the South Arabian Peninsula:
The Broader Context of the 19th and 20th Centuries 256
Menashe Anzi
The Yemenite Diaspora in Palestine and its Impact on the
‘Dor De’a’ Movement in Yemen 284
Zvi Zohar
Continuity and Renewal: Rabbi Moshe Maimon between Gabes
and ‘Afula – City of Jezreel’ 301
Yosef Yuval Tobi
‘Nationalist-Zionist’ Historiography’s Neglect of Jewish Literature
in Northern Tunisia: Dr. Saül Chemla’s Book as a Case Study 367
Yoram Bilu
Migrants, Saints and Wandering Traditions: Mobility and
Transformations in the Cult of the Saints of Moroccan Jews
in Israel 345
Part III: Regional and Superregional History
Ethan B. Katz
Who Were the Jewish Underground of Algiers? A Sectorial
Analysis of the Paths to Resistance 367
Jessica M. Marglin
Jewish Law across the Mediterranean: The Last Will and
Testament of Caid Nissim Shamama, 1873-1883 401
David Guedj
‘And so Our Culture and Language Spreads throughout all the Communities’: The Hebrew Network in Morocco during the
First Half of the 20th Century 419
Tsivia Tobi
The Italian Component in Spoken and Written Tunisian
Judeo-Arabic: A Colonial Tradition 439
Yaron Harel
‘Harbinger of Zionism?’ Alliance Israélite Universelle and
Jewish-Religious Nationalism in the Vision of Rabbi Eliyahu Hazan 450
Guy Bracha
East versus West in the Writing of Eliyahu Hai Sasson, Aleppo 1870 467
Yaron Ben-Naeh
Court Jews in the Ottoman Empire 486
Tamir Karkason
Spatial Sensitivities in the Israeli Historiography of Jews from
Muslim Countries 512
Aviad Moreno and Noah S. Gerber
In lieu of an Epilogue: Yaron Tsur’s Personal and Professional
Impressions 529
List of Participants 550 English Abstracts viii
Abstracts vii
היהודית בטנג'יר הוא טקסט פרי עטם של כמה מהבולטים
שבסוכני מפעל ההתערבות האירופית במרוקו. סוכנים אלה
הפכו למנהיגיה החדשים של הקהילה היהודית בטנג'יר על רקע
הנוכחות האירופית הגוברת בעיר. הפרוטוקולים מאפשרים
הצצה על ראשית תהליך ההתערבות האירופית באורחות
חייהם של יהודי ארצות המזרח במהלך המאה התשע עשרה.
הם מתמקדים בעיר הנמל טנג'יר שבצפון מרוקו, עיר שהייתה
אחד האזורים המרכזיים שבהם התרחש התהליך אך טרם זכתה
למחקר מעמיק בהקשר זה. למחקר השלכות מתודולוגיות
והיסטוריוגרפיות חשובות על השיח המחקרי הקיים, שנוטה
לתאר מפגש בין שתי תרבויות מוּבְנות: מערב מייצר ומנגד
מזרח מקבל או מגיב. 'אירופה ממרוקו' מראה כי חברי החונטה
המקומית, מתוך שאיפותיהם הפוליטיות, פיתחו בפרוטוקולים
שיח פרו־אירופי שיזם וקידם התערבות אירופית בקהילה. כך
למשל הם קידמו את פתיחת בתי הספר הראשונים של כי"ח
בעולם. המחקר אף מציע כי הפרוטוקולים אינם מקור היסטורי
שתיעד בדיעבד תהליכי מודרניזציה אירופית בקהילה היהודית,
אלא כלי מעשי שבעצבו את דמותה של אירופה על אדמת
מרוקו תרם להתפתחות תהליכי מודרניזציה אירופית, ואִפשר
להם להפוך למציאות היסטורית.
local de patrones globales de protesta y resistencia. Sin embargo, quienes
aceptan esta conceptualización pasan por alto el efecto opuesto que
tuvo en la diáspora judía la lucha emprendida por activistas provenientes
de tierras islámicas por la igualdad social y la representación política
en Israel. Esta lucha contribuyó a conformar la autopercepción de las
comunidades sefardíes de Israel, Europa Occidental y Estados Unidos
como una diáspora global diferenciada que se comprometía a mejorar
la situación de aquellos correligionarios procedentes de tierras islámicas
en Israel y en todo el mundo.
La Liberté/El Horria came out in a dual edition: in French (La Liberté) and in Judeo-Arabic (El Horria). Each edition reached out to a somewhat different target audience and presented different content accordingly. The two-page-long El Horria reproduced many news items that it had gathered from Jewish newspapers worldwide, including some from Hebrew presses in Palestine that were presented to readers without translation. This Judeo-Arabic edition was seemingly aimed at migrants from the interior of Morocco who flooded Tangier, Morocco’s main port city, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was also circulated in additional major urban centers in Morocco, however. The French edition focused on domestic events in Tangier and served as a platform for intellectual debates among notables of the community at home and abroad. Many of its writers were associated with the global network of the French Alliance Israélite Universelle. Among these writers were Haim Toledano, who moved to New York (often using Lucius—Latin for light—as his pen name), and Samuel-Daniel Levy, who became a prominent member of the pioneer Zionist organization in Casablanca after his return from Argentina in 1913.
מוזיאון ״אנו״ והאמריקניזציה של ההיסטוריה היהודית אביעד מורנו ואריה דובנוב • הזמן הזה
This month’s SIM shines the spotlight on a new path in Sephardi/Mizrahi historiography in an interview with Dr. Aviad Moreno from the Azrieli Center for Israel Studies at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Dr. Moreno recently co-edited a Hebrew-language volume of essays, The Long History of the Mizrahim: New Directions in the Study of the Jews of Islamic Lands, that explores how Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews experienced their own lives and migrations to Israel, free from larger narratives. The approach might sound natural, perhaps even routine, but it’s relatively new to the scholarly scene, and it promises to deepen and expand our understanding of Greater Sephardi/Mizrahi history.
The past two months of Sephardi Ideas Monthly (SIM) featured Dr. Aviad Moreno’s research into 19th-20th century migrations of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Jews to various South American destinations. December’s SIM highlighted, “What Do You Know? Jewish Migration to Latin America,” Moreno’s piece on the global movement of Greater Sephardi Jews to Brazil and Argentina, while SIM’s January issue featured, “Globalizing the ‘Mizrahi Revival,’” an introduction to the Moroccan Jewish immigration to Venezuela.
This month, SIM expands our vision and understanding of the past two-hundred years of MENA migrations with an original interview with Moreno. Focusing on the December 2019 conference that he initiated and organized in Israel, “New Directions: Sephardi-Mizrahi Migrations in Global Contexts,” Moreno clarifies why it’s so important to move beyond the conventional paradigms for viewing the migrations of MENA Jews, shares his personal connection to the topic, and explains the relevance of hosting the conference in Israel’s south, only a few meters from David Ben Gurion’s grave. SIM thanks Dr. Moreno for setting aside the time to share his ideas and research with our readers.
were the main factors shaping the nature of their emigration, and patterns of assimilation into new countries. As a consequence, such politically-oriented narratives have left only marginal space to explore the role of social developments and the dynamic nature of identity in the course of these emigration and assimilation processes. Moreover, such narratives focused extensively on
aliyah (immigration to Israel), following the founding of the State of Israel (1948), thereby pushing aside other, earlier and parallel emigration phenomena among Jews from Arab and Muslim countries. This dissertation challenges these and other concepts that still dominate much of the discourse on the emigration of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries in the mid-twentieth century. It proposes an alternative narrative that would leave more space for research into the dynamic and evolutionary nature of national and ethnic identities; and thereby, to the role played by individual migrants in the course of emigration. Throughout the dissertation, prominent dichotomist and rigid concepts such as
“olim”(immigrants to Israel) versus “emigrants”, “Zionists” versus “non -Zionists”, “Israeli” versus “Moroccan, or “traditional” versus “modern” take on a dynamic shape
in the course of ever-changing human interactions, rather than serve as stable categories of analysis. I focus on the mass migration of Jews from northern Morocco to Venezuela and Israel, between 1860 and 2010, suggesting that: a) social networks generated identities that waxed and waned, within the daily routines of potential migrants and migrants, as they moved in space interacting with others; and that, b) over time, such dynamic networks evolved to cause, self-sustaining processes of emigration and assimilations among large Jewish populations from northern Morocco. By focusing on the immigration of northern Moroccan Jews to Latin America from the mid-nineteenth century - alongside the more typical research on aliyah from the mid-twentieth century - I expand the geographical frame of analysis, which focused more narrowly on aliyah as the only major, ethnicity-based migratory option open to Jews from Arab and Muslim countries. The narrative in my dissertation begins with the evolution of local (Judeo-Spanish) ethnic identities among northern Moroccan Jews in the 1940s and 1950s. I suggest that such evolution took shape in reaction to intensifying encounters among Jews and non-Jews in light of Spanish-dominated immigration into northern Morocco. I then show how the concept of ethnic migration among Jews in northern Morocco was also gradually ingrained into their ethnic identity; beginning in the mid-nineteenth
century, due to their “century -old” migration to Latin America. There, Moroccan émigré communities evolved to accommodate ongoing immigration of Jews into new non-Jewish environments. These ethnic communities, in turn, came to shape the nature of migratory decisions among those remaining in their country of origin. I later recount how Israeli and Moroccan statehood (in 1948 and 1956, respectively) added complexity to the already existing migration decision-making matrix among Jews in northern Morocco, rather than shaped it directly. I examine the role of networks of pioneer Zionists, potential olim, against the backdrop of other emigration, or non-migration, alternatives available to them. I then show how, following Moroccan independence, similar ethnic networks gradually turned Venezuela (of all countries in the Americas and Europe) into an attractive migratory haven for northern Moroccan Jews, some of them Zionist activists that could have chosen aliyah. I conclude this section of the dissertation by analyzing how evolving aliyah networks in the 1960s, changed practices of migration decision-making in the region. These networks would shape the aliyah of many whom, a decade earlier, had not been attracted by this migratory option. In the last part of the dissertation, I study the reconstruction of Moroccan identities in two different post-migration settings. First, I focus on the evolution of Moroccan identities in Venezuela, where, in the absence of non-Jewish immigrants from Morocco- as in the case of Moroccan aliyah to Israel- Moroccan Jews constituted the sole immigrant population from Morocco. I show how, under such circumstances in Venezuela, ad hoc ethnic networks came to solidify a collective Moroccan identity among Jewish immigrants, which, in retrospect, created a sense of alienation from the Moroccan nation-state. Such alienation, as I claim, was strongly dependent on forms of recollection in ethnic social contexts. I then discuss the group’s post-aliyah era, in which olim from northern Morocco scattered throughout Israel as they resettled in this country. I reveal how dynamic ethnic voices waxed and waned in individuals’ daily lives. Moreover, I show how ethnic networks generated such aspirations on the part of olim to forge a unique and differentiated northern Moroccan identity; mostly against the backdrop of a Mizrahi-Moroccan identity that began emerging in Israel in the 1980s. This dissertation therefore builds toward a long-term, geographically broad narrative, according to which human movement in space and ethnic and national identities, evolve reciprocally. Seen from this perspective, migrations of Jews from northern Morocco, and their patterns of assimilation into new countries, were not direct outcomes of their fixed ethnic or national identities and aspirations. Rather, they depended on dynamic and evolving networks. I thus, suggest that the emigration of Jews from northern Morocco is a case that may contribute to the de-generalization of current perceptions in the history of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, including their migratory journeys. The methodology stems from my approach toward identity formation and migratory movements, and the attempt to capture their dynamic interrelationships as they evolve over time. It is based on the ethno-historical reading of sources: an interdisciplinary combination of oral history, ethnography and archival work. The sources include in-depth interviews, statistical records, historical videos and audio contents, periodicals, personal and official correspondence, and websites and blogs.
Our paper examines the incorporation of first and second generations of Syrian Jews migrants into the Argentine economy between the years 1946 and 1955. This period was marked by the government of Juan Domingo Peron, which introduced novel “popular politics”, industrialization and a fairer distribution of the national income.
These characteristics meant a significant transformation in the Argentine economy, given the new role played by the State in supporting entrepreneurs and industrial development and in improving the welfare of the working-class.
The latter, who had struggled to make ends meet in previous decades, could now afford casual clothing, radios, electro-domestics and a whole new range of goods and low-cost items. The social and political developments as well as economic growth that allowed the general population to become consumers of industrial goods are crucial to understanding the insertion of Syrian Jews in the different and always developing branches of production, distribution, and selling of commodities.
By focusing on major entrepreneurial trajectories as the Teubal family, as well as on small- and medium-size manufacturers and merchants, this paper addresses the ways these agents spotted business growth; the role played by family and ethnic networks in commercial relationships and, last but not least, the way entrepreneurial logic was intertwined with cultural patterns and community duties.
Our ethnography is based on interviews, official documents, analysis of the national and community press, autobiographies and on the personal testimonies of entrepreneurs and their relatives.
"Between Colonial, National and Ethnic Networks" seeks to contribute to these ongoing efforts, by exploring the evolution of Jewish intellectual writing and activities as addressed above, from a dynamic, social networks perspective. We wish to discuss the function of dynamic social networks in the creation of discourses and ideas that evolved as intellectuals and writers across the Mediterranean engaged with each other's work; often while in transit, shaping, transforming and reshaping their intellectual identities, over time and throughout their day-to-day social interactions. Special attention will be given to certain individuals who "traveled" between reference groups, as suggested above, concurrently sharing, absorbing and generating new realms of knowledge, by means of editing, as well as authoring a steady stream of monographs, anthologies and periodicals.
With the participation of: Aviad Moreno (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) and Adriana Brodsky (St. Mary’s College of Maryland); Coordination: Cynthia Gabbay (Humboldt Universität Berlin). The event will take place in English Pre-sign in following the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYod--qqDstH9xwMvws3aYL3AL99Oc4iG_6
ABERTURA: Suzana Chwarts, Elias Salgado, Regina Igel
FALAS:
1. Breve panorama dos estados sobre jadeas sefarditas e orientáis no Brasil Ma. Adriana Abuhab Bialski
2. A escrita das mulheres é diferente?
Nancy Rozenchan
3.Entre os estudos judaicos norte-africanos e latino-americanos: urna discussáo com o autor de “Entwined Homelands, Empowered Diasporas” Regina Igel em conversa com Aviad Moreno