#such is the state of mizrahi jewish history research

[rodeodeparis]

having jewish family from n iraq general area is very strange. n iraq area is a bit of an outlier from its neighbors people group-wise because it’s often kurd = muslim; arab = muslim also; assyrian = christian (or at least an overwhelming amount of christians are assyrian); yazidi = yazidi; but jews are called ‘kurdish jews’? they probably just got that label because they were in the area (some have ‘tribal’ last names if they were from the literal towns the tribes got their names from), but for example syrian jews who lived in aleppo/damascus and spoke arabic are called syrian jews, some people use “arab jew” but afaik most don’t 

in that context “kurdish jew” seems a little...misleading? “assyrian jew�� is too, they were both religious minorities and spoke aramaic but jews have a separate history (and due to current politics it feels insensitive but idk.) and both of those can be used by israeli govt stuff for propaganda purposes, so looking into sources for this is nigh impossible. tbh i prefer ‘mesopotamian jew’

[girlactionfigure]

@abbasez

ISRAEL IS NOT A RACIST STATE: Unlike Gaza, every Israeli citizen has equal rights regardless of race, religion or gender or sexual orientation (so you won't get tossed off a roof)

THERE IS NO APARTHEID: Unlike citizens of Gaza, Israelis of all races can live anywhere, marry anyone, run for office, vote, assemble freely, pursue any occupation and worship freely.

JEWS ARE NOT WHITE: Over 62% of Israeli citizens are of Mizrahi, Arab, Ethiopian, North African or Mixed descent. 

JEWS ARE NOT COLONIZERS: Genetic, historical, religious and archaeological evidence prove that Israel is the ancestral home of the Jewish people – making our return to the land the ultimate act of “decolonization.”

JEWS DIDN’T STEAL THE LAND: In ‘48, the UN Partition divided the land into two states: one for Jews and one for Arabs. Israel accepted the plan. The Arab states didn’t and declared war.

ISRAEL DIDN’T START THE WAR: There was a ceasefire on Oct 6th when Hamas murdered, mutilated, raped and kidnapped over 1,500 Israelis. Simply put, Hamas will not stop until Israel no longer exists.

THERE IS NO GENOCIDE: “Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history – above and beyond what international law requires, and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” - John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point (See article in bio)

THERE IS NO FAMINE: Columbia Professors Awi Federgruen & Ran Kivetz have analyzed available data and conducted research, noting that “the food supply entering Gaza is more than sufficient to feed all 2.2 million Gazans according to what is considered a normal diet in North America. They further argue that the International Criminal Court and UN have joined Hamas in blaming Israel for a “famine that never was, hoping to stop the war in Gaza.” 

[5oclockcoffees]

AFTER MY FIRST LECTURE on the history of the Jews of Salonica at a Conservative synagogue near Princeton, a perfect stranger with a typical Ashkenazi surname sent me a package. In a handwritten letter, he expressed his appreciation for my “wonderful talk,” but concluded: “I hope that the Ashkenazi strands here can enrich the Sephardic side too.” That “here” referred to the book that accompanied the letter: Sander Gilman’s classic 1986 study, Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews. Did my first piece of fan mail insinuate that the history of the underrepresented Sephardic “side” was impoverished and could not stand on its own? Or that my de-emphasis of the Ashkenazi side amounted to self-hatred? I was so put off by the message surrounding the “gift,” that it took me years to crack the book open. That piece of mail also reminded me why I pursued the academic study of Sephardic history in the first place: it was, in part, a form of self-defense. I wanted to arm myself with an understanding of the world from which my family came — my grandfather, whom I called nono in Ladino, was born in Salonica, once home to a major Jewish community in the Ottoman Empire and today the second-biggest city in Greece — and also to comprehend and combat the kind of sly prejudice I encountered in Jewish spaces. I had already grown accustomed to Jews — principally white, Ashkenazi Jews — using me as a screen on which to project their own discomfort and ignorance about Jews whose stories they do not know or cannot fathom. At a community-wide Holocaust commemoration in college, one of the organizers insinuated that I had made up the fact that my Salonican-born great-uncle and his family had perished in Auschwitz, since she was a survivor herself and had never met a Jew from Greece. In another instance, neighbors my own age, who are now rabbis in the Conservative and modern Orthodox movements, knocked on my door one Shabbat morning and asked if I would serve as their “shabbos goy”: “Because, you know, you’re Sephardic . . .” During one of my first visits to a Jewish research institution in New York, a senior colleague found out that my mother is Ashkenazi and retorted: “Aha! That explains your intellectual curiosity,” as if to say that if I were fully Sephardic, I would have no business engaging in scholarly pursuits. A Jewish acquaintance, a baby boomer active in the Reform movement, recently learned of my family background and jokingly, or so it seemed, described “mixed breeds” like me with the derogatory term “mulattos.” A peer of my own generation invoked the “one-drop rule” — another “joke” — referencing the legal system in parts of the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries that disallowed anyone with a single black ancestor from “passing” as white in the eyes of the law. He referred to my son as an “octoroon,” a term used in slave societies to refer to those with one-eighth African and seven-eighths European ancestry. There is a Ladino refran, or proverb, that goes: Deshame entrar, me azere lugar (“Let me enter and I will make a place for myself”). I used to think that Sephardic Jews — like many “other��� Jews — just needed to have the door opened by the gatekeepers, especially the white Ashkenazi Jewish establishment, in order for their fate to improve. But a seat at the table is not enough for today’s generation. Sephardic identity and culture have largely been swallowed up by Ashkenaziness, by whiteness, by erasures so complete that many of my peers no longer possess a consciousness of what it could mean to be Sephardic today. Those sublimated histories must be reclaimed and those submerged stories raised up. Confronting the deep-seated and disturbing history of intra-Jewish prejudice is a prerequisite for the empowerment of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews — and Jews of color — in Jewish spaces, and for a reckoning with the place of most Jews as targets of, and willing and unwilling accomplices to, the structures of white supremacy. Our white supremacy problem, by Devin E. Naar.

[drmaqazi]

JEWISH TERRORISM & GENOCIDE OF PALESTINIANS IN THE OCCUPIED HOLY HAND SINCE 1948, AND STILL CONTINUING BY KILLING OF HELPLESS & INNOCENT CHILDREN, WOMEN AND OLD PEOPLE UNDER THE EYES OF IMPOTENT WORLD LEADERS, GOD FORBID, AMEN.

July 3, 2014, Rabbi Noam Perel, Head of the largest Orthodox Judaic youth movement, B’nei Akiva, calls for indiscriminate murder:

July 4, 2014, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, Minsiter for Strategic Threats Moshe Ya’alon, and Chief of Israeli Central Command Major General Avi Mizrahi honor the racist Rabbi Dov Lior who endorsed the manual on killing gentiles, Torat Hamalech.

July 7, 2014, Israelis abducted and burned alive a teenager, Mohammed Abu Khedair, then ferociously beat his American cousin, Tariq Khdeir, visiting on holiday.

Warning: The videos are graphic.

After his cousin was abducted and burned alive by Israelis, Tariq Khdeir, an American, was ferociously beaten.

July 1, 2014, Jewish “Defense” League provokes French opponents of Israeli genocide in Gaza:

http://mauricepinay.blogspot.com/2014/07/video-of-jdl-provocateurcowards-at.html

July 14, 2014, Israeli Member of the Knesset for the “Jewish Home” party (and Justice  Minister since 2015) Ayelet Shaked stated that all Palestinian mothers should be killed so they do not raise any more “little snakes.”

“On Monday [June 30, 2014] Shaked quoted this on her Facebook page: ‘Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.’

‘They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists,’ said Shaked. Standing behind the operations on Gaza, ‘they are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands. This also applies to the mothers of the dead terrorists,’ Shaked added.

A day before Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khudair was kidnapped and burned alive [above] allegedly by six Israeli Jewish youths, Shaked published on Facebook a call for genocide of the Palestinians

Try watching this video on www.youtube.com,

[beta-lactam-allergic]

Try to read some history books @puppyalice. Jews are native to the Levant. That's not just Jewish sources saying this. We have the writings of the Ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Ancient Greeks & the Roman Empire all confirming Jewish indigeneity to the region. We got the archaeological record confirming these historical accounts. We have genetic testing confirming that the Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrahi & other Jewish groups share common ancestors in the Levant around 3,000 years ago, right at the time the Kingdoms of Yisrael & Yehuda existed according to our written records & archaeology. Half of modern Kohanim share the same Y-Chromosome ancestor at this time, though whether this genetic ancestor is the Aaron Kohan mentioned in the Torah or the later Hilkiah Kohan (who we have archaeological confirmation was definitely a real person, making him & Nathan-melech the first non-royal Jews we can prove archaeologically), we can't know at this point of time.

In contrast Arabs moved up from the Arabian Peninsula. The first ones to come in were Bedouin, probable descendants of the Nabataean Arabs who moved into modern day Jordan sometime after the Moabites disappear from the record. Other Arab tribes move in during the 300s-500s at the invitation of the Byzantines. They don't become a politically dominant force until the Islamic invasions & don't become a majority of the population until sometime after the Crusades. Arabs are the colonial group in this instance, not Jews. As @eye-in-hand has already told you @puppyalice, Zionism is Land-Back & while I don't like Netanyahu or his government for other reasons (that's a whole different post because I don't want to make this super long), I am not going to judge him for using Israel's right to defend itself from attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis & Iran after October 7th.

And Israel hasn't sought any such mass deportation of Arab populations the way you seek mass Jewish deportation. 20% of Israel's population are Arab & are equal citizens under the law. Yes, racism exists, but it isn't "apartheid". Arab Israelis serve in all sectors of Israeli society, including as doctors, police & the Supreme Court. Most of the Arabs who fled in their so-called "Nakba" left at the official direction of Arab League militaries, only a minority fled from Israeli actions (which wasn't state policy). And those prescribed to the Nakba narrative always fail to mention that just as 700,000 Arabs left Israel, 900,000 Mizrahi fled MENA nations. And unlike the self-inflicted Nakba, the Mizrahi didn't do this to themselves. They were kicked out of their homes & fled to the only place that would take them, the newly victorious Israel.

By the way, this 20% number is a figure that excludes the aforementioned Mizrahi who are seen as Jews by themselves, the state of Israel & every single Diasporic Jewish community but are often considered by some dumb Anglo-Celts who don't want to admit that they waddled in to this debate with no real research to be "Arab". Mizrahi are half the total Israeli population & a majority of its Jewish population.

btw if you accuse Jews who don't want the total destruction of Israel of "wanting an ethnostate" while also advocating for the mass exodus of Israelis to Europe to create a united Palestinian nation...you support an ethnostate.

[thrillorarc]

misconceptions regarding judaism and jewish characters that i’ve seen perpetuated through the rpc over the years:

“ judiasm , as an organized religion doesn’t allow you to ask questions ” this is fundamentally antithetical to judaism. we as jews are encouraged to ask questions and interpret our texts. in fact , one of our most important texts is literally a bunch of old rabbis arguing about everything in the torah. while different sects of judaism may interpret and follow the word of g-d strictly , there isn’t one right way to be jewish and by enforcing the fundamentalism of christianity onto jewish characters , you are showing you completely misunderstand the ethn-oreligion of your muse. ALSO !!! AND THIS IS IMPORTANT !!! RELIGIONS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE !! BECAUSE YOU GREW UP IN ONE RELIGION DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN SPEAK FOR THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF FOLKS FROM OTHER RELIGIONS !!!

“ lilith is a pagan figures and therefore okay for non-jews to write ” lilith is actually specific to judaism , which is a closed practice. it’s one thing to write a character who is jewish while not being jewish , we all write characters whose identities don’t align perfectly ( or at all ) with our own , but lilith is a figure in judaism and therefore is not up for the interpretation of gentiles. period.

“ all jews are ashkenazim ” whether or not you know what ashkenazi is , this is a super common theme i’ve found throughout the rpc. judaism is a diasporic ethno-religion and as such different communities of jews have grown and cultivated their own unique cultural practices. for example , not every jew has a connection to yiddish. ladino and judeo-arabic are two other languages that immediately come to mind for me personally , but there are so many. this also affects traditions during holidays , food , and even styles of worship. diasporic judaism is beautiful , and as a mizrahi jew , i implore you all to do your research. additionally , as a diasporic group , we are also racially diverse and have communities all over the world.

“ judaism is a sector of christianity ” i wish i was lying , i really do. i wish this isn’t something i’ve seen and had to correct when folks were writing jewish characters. alas... here we are. firstly , judaism pre-dates christianity. secondly , christianity has tried to eradicate judaism for nearly as long as it has existed through both cultural and literal genocide. to believe judaism is a branch of christianity is a form of violence. we also aren’t “ basically christians who just don’t believe jesus was the messiah. ” our interpretations of our texts and our traditions surrounding them , are all unique to us. the “ same ” line in the torah and the old testament are always going to be different due to the vastly different lens through which judaism and christianity function. also , if i see one more person relate a crucifix to a jewish character , i’m going to mcfreakin lose it.

“ so-and-so is a canonically jewish character who i write as gay , so i’m going to make their parents violently homophobic to them ” i’m not here to invalidate the lived experiences of any of my fellow jews who have had to deal with homophobia at home. i know it happens , we live in a violently homophobic society and my heart aches for you. but the truth is , jewish communities outside of the ultra-orthedox are historically more progressive towards gay members of their community than christians. starting in the 1960s , jewish organizations began to campaign for the decriminalization of homosexuality in the united states. when gentiles write this trope of homophobic parents , it is almost always coming through a lens of christianity. you say “ah , this character has a Religion , this must mean that Religion hates gays. ” to make this assumption is supersessionist and antisemitic. again , this isn’t to say this doesn’t happen , but i’ve seen this enough for it to be an alarming trend that doesn’t align with the actual history of jewish support for the LGBTQIA+ community.

“ at this point , christmas is a secular holiday so it’s okay if my jewish character celebrates it. ” there are jews who love christmas. there are jews who come from interfaith homes and celebrate christmas every year. there are also jews who hate christmas. christmas can be an isolating time for some jews , a time where we feel excluded or dismissed. there’s an excellent quote that goes “ two jews , three opinions. ” we tend to argue about everything , even -- or especially , amongst ourselves. that being said , christmas is a christian holiday. be cautious and mindful of the way you have your character engage with it. even if i personally despise christmas , i don’t speak for all jews. just be mindful. also , as is a common theme here , don’t just put chanukah under the umbrella of christmas if you decide during the “holiday season” to shift towards it. make an effort to learn about it as a holiday separate from christmas and not just the “jewish equivilant.” that being said , if you incorporate chanukah into your interpretation of a jewish muse , but not any other jewish holiday , you are doing a major disservice to the character and your jewish followers. we have so many holidays that are important in shaping our lives. do your research.

“ conspiracy theories are fun and harmless to incorporate into roleplaying. ” listen we all love a good ‘ trudeau is actually castro’s son ’ moment , but there is a long history of conspiracy theories that are linked back to centuries of antisemitic propoganda: lizard people , flat earth , the illuminati just to name a few. if you’re someone who likes a good conspiracy theory and wants to weave it into your writing , please please please make sure it isn’t just n*zi propaganda that’s been disguised to look like something else.

honestly , there is more that i could say , but i’ll leave it here. if any other jews would like to add on , please do ! and remember , like with anything else , please do your research when writing a character that doesn’t share your same identity , be mindful of your own assumptions and biases , and when in doubt: google is your best friend.*

*everything mentioned above can be easily googled. i even googled things myself to make sure i wasn’t just speaking out of my own ass.

[womenfrommars]

Debunking myths about Jewish history

1. ‘’Ashkenazi Jews are white Europeans’’

Let’s start with the claim that’s been propagated the most on the Internet. The claim is that some ethnic Jews are indeed Middle-Eastern (e.g. Sephardi and Mizrahi), but that the Ashkenazi Jews specifically are (white) Europeans. This claim simply isn’t supported by scientific evidence.

The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring nonJewish communities during and after the Diaspora.

(...)

The m values based on haplotypes Med and 1L were ~13% ± 10%, suggesting a rather small European contribution to the Ashkenazi paternal gene pool. When all haplotypes were included in the analysis, m increased to 23% ± 7%. This value was similar to the estimated Italian contribution to the Roman Jewish paternal gene pool. (Hammer et al. 2000)

About 80 Sephardim, 80 Ashkenazim and 100 Czechoslovaks were examined for the Yspecific RFLPs revealed by the probes p12f2 and p40a,f on TaqI DNA digests. The aim of the study was to investigate the origin of the Ashkenazi gene pool through the analysis of markers which, having an exclusively holoandric transmission, are useful to estimate paternal gene flow. The comparison of the two groups of Jews with each other and with Czechoslovaks (which have been taken as a representative source of foreign Y-chromosomes for Ashkenazim) shows a great similarity between Sephardim and Ashkenazim who are very different from Czechoslovaks. On the other hand both groups of Jews appear to be closely related to Lebanese. A preliminary evaluation suggests that the contribution of foreign males to the Ashkenazi gene pool has been very low (1 % or less per generation). (Benerecetti et al. 1993)

A sample of 526 Y chromosomes representing six Middle Eastern populations (Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Kurdish Jews from Israel; Muslim Kurds; Muslim Arabs from Israel and the Palestinian Authority Area; and Bedouin from the Negev) was analyzed for 13 binary polymorphisms and six microsatellite loci. The investigation of the genetic relationship among three Jewish communities revealed that Kurdish and Sephardic Jews were indistinguishable from one another, whereas both differed slightly, yet significantly, from Ashkenazi Jews. The differences among Ashkenazim may be a result of low-level gene flow from European populations and/or genetic drift during isolation. (Nebel et al. 2001)

Here, genome-wide analysis of seven Jewish groups (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek, and Ashkenazi) and comparison with non-Jewish groups demonstrated distinctive Jewish population clusters, each with shared Middle Eastern ancestry, proximity to contemporary Middle Eastern populations, and variable degrees of European and North African admixture. Two major groups were identified by principal component, phylogenetic, and identity by descent (IBD) analysis: Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews. The IBD segment sharing and the proximity of European Jews to each other and to southern European populations suggested similar origins for European Jewry and refuted large-scale genetic contributions of Central and Eastern European and Slavic populations to the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry. Rapid decay of IBD in Ashkenazi Jewish genomes was consistent with a severe bottleneck followed by large expansion, such as occurred with the so-called demographic miracle of population expansion from 50,000 people at the beginning of the 15th century to 5,000,000 people at the beginning of the 19th century. Thus, this study demonstrates that European/Syrian and Middle Eastern Jews represent a series of geographical isolates or clusters woven together by shared IBD genetic threads. (Atzmon et al. 2010)

2. '’Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of the Khazars’’

Another popular idea on the Internet, which is also associated with the alt-right, is that Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of the Khazar people, from the Khazar empire (roughly 600-1000). This culture completely died out and there are no direct descendants, so genetic testing is a bit difficult.

However, there still has been done genetic testing that confirms this hypothesis to be false.

Employing a variety of standard techniques for the analysis of population-genetic structure, we find that Ashkenazi Jews share the greatest genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations, and among non-Jewish populations, with groups from Europe and the Middle East. No particular similarity of Ashkenazi Jews with populations from the Caucasus is evident, particularly with the populations that most closely represent the Khazar region. Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region. (Behar et al. 2013)

However, if the R-M17 chromosomes in Ashkenazi Jews do indeed represent the vestiges of the mysterious Khazars then, according to our data, this contribution was limited to either a single founder or a few closely related men, and does not exceed ∼12% of the present-day Ashkenazim. (Nebel et al. 2005)

3. '’Palestinians are indigenous to the land of Israel, so the Jews can’t be indigenous’’

First off, it has been established that Jews and Palestinians share the same ancestry:

Archaeologic and genetic data support that both Jews and Palestinians came from the ancient Canaanites, who extensively mixed with Egyptians, Mesopotamian and Anatolian peoples in ancient times. Thus, Palestinian-Jewish rivalry is based in cultural and religious, but not in genetic, differences. (Arnaiz-Villena et al. 2001)

If Palestinians are considered native, then so should Jews, since both descend from the ancient Canaanites.

Furthermore, the Hebrew Bible states that Philistines (’’Palestinians’’) came from Caphtor, which has been identified as modern-day Crete, an island that is part of Greece (see also Finkelstein 2002). Other contestants for Caphtor include Cyprus and Cilicia (modern-day Turkey).

Archeological evidence also supports this theory:

Modern archaeologists agree that the Philistines were different from their neighbors: Their arrival on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean in the early 12th century B.C. is marked by pottery with close parallels to the ancient Greek world, the use of an Aegean—instead of a Semitic—script, and the consumption of pork. (National Geographic)

This was more recently confirmed by DNA evidence:

Now, a study published today in the journal Science Advances, prompted by the unprecedented 2016 discovery of a cemetery at the ancient Philistine city of Ashkelon on the southern coast of Israel, provides an intriguing look into the genetic origins and legacy of the Philistines. The research appears to support their foreign origin, but reveals that the reviled outsiders were soon marrying into the local populations. (...) The four early Iron Age DNA samples, all from infants buried beneath the floors of Philistine houses, include proportionally more “additional European ancestry” in their genetic signatures (roughly 14%) than in the pre-Philistine Bronze Age samples (2% to 9%), according to the researchers. While the origins of this additional “European ancestry” are not conclusive, the most plausible models point to Greece, Crete, Sardinia, and the Iberian peninsula. (Idem)

Now, this doesn’t mean that modern-day Palestinians are mostly European, as the research also found that the Philistines were mixing with the local populations. This also explains why modern-day Jews and modern-day Palestinians are genetically very similar (see above). It is highly unlikely that modern-day Palestinians are the direct descendants of the ancient Philistines.

However, the name ‘’Palestine’’ is derived from ‘’Philistia’’:

The first records of the Philistines are inscriptions and reliefs in the mortuary temple of Ramses III at Madinat Habu, where they appear under the name prst, as one of the Sea Peoples that invaded Egypt about 1190 BCE after ravaging Anatolia, Cyprus, and Syria. After being repulsed by the Egyptians, they settled—possibly with Egypt’s permission—on the coastal plain of Palestine from Joppa (modern Tel Aviv–Yafo) southward to Gaza. The area contained the five cities (the Pentapolis) of the Philistine confederacy (Gaza, Ashkelon [Ascalon], Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron) and was known as Philistia, or the Land of the Philistines. It was from this designation that the whole of the country was later called Palestine by the Greeks. (Encyclopædia Britannica)

Modern-day Palestinians are the descendants of local populations who converted to Islam due to Islamic conquest. Likewise, Jews are the descendants of local populations who left the country. Despite this, both groups are genetically related to each other. This is because Jews have been a relatively isolated group of people, since the religion of Judaism doesn’t permit interfaith marriage (unless a non-Jew converts into the faith). In other words: the fact that the Palestinians may be indigenous to the land of Israel doesn’t negate the fact that the Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel.

Our findings corroborate previous studies that suggested a common origin for Jewish and non-Jewish populations living in the Middle East (Santachiara-Benerecetti et al. 1993; Peretz et al. 1997; Hammer et al. 2000).

(...)

According to historical records part, or perhaps the majority, of the Moslem Arabs in this country descended from local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD (Shaban 1971; Mc Graw Donner 1981). These local inhabitants, in turn, were descendants of the core population that had lived in the area for several centuries, some even since prehistorical times (Gil 1992). On the other hand, the ancestors of the great majority of present-day Jews lived outside this region for almost two millennia. Thus, our findings are in good agreement with historical evidence and suggest genetic continuity in both populations despite their long separation and the wide geographic dispersal of Jews. (Nebel et al. 2000)

4. ‘’Well, the Palestinians were there first’’

As discussed before, the ancient Philistines from the book of Deuteronomy are said to have immigrated from Caphtor, which has been identified as island in southern Europe. The ancient Philistines have no direct descendants because they mixed with local populations. The ancient Philistines are also mentioned in the book of Genesis, which mentions they came from Egypt. According to rabbinic sources, this refers to a different people from the Philistines mentioned in the book of Deuteronomy. As discussed before, modern-day Palestinians descend from neither of these people. Palestinians maintain they are the descendants of the ancient Canaanites:

Both Israeli and Palestinian politicians claim the region of Israel and the Palestinian territories is the ancestral home of their people, and maintain that the other group was a late arrival. “We are the Canaanites,” asserted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last year. “This land is for its people…who were here 5,000 years ago.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said recently that the ancestors of modern Palestinians “came from the Arabian peninsula to the Land of Israel thousands of years” after the Israelites. (National Geographic)

As discussed, modern-day Jews and modern-day Palestinians are genetically very similar. This was again established by a recent study:

Finally, we show that the genomes of present-day groups geographically and historically linked to the Bronze Age Levant, including the great majority of present-day Jewish groups and Levantine Arabic-speaking groups, are consistent with having 50% or more of their ancestry from people related to groups who lived in the Bronze Age Levant and the Chalcolithic Zagros. These present-day groups also show ancestries that cannot be modeled by the available ancient DNA data, highlighting the importance of additional major genetic effects on the region since the Bronze Age. (Agranat-Tamir et al. 2020)

According to the Bible, when the Israelites left Egypt, they conquered the Canaanites, who were already living in the land of Israel. Joshua 10:40 mentions there are no survivors of the ancient Canaanites. However, the Bible was written much later after these events took place. The study referenced above supports the hypothesis of continuity, i.e. the ancient Canaanites were not completely wiped out by the Israelites. Instead, Canaanite culture slowly morphed into other cultures, including the culture of the Israelites. As referenced under 3., it is likely both Jews and Palestinians came from the ancient Canaanites.

The Bible itself also mentions the Canaanites continued to exist in Judges 3:1-3 and explains the command to the Israelites was only given to teach them warfare (not to actually annihilate the Canaanites). It is more likely the Canaanites indeed continued to exist:

We show that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age. (Haber et al. 2017)

To put it differently, in the land of Israel, the ancient Canaanites were not destroyed, but rather subsumed by the Israelites. The Jews have maintained this culture and tradition. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have not. Palestinians didn’t maintain any tradition from the ancient Canaanites. Instead, their culture, tradition, and language can be traced back to the Hejaz, a region in the west of modern-day Saudi Arabia. This is also the birthplace of the religion of Islam.

Indeed, up until recently, Palestinians were not even called ‘’Palestinians’’. Instead, they were referred to as ‘’Palestinian Arabs’’. A report from 1946 gives more insight. In Chapter VI, titled ‘’The Arab Attitude’’, it states the following:

The Committee heard a brief presentation of the Arab case in Washington, statements made in London by delegates from the Arab States to the United Nations, a fuller statement from the Secretary General and other representatives of the Arab League in Cairo, and evidence given on behalf of the Arab Higher (committee and the Arab Office in Jerusalem). In addition, subcommittees visited Baghdad Riyadh, Damascus, Beirut and Amman, where they were informed of the views of Government and of unofficial spokesmen.

Stopped to the bare essentials, the Arab case is based upon the fact that Palestine is a country which the Arabs have occupied for more than a thousand years, and a denial of the Jewish historical claims to Palestine.

This report states Arabs have lived in Palestine ‘’for more than a thousand years’’, referring to the Islamic conquest of Palestine in the 7th century. Clearly, Palestinians are identified as Arabs here, by Palestinian leaders themselves.

Another report from the same year supports this view:

In addition to the question of right, the Arabs oppose the claims of political Zionism because of the effects which Zionist settlement has already had upon their situation and is likely to have to an even greater extent in the future. Negatively, it has diverted the whole course of their national development. Geographically Palestine is part of Syria; its indigenous inhabitants belong to the Syrian branch of the Arab family of nations; all their culture and tradition link them to other Arab peoples; and until 1917 Palestine formed part of the Ottoman Empire which included also several of the other Arab countries. The presence and claims of the Zionists, and the support given them by certain Western Powers have resulted in Palestine being cut off from other Arab countries and subjected to a regime, administrative, legal, fiscal and educational, different from that of the sister-countries. Quite apart from the inconvenience to individuals and the dislocation of trade which this separation has caused, it has prevented Palestine participating fully in the general development of the Arab world.

You can see the story changed overtime. The Palestinian claim to Canaanite blood is an ad hoc claim that is meant to predate the Jewish presence in Israel.

In general, the Palestinian claim to Canaanite roots also erases the fact that the Israelites drove the Canaanites out of Israel, to Lebanon. The remaining Canaanites were subsumed by the Israelites. Therefore, if Palestinians are native to the land of Israel, and if they descend from the Canaanites, then they must also descend from the Israelites. However, Palestinians attempt to bypass the Israelite link, claiming to not descend from the Israelites. I believe they likewise deny that the Jews descend from the Israelites, claiming that instead the Jews are just Europeans.

This wouldn’t be the first time the Palestinians changed their narrative either. They used to claim they descend from the ancient Philistines, referring to Genesis 21:34 as proof:

And Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines for a long time. (New International Version)

As such, the Palestinian PM argued they have lived in the land of Palestine before Abraham. (Video is in the article.)

As explained earlier, the Philistines immigrated from southern Europe, and the Palestinians are not directly descended from them, given the DNA evidence. The ancient Philistines have disappeared as a people, because they mixed with local populations. That also explains why modern-day Palestinian DNA is not mostly European, as would be the case if they directly descended from the Philistines.

Recommended further reading

‘’Are Jews Indigenous to the Land of Israel?’’

‘‘Jews and Arabs Share Genetic Link to Ancient Canaanites, Study Finds‘‘

‘‘The Canaanites weren’t annihilated, they just ‘moved’ to Lebanon‘‘

[sylvielauffeydottir]

Hi I just saw your post about Israel and Palestinian. I don't know if you're the person to ask or if this is a dumb question but I was wondering if anyone has considered starting a second Jewish state? I was wondering because there's a bunch of Christian countries so why not multiple Jewish ones.

Sorry if I'm bothering you and Thanks for your time.

That’s actually a pretty interesting question. I am going to apologize right now, because I essentially can’t give a short answer to save my life.

I’m not a ‘Jewish Scholar,’ so while I can speak with some authority about the history of Zionism, I definitely couldn’t speak about it with as much authority as others. I mentioned in at least one of the posts I have written about the history of plans for a ‘Jewish state’ when Zionism was originally being proposed, and I can kinda of track the history of Zionist thinking for you if you are interested, though essentially it’s just about arguing where to go. But there are better scholars for this than me, so I would recommend Rebecca Kobrin, Deborah Lipstadt, Walter Laqueur … idk. Maybe just read some Theodor Herzl, honestly. With all of that said, I can speak with some authority about the post-war history of this in the Middle East. So let’s go.

In post-war times, there has really only been one serious discussion of an alternative Jewish state, as far as I know. And actually, this is part of why I find it so ironic that people are campaigning so hard to be “anti-Zionist” and to express views like “anti-Zionism” in their activism, because the Jews in Israel who are most anti-Zionist are actually the settlers of Palestinian territories, who want to secede and form a “Gaza-State” called Judeah. There's a great book about this called The Deadly Embrace by Ilana Kass And Bard O'Neill, if anyone is interested. Anyway, most of those people, who are largely Haredim (the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, though some of those settlers are semi Orthodox), have essentially been waging a “culture war” about what it means to have a Jewish state and what the identity of that Jewish state should look like basically since the 1980s.

There is a really good article about this that you can find right here written by Peter Lintl, who is a researcher at the Institution of Political Science for the Friedrich-Alexander Universitat. I’ll summarize it for the lazy people, though, because it’s like 40 pages. Just know that this paragraph won’t be super source heavy, because it is basically the same source. Essentially, the Haredim community has tripled in size from 4% to 12% of the total Israeli population since 1980, and it is probably going to be about 20% by 2040. They only accept the Torah and religious laws as the basis for Jewish life and Jewish identity and they are critical of democratic principles. To them, a societal structure should be hierarchical, patriarchal, and have rabbis at the apex, and they basically believe that Israel isn’t a legitimate state. This is primarily because Israel is (at least technically, so no one come at me in the comments about Palestinian citizens of Israel, so I’ll make a little ** and address this there) a ‘liberal’ democracy. Rights of Israeli citizens include, according to Freedom House, free and fair elections (they rank higher on that criteria here than the United States, by the way), political choice, political rights and electoral opportunities for women, a free and independent media, and academic freedom. It is also, I should add (as a lesbian), the only country in the Middle East that has anything close to LGBT+ rights.

[**to the point about Palestinians and Palestinian citizens of Israel: I have a few things to say. First, I have recommended this book twice now and it is Michael Oren’s Six Days of War, which absolutely fantastically talks about the ways in which the entire structure of the Palestinian ‘citizenship’ movement, Palestinian rights, and who was responsible for governing Palestinians changed after the Six Days War. If you are at all interested in the modern Middle East or modern Middle East politics, I highly recommend you read this, because a huge tenant of this book is that it was 1967, not 1947, that caused huge parts of our current situation (and that, surprisingly, a huge issue that quote-on-quote “started it” was actually water, but that’s sort of the primary secondary issue, not the Actual Issue at play here). Anyway, I’ve talked about the fact that Israel hugely abuses its authority in the West Bank and Gaza and that there are going to be current members of the Israeli Government who face action at the ICC, so please don’t litigate this again with me. I also should add that the 2018 law which said it was only Jews who had the natural-born right to “self-determine” in Israel was passed by the Lekkud Government, and I really hate them anyway. I know they’re bad. It’s not the point I’m making. I’m making a broader point about the Constitution vis-a-vis what the Haredim are proposing, which is way worse].

To get back to the Haredim, basically there is this entire movement of actual settlers in territories that have been determined to belong to the Palestinian people as of, you know, the modern founding of Israel (and not the pre-Israel ‘colonial settler’ narrative you’ll see on instagram in direct conflict with the history of centuries of aliyah) who want to secede and form a separate Jewish state. They aren’t like, the only settlers, but I point this out because they are basically ‘anti-Zionist’ in the sense that they think that modern Zionism isn’t adhering to the laws of Judaism — that the state of Israel is too free, too radical, too open. And scarily enough, these are the sort of the people from whom Netanyahu draws a huge part of his political support. Which is true of the right wing in general. Netanyahu can’t actually govern without a coalition government. Like I have said, the Knesset is huge, often with 11-13 political parties at once, and so to ‘govern’ Netanyahu often needs to recruit increasingly right wing, conservative, basically insane political parties to maintain his coalition. It’s why he has been so supportive of the settlements, particularly in the last five years (since he is, as I have also said, facing corruption charges, and he really can’t leave office). It would really suck for him if a huge chunk of his voters seceded, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, that is the only ‘second Jewish State’ I know about, and I don’t think that is necessarily much of a solution. I really don’t have the solutions to the Middle East crisis. I am just a girl with some history degrees and some time on her hands to devote to tumblr, and I want people to learn more so they can form their own opinions. With that said, I think there are two more things worth saying and then I will close out for the night.

First, Judaism is an ethno-religion. Our ethnicities have become mixed with the places that we have inhabited over the years in diaspora, which is how you have gotten Sephardi, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, and even Ethiopian Jews. But if you do actual DNA testing on almost all of the Jews in diaspora, the testing shows that we come from the same place: the Levant. No matter how pale or dark, Jews are still fundamentally one people, something we should never forget (and anyone who tries to put racial hierarchy into paleness of Jews: legit, screw you. One people). Anyway, unlike other religious communities, we have an indigenous homeland because we have an ethnic homeland. It’s small, and there are many Jews in diaspora who choose not to return to it, like myself. But that homeland is ours (just as much as it is rightfully Palestinians, because we are both indigenous to the region. For everyone who hasn’t read my other posts on the issue, I’m not explaining this again. Just see: one, two, and three, the post that prompted this ask). This is different from Christians, for example, who basically just conquered all of Europe and whose religion is not dependent on your race or background. You can be a lapsed Christian and you are still white, latinx, black, etc right? I am a lapsed Jew, religiously speaking, and will still never escape that I am ethnically Ashkenazi Jewish.

Second, I think you raise a really good point about other religious states. There are many other religious majority states in the world (all of these countries have an official state religion), and a lot of them are committing a lot of atrocities right now (don't even get me started on Saudi Arabia). I have seen other posts and other authors write about this better than I ever could, but I am going to do my best to articulate why, because of this, criticism of Israel as a state, versus criticism of the Israeli Government, is about ... 9 times out of 10 inherently antisemitic.

We should all be able to criticize governments. That is a healthy part of the democratic process and it is a healthy part of being part of the world community. But there are 140 dictatorships in the world, and the UN Human Rights Council has condemned Israel 45 times since 2013. Since the creation of the UN Human Rights Council, it has has received more resolutions concerning Israel than on the rest of the world combined. This is compared to like … 1 for Myanmar, 1 for South Sudan, and 1 for North Korea.

Israel is the world’s only Jewish majority state. You want to talk about “ethnic cleansing” and “repressive governments”? I can give you about five other governments and world situations right now, off the top of my head, that are very stark, very brutal, very (in some cases) simple examples of either or both. If a person is ‘using their platform’ to Israel-bash, but they are not currently speaking about the atrocities in Myanmar, Kashmir, Azerbaijan, South Sudan, or even, dare I say, the ethnonationalism of the Hindu Nationalist Party in India, then, at the very least, their activism is a little bit performative. They are chasing the most recent ‘hot button’ issue they saw in an instagraphic, and they probably want to be woke and maybe want to do the right thing. And no one come at me and say it is because you don’t “know anything about Myanmar.” Most people know next to nothing about the Middle East crisis as well. At best, people are inconsistent, they may be a hypocrite, and, whether they want to admit it to themselves or not, they are either unintentionally or intentionally buying into antisemitic narratives. They might even be an antisemite.

I like to think (hope, maybe) that most people don’t hate Jews. If anything, they just follow what they’ve been told, and they tend to digest what everyone is taking about. But there is a reason this is the global narrative that has gained traction, and I guarantee it has at least something to do with the star on the Israeli flag.

I know that was a very long answer to your question, but I hope that gave you some insight.

As a sidenote: I keep recommending books, so I am going to just put a master list of every book I have ever recommended at the bottom of anything I do now, because the list keeps growing. So, let’s go in author alphabetical order from now on.

One Country by Ali Abunimah Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust: A Memoir by Noam Chayut If a Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State by Daniel Gordis Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis The Deadly Embrace by Ilana Kass And Bard O'Neill Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation by Yossi Klein Halevi Antisemitism by Deborah Lipstadt Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael Oren The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East by Abraham Rabinovich One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate by Tom Segev Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation by Eyal Weizman

[zamancollective]

Hashish: A (Jewish) History 

By Jordan Adelipour

Additional Writing and Illustration by Sophie Levy and Evan Mateen

Hashish, the emblematic, mystified drug of the Middle-East, is just hemp. Yes, the cannabis kind. While marijuana constitutes the buds of the flowering plant, hashish is made of its resin. 

Since the inception of its recreational use in southwestern Asia, hashish has functioned as a hallmark of many vital literary works and cultural movements across history. In One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, one character is found sleeping in front of the city gates and guards approach him, asking if he had passed out because he was stoned. Some Rastafarians believe the burning bush that Moses saw was really an innuendo for cannabis. There is even a conspiracy that in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, the chocolates the Witch gives one of the children were actually laced with hashish, referring to them as “Turkish Delights.”

But how did this plant gain its status as one of the most popular drugs in southwestern Asia and the Maghreb? Turns out it all started with a cult of pothead assassins.

origins and distribution

From the mid-1050s to the mid-1270s, there existed a secretly-practiced sect of Shi’a Islam found in the Nizari Ismaili “state,” a network of settlements and fortresses in Syria and Persia. Nizari Ismailis observed a strain of religious practice they attributed to the ways of the descendants of Muhammad’s daughter Fatimah. The followers of this sect often took on the role of what we would today call assassins. As crusaders hailing from the north became increasingly present in the cities dotting southwestern Asia, members of this cult developed a practice of silently killing crusaders then retreating into hiding. The sect’s followers were called asāsiyyūn (أساسيون) which originally meant “faithful people,” but after a story formed about the group’s leader marketing hashish as an alleged entry ticket to heavenly transcendence, the members’ title was mistranslated to mean “men of hashish” or “hashish eaters.”  By the time Shakespeare came around, he turned the Italian-influenced noun “assassini” into a verb (something he always loved to do), creating the words “assassinate” and “assassination.” 

The first known record of hashish consumption in the Middle East occurred around 900 CE. Over time, as other empires came through, conquered, and absorbed cultural elements from populations in southwestern Asia, hashish became included in an inventory of exotic trade goods and was taken back to empires’ capitals. In the thirteenth century, Genghis Khan spread the use of hashish across the Asian continent. Sheikh Haydar, a Sufi monk living in Safavid Persia in the fifteenth century, recorded an account of ingesting cannabis resin directly. Hashish made its way to Europe in the nineteenth century, when Napoleon introduced it to the French after his army’s campaign in Egypt and Syria.

in contemporary mizrahi contexts

Following the spread of hashish to the Maghreb, Morocco eventually became one of the biggest exporters of this substance. Its commonplace use across North Africa, where hashish smoking remains prevalent today, can arguably be attributed to a historical relationship between the land’s Amazigh and Jewish inhabitants.

Dr. Doron Danino, an expert on Moroccan Jewry, expanded upon this interesting connection in an interview published in the Times of Israel. In reference to the nature of Moroccan society in the seventeenth century, Danino explained,

“The Jews, in general, did not grow cannabis, [...] But they received a monopoly from the king for the sale of tobacco in Morocco, and that included sales of the cannabis plant and the hashish produced from it.”

Because the rural Amazigh farmers who grew cannabis often did not speak Arabic, a pragmatic partnership developed between these cultivators and Jewish merchants, who acted as middlemen in urban trade deals. According to Danino, “Jews used to speak several languages, and they had a business sense, which made it a mutually beneficial partnership.” 

Apart from their role in selling hashish, it remains unclear whether or not the recreational use of cannabis was common among Moroccan Jews. However, further inspection of Jewish texts can reveal possible connections between hashish, biblical Jewish lore, and ritual practice.

a haredi rabbi blessing cannabis as kosher, 2016

in jewish texts and ritual observance

The use of hashish and cannabis in Jewish tradition is controversial, to say the least. The Tanakh includes numerous mentions of a grain or spice called qaneh-bosem (קְנֵה-בֹשֶׂם). In the Book of Exodus, G-d instructs Moses to carry this plant with him as part of a spice collection for anointing ritual sites, deeming it too holy for use by laymen (Exodus 30:22-33). 

Most translations describe qaneh-bosem as “sweet cane,” which is, at most, a vague estimation of a proper translation, since no specific plant has been definitively attributed to this Aramaic word. The identity of qaneh-bosem is widely disputed- but some researchers and users of cannabis contend this mystery spice could be cannabis. It is described as an “aromatic grass” (which is exactly what I would call cannabis) that came from distant lands, most likely being northeastern India. The plant is noted to grow between three to five feet tall (*ahem ahem), growing in marshy areas (Jeremiah 6:20). 

Obstacles in identifying biblical plants are also indebted to the Torah’s early standing as a completely oral tradition for many years, which can, of course, lead to some mistranslations. In his book The Living Torah (1981), Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan proposes that the translation of qaneh-bosem as “cane plant” is, in fact, incorrect, having resulted from a misattribution to the Egyptian word kalabos- a cane that grew on the Nile. 

Jewish utilizations of hemp are also mentioned in medieval rabbinic texts and more contemporary records of Jewish religious practice. Yosef Glassman, a geriatrician living in Boston, has extensively researched the use of cannabis in Shabbat rituals. He cites the Talmud as a record of Jewish people using hemp to make textiles for tallitot and tzitzit. Separately, Ashkenazi rabbinic authorities characterize cannabis as kitniyot during Passover, so smoking hashish or eating hemp seeds (which have no psychoactive effect) during the grain and rice-free week would be heavily frowned upon. Still, there is no refuting that Hashem did say, “Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed—to you it shall be for food. (Genesis 1:29)” 

In 450 BCE, Herodotus wrote in Histories that Persians discussed diplomatic policies while drunk, then rehashed while sober (or vice versa) to see if they still held fast to their earlier claims. Similarly, a cornerstone of Jewish identity is a fierce love of argument and discussion- coupled with intoxication, of course. At least that’s what I saw that one time at Chabad. But I guess now we have proof that it wasn’t the first time Jews have taken things a step further than wine.

Jordan Adelipour is a senior at Babson College majoring in Business. He has a profound fondness for Japanese culture and Reddit. He has approximate knowledge of many things.

references

https://books.google.com/books?id=RAwg47G0M2IC&pg=PA68#v=onepage&q=bosem&f=false

https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=0ZkWAAAAYAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA147

https://www.narconon.org/drug-information/hashish-history.html

https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/biblical-roots-of-jews-and-grass-1.5298099

https://www.etymonline.com/word/assassin

https://www.etymonline.com/word/hashish?ref=etymonline_crossreference

https://books.google.com/books?id=GtCL2OYsH6wC&pg=PA21&dq=history+Hashishin+killed+caliphs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwhyyoualwayslyingQ6AEwAGoVChMI67L3hf2_yAIVQZQNCh2D4Qtk#v=onepage&q=history%20Hashishin%20killed%20caliphs&f=false

Burman, Edward (1987). The Assassins – Holy Killers of Islam. Wellingborough: Crucible. P.70

[jewish-privilege]

When Michael Twitty dressed in the outfit that slaves wore in the American South — wool stockings, waistcoat and kerchief tied around his neck — to cook meat in an open-hearth oven on a historic Virginia plantation, more than one memory of slavery flashed through his mind.

One memory, of his African-American ancestors in the South, seems obvious. The other, of Jews enslaved thousands of years ago in Egypt, perhaps less so.

Cooking on the Virginia plantation as part of his research into black and Southern foodways, the African-American Jew by choice thought of the Passover injunction that each Jew remember the Exodus from Egypt as if he or she had been there. And passing by a colonial-style house near the historic plantation brought to mind both slavery and Nazi concentration camps.

In 2012, Twitty embarked on a “Southern Discomfort Tour” to trace the history of his black ancestors through food. On the journey, which he documents in his forthcoming book, “The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African-American Culinary History in the Old South,” he also saw parallels to Jewish history.

The book... explores the history of soul food and its relationship to the larger category of Southern cuisine. It also documents Twitty’s personal journey as he learns about his ancestors’ fates, works on historic plantations and takes DNA tests to learn more about his heritage.

The 40-year-old former Hebrew school teacher, food writer and creator of the food blog Afroculinaria also writes about his Jewish journey in the book, and it turns out that — no surprise here! — food plays a big role.

“How I became Jewish began through food,” Twitty told JTA during an interview in the lobby of a trendy New York hotel. His Christian mother, whom Twitty describes in his book as “the best challah braider I have ever known,” introduced him to the Shabbat staple early on. At the age of 7, Twitty, who grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., declared himself to be Jewish.

“[T]here are some things that science cannot explain, it’s a calling, it’s a connection, it’s above us,” Twitty said of his childhood interest in Judaism.

Food continued to inform his Jewish journey, which culminated in his conversion at 25. He chose a Sephardi Mizrahi synagogue because he found it the most welcoming as a person of color — and because of its culinary traditions.

“[T]he food was better — and [you can eat] rice on Pesach,” he said, referring to the Sephardi custom of eating rice and other legumes from which Ashkenazic Jews abstain during Passover.

Asked to describe himself, Twitty invents a new word: “Afro-ashke-phardi.”

“I feel African-American brings in the Southern, brings in the mixture of heritage that is African-American and African diaspora,” he said. “I feel like the Ashkenazi, I really do appeal to Hasidic culture, dabbled with it before in my life. And Sephardic and Mizrahi heritage will always be a part of me because it’s where I converted, in a Sephardic and Mizrahi synagogue.”

The kitchen also served as a place for Twitty to discover another identity: as a gay man.

“There was a lot of gay culture in our kitchen,” Twitty writes, citing the show tunes that family members would play while cooking. The kitchen was also the place where he first came out to his mother and aunt.

Twitty’s background is reflected in his unique takes on traditional Jewish food. A Shabbat dinner at his house might include such dishes as “kosher soul-rolls”— spring rolls stuffed with collard greens and pastrami — and Senegalese chicken soup featuring matzah balls and peanut butter.

The food writer keeps a kosher kitchen, but that doesn’t stop him from cooking soul food dishes featuring pork or catfish on the outside. He relies on tasters to ensure the food is delicious, so he doesn’t have to eat the non-kosher ingredients.

That workaround is symbolic of Twitty’s larger approach to his different identities. Instead of pitting them against each other or prioritizing one over another, Twitty embraces the nuances that come along with belonging to different communities.

“It’s not a hierarchy, it’s a circle, and in that circle are all these different elements that work together like a chain, and if one of them is broken, there is no circle, it’s incomplete,” he said.

After “The Cooking Gene” is published this summer, Twitty hopes to do a similar project about his Jewish identity, which he said will “probably” amount to a second book.

“I’m even more convinced now that in addition to going to Medinat Yisrael, people need to go to Europe,” he said, referring to the State of Israel in Hebrew.

“[O]ne of the things that got me [is] all those gravestones that were turned upside down, all those shtetls that used to exist. You’ve got to see it with your own eyes because you’ve got to know and understand and feel it in your gut: This is where the debt was paid so I could exist.”

[juudgeblog]

CFP: Mizrahi Legal Studies Conference – Cambridge, MA

The Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce its upcoming conference on Mizrahi Legal Studies, to be held at Harvard Law School on December 10-11, 2019.

The newly-emerging field of Mizrahi Legal Studies aims at highlighting the specific conditions, experiences, and perspectives of Mizrahi Jews in Israeli law and society, both historically and today. The discipline seeks to develop readings of Israeli law that expose the ethno-racial aspects of what may initially appear neutral, objective, or colorless.

The purpose of the conference is to explore, critique, engage and broaden this emerging area, promoting writing and critical discussion around Mizrahi issues in multiple sites of legal research, including both Israeli and Jewish law. The conference offers a forum to consider, define, and contest the field’s directions in light of comparative and concrete analysis, as well as theoretical inquiry. Despite a robust tradition of critical writing on Israeli law, as well as prolific research in Mizrahi Studies in other disciplines such as history, sociology, and anthropology, the Mizrahi perspective has been traditionally neglected in Israeli legal academia. Recent developments, including Yifat Bitton’s writings, have sparked new scholarship around the topic. This first wave of legal writing on Mizrahi issues focused primarily on the absence of Mizrahi Jews from Israeli law, and the importance of recognizing Mizrahi Jews as a distinct group within legal language and adjudication. And yet, scholarship that moves beyond this prism to analyze Israeli law from a Mizrahi standpoint is still scarce. The conference offers a unique opportunity to take a leading role in shaping this newly-emerging field. We welcome papers exploring Mizrahi perspectives on Israeli and Jewish law. These include, but are not limited to, papers on the histories of Mizrahim and the law, both before and after the establishment of the State of Israel; papers on Mizrahi approaches to rabbinic thought and Halakha, both institutionally and in theory; papers on discrimination against Mizrahi individuals and communities in the Israeli legal system and Israeli society; papers on Mizrahi deployment of political, cultural, and legal power through Israeli and Jewish law and legal institutions; papers that offer a Mizrahi perspective or reading of legal disciplines and/or doctrines; papers examining how Mizrahi narratives interact with national narratives; papers examining Mizrahi positionality and identity vis-à-vis Israel/Palestine, etc.

Abstracts (200-500 words) should be sent to Lihi Yona (ly2303@columbia.edu) by February 15, 2019. A limited number of bursaries will be available to help cover some of the costs for those lacking institutional funding.

Conference website.

CFP: Mizrahi Legal Studies Conference – Cambridge, MA syndicated from https://namechangersmumbai.wordpress.com/

[nataliesnews]

Misrachi Jews and the Holocaust 25.12.2017

Libyan Jews returning to Tripoli from Bergen-Belsen. Reproduction by Nir Keidar

Opinion Our passports were stamped 'Exit, with No Return': The real story of how Egypt expelled its Jews

Meet the self-styled Kendrick Lamar of Israeli poetry: A Romanian royal with dark family secrets

The Israelis helping rehabilitate disaster areas with honey

My grandfather was a very proud person. He uttered not a word about the Holocaust he endured in Libya; only once did I hear him talk about the renta, the reparations from Germany, which, by a cruel irony, began arriving a month after his mother died. I heard that his mother’s back had been broken in the camp and that from then on she was completely hunched over. So I also understood that there had been Nazis there.

 At first, my family’s involvement in that incomprehensible event seemed to me improbable, and later negligible. At some point I started to explore the subject more deeply, and heard about the Giado camp, closed in by a barbed-wire fence, with wooden huts holding more than 300 people each. About 2,600 Libyan Jews were transported to the camp and subjected to forced labor. They suffered from hunger and disease, and were the victims of daily abuse. Many were murdered – 562 Jews died there – and dozens more were sent to death camps, notably Bergen-Belsen.

 To this day, it remains unclear whether Giado was a ghetto, a forced-labor camp or a concentration camp. What can be said for certain is that there were many camps like Giado across North Africa. The echoes of war also reverberated in other Arab countries, such as Iraq, where pogroms and other violent incidents took place.

 All this is part of the unknown story of the Jews of the Middle East during World War II – a story that is not part of the construct of the Holocaust experience in Israel. In a new book, Yvonne Kozlovsky Golan, who specializes in film history and teaches at the University of Haifa, seeks to understand why the Holocaust experience of these Jews is absent from Israeli media and art, and what this obliviousness signifies.

 The idea for the book, “Forgotten from the Frame: The Absence of the Holocaust Experience of Mizrahim from the Visual Arts and Media in Israel” (published by Resling, in Hebrew), Dr. Kozlovsky Golan relates in an interview with Haaretz, arose when she realized that the Mizrahi (referring to Jews of North African or Middle Eastern origin) students she taught some years ago at Sapir Academic College in Sderot had no knowledge of the history of their communities, or even of their families, during the Holocaust period.

 Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter

Email*Sign up

  “I sent them to ask their families,” she says. “Many of them discovered only then that their family had been in the Holocaust. Afterward, we started to look for testimonies, films, plays, television programs. Unfortunately, we didn’t find much.”

  There is “deficient understanding,” she avers, with regard to North African Jewry as a whole, and in particular regarding its history during the Holocaust. This state of affairs has given rise to multiple difficulties in documenting, commemorating and representing the experience of the members of this community during World War II. Indeed, until recently the subject was not even taught in the Israeli education system, and effectively disappeared from public discourse. Something of a change occurred a few years ago, with the 2013 publication of “Benghazi-Bergen-Belsen,” by Yossi Sucary, which won the Brenner Prize awarded by the Hebrew Writers Association, and was also adapted for the stage. It was the first Israeli novel to tell the story of Libyan Jewry in the Holocaust. (The book is available in English translation.)

 Kozlovsky Golan, for her part, describes the teaching of the Holocaust since Israel’s establishment as being driven by a stereotyping of the subject as an exclusively European “product” of suffering. Communities including North African Jewry were excluded because of the “obligation” to be absent “from a place which is in no way theirs,” as she puts it. In contrast to the horrors that were documented in Europe, the camps in which Jews were incarcerated in North Africa were barely filmed, and whatever photographic record there was lost or destroyed. This helps account for the fact that the image of the Holocaust in Israel and worldwide is very specifically one of a European prisoner in a striped uniform behind barbed wire.

 “There were usually no fences in the North African camps,” explains Kozlovsky Golan. “The Jews were not transported in trains. They were put into horses’ stables and they spoke Arabic. The Jews of the East did not have an image that could be imagined. What was not photographed, documented or observed was therefore also not engraved on the collective consciousness.”

 Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, took testimonies of Jewish survivors from North Africa, from the time the institution opened, in 1953, but it did not accord the survivors or their information proper treatment.

 “Unfamiliarity with the culture, language and customs of North African Jewry led to a situation in which those who took the testimonies – most of whom were from Eastern Europe and some of whom were Israeli-born – did not understand in depth [the survivors’] manner of expressing themselves, their worldview or their perception of their identity,” Kozlovsky Golan notes. “They were not asked the right questions and they sensed that many of their stories were viewed disparagingly. The result was misunderstanding between the sides and ultimately an unbridgeable disconnect.”

 The prejudices, the racism and the stereotyping with which the taking of the testimonies was fraught generated frustration and anger among the survivors, and above all, led again to the silencing of any real discussion of the North African Holocaust.

  Artwork by Nava Barazani, 2011.Nava Barazani

A shocking example of the gaps of understanding that existed between the interviewers and the survivors concerns the rape of North African women in the Holocaust period.

 Kozlovsky Golan: “In the communities of the East the rape of women is considered worse than murder. In addition, a conversation about this subject with an unfamiliar man is not self-evident. Thus, rape stories appear in the testimonies in an implied manner, along the lines of ‘They took all the girls.’ Or ‘All the girls were placed in the well’ ... In practice, North African survivors described sexual exploitation of Jewish women and even the establishment of a brothel in Mahdia, in Tunisia, under the management of a Jewish woman from Eastern Europe.”

 Exclusion from memory

 The mission of Yad Vashem, having been established with public funds, was to commemorate all the Jewish communities and the Jews murdered in the Holocaust. But until 2005, when a small memorial corner was created, the disaster of the North African communities was completely unrepresented.

 “Similarly, the study of the Holocaust of North African Jewry, particularly at the start, was not carried out by Yad Vashem but by the Ben-Zvi Institute [which studies Jewish communities in the East],” Kozlovsky Golan observes. “This was as if to symbolize that the Holocaust undergone by these communities is part of the ongoing history of the Jews of the East, and not a phenomenon related to the history of mankind, as the Holocaust of European Jewry is considered to be.”

 But exclusion from the collective memory was not confined to the official institutions of the state or academia. It also exists within the communities themselves and among their representatives in politics, culture, research and art, whether because of language disparities or because of the difficulties that the survivors – who lacked political, economic and social clout – faced in Israel.

  Yossi Sucary.Tomer Appelbaum

Kozlovsky Golan says that, “On the official website of Tunisian Jewry there are arguments about whether what happened to the Jews of Tunisia should be considered part of the Holocaust or as pogroms. Are they ‘survivors’ or ‘victims of persecution’? Others doubt that the Holocaust extended to Tunisia and they deplore the attempt to draw an unjust comparison between the Holocaust of North Africa’s Jews and the Holocaust of Europe’s Jews.”

 The overwhelming response of North African Jews to their Holocaust experience was silence, or more accurately, silences. According to Kozlovsky Golan, “Some of the Jews were silent as a reaction to personal and public loss and bereavement; others kept silent as an act of protest or due to an inability to come to terms with the violent experience they endured. Still others were silent as part of a strategy of capitulation, deriving from the hope that everything would pass with time.”

 Kozlovsky Golan also attributes the silences to mentality: “Among Mizrahi Jewry, it was not customary to speak of the dead. Notions such as ‘Ili fath math’ [“What’s past is dead”] were rife, although the dead were always referred to in the synagogue,” she says. “Furthermore, a mentality of compassion and modesty prompted many survivors to keep their stories to themselves in order to give the platform to European Jewry.”

 Kozlovsky Golan also attributes some of the responsibility for this to Mizrahi politicians who came to power in Israel starting in 1977 and who, she says, “have done nothing for the sake of the memory of their communities.” This includes figures from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, who have long had key positions in local politics, but “effectively have eradicated the memory of the war.” Additional responsibility devolves on Mizrahi intellectuals (such as the leaders of the Sephardi Democratic Rainbow, past and present), who, she says, “overlaid the story of the Arab Jew onto Mizrahi Jews, but did not address the Holocaust of those Jews or their Zionist activity.”

 In her book, however, Kozlovsky Golan does mention Israeli artists who have dealt with the Holocaust of North African Jewry. “After all my searches, I found only three Mizrahi artists who addressed the subject: Joseph Dadon, Itzik Badash and Nava Barazani,” she relates. “Dadon, for example, depicts in one of his works the lives of the Jews in suitcases. In his film ‘Zion,’ he portrays the Holocaust as a colossal cyclicality that befalls the Jewish people from the East and from the West, through the story of Zion, which is portrayed by [the late actress] Ronit Elkabetz.” Badash’s work is about Libyan mourners in Israel, more specifically his grandmother, who lost seven members of her family.

 Nava Barazani, who in 2016 became the first female Mizrahi artist to have her work exhibited in the Yad Vashem Museum, transformed the testimony of her mother, who was incarcerated in Giado as a girl, into paintings accompanied by a text.

 “Barazani’s work was the first to deal with the Holocaust of North African Jewry to explicitly use the word ‘Holocaust,’” Kozlovsky Golan relates. “More than Dadon and Badash, her work is direct and focused on her mother’s experiences in Libya, which includes the forced labor of the father and the death of her grandmother and her grandmother’s three younger sisters. In another case, which was engraved in the memory of the mother as a girl, a woman sat on the floor breast-feeding her baby, and a soldier arrived and cut off her breast and shot her. The characteristics of Barazani’s work are saliently of the Holocaust, and the protagonists of her work are the German soldier, the Kapo, hunger and martyrdom.”

 Kozlovsky Golan hasn’t yet concluded her research and is planning to publish another volume, which will deal with artwork done in Europe on the theme of the Holocaust of Mizrahi Jews. “Greater awareness of the subject is developing among the young generation of political activists and among some Knesset members,” she says. Her hope is that the subject will receive more recognition and visibility among the Israeli public – while there are still survivors among the living.

r

[zamancollective]

The Anthropologist’s Dilemma: Examining the Complexity of Middle-Eastern Ethnic Identities

By Kyle Newman

In a volatile time of political and religious conflict, the Middle East has been branded as one of the most complicated and divided geographical regions on Earth. However, alongside the tense West Asian and North African sociopolitical issues up for debate today, there lies a broader issue at hand: the entire ethnic identity of the region’s population.

In the United States Census, there is no specific category to define Middle-Easterners. Peoples belonging to a wide array of nationalities, cultures, and sub-ethnic identities all check the same box, labeled as “White (including people of Middle Eastern origin).” Even in the upcoming 2020 census, which is undergoing reforms that will better represent the racial and ethnic makeup of the United States, no box for people of West Asian and North African origin will be included. 

The census’ repeated failure to recognize the unique racial makeup of Middle-Eastern peoples sheds light on many truths and misconceptions regarding the issue of ethnic identity in the Middle East. 

For one, West Asians do bear a closer genetic proximity to European groups when compared to other populations across the world, perhaps giving rise to their inclusion in the broader “Caucasian” This generalization does not suffice as an accurate description of the nuanced ethnic backgrounds of those who inhabit every Middle Eastern and North African country.

For the most part, populations in the Middle East and North Africa are grouped into two main ethnic or racial categories, which themselves are still contested. The West Asian label includes most people with ancestry hailing from modern-day Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The North African and Arabian label includes most people with ancestry from the Gulf Arab states (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, Kuwait), the Levant (Israel and Lebanon), Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, and Tunisia. These two categories are most commonly used by genetic testing services when identifying ethnic backgrounds, but could be seen as very erroneous in and of themselves. 

For example, the West Asian category’s inclusion of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan may seem sensible in that their populations had mixed with other West Asian groups in the era of the Silk Road; however, this neglects the fact that most people from these two countries are of Turkic origin. Georgia is also inaccurately placed in this category because most Georgians and other people from the Caucasus mountains are a genetically isolated group that arguably function as an independent genetic category. Syria, Iraq, and the Levant should not necessarily be grouped with Iran because their inhabitants are mostly Semitic peoples that do not bear relation to the ethnically Iranian and Turkic people within Iran. Altogether, although this method of separating Middle-Eastern ethic identities into two larger groups definitely has its faults, it does offer a more interpretation of the region's genetic makeup than “Caucasian”.

Rather, the most accurate way to categorize the ethnic groups of West Asia based on genetic clustering, as suggested by many current anthropologists, would be to distinguish between  Iranian peoples, Turkic peoples, Caucasian peoples, Levantine peoples, Armenian peoples, and Arabian and North African peoples. Ethnically Iranian people would mostly inhabit Iran and the Kurdish regions of Eastern Turkey, Northeast Syria, and Northern Iraq. Turkic peoples would inhabit most of Turkey (excluding its Kurdish and Armenian population centers in the east), and Azerbaijan. Caucasian peoples would inhabit Georgia (excluding the region of Ossetia, which largely contains a population of Iranian descent). Levantine peoples would inhabit Lebanon, Israel / Palestine, and parts of Syria. Armenian peoples would inhabit modern Armenia, the Nagorno-Karabakh region of southwest Azerbaijan (also referred to as the Republic of Artsakh), and parts of Eastern Turkey and Lebanon. 

Even within this system, however, there are some major flaws due to the sheer complexity of this matter in genetic terms. For instance, Turkic peoples in Turkey only have 15 to 20 percent in common genetically with Turkic peoples in Central Asia, as the migration of Ottomans to Anatolia in the 13th century CE did not have much of a profound effect on the ethnic makeup of modern day Turkish people, and the same applies to modern Azerbaijani people. Overall, the genetic disparities that lay between and within West Asian and North African populations generally make the task of categorizing ethnicities in the Middle East very difficult and controversial.

An even more problematic issue concerning the ethnic identity of Middle Eastern peoples is where the Jewish people fit into the equation. Mizrahi Jews, or Jews of West Asian and North African origin, are - like all other Jewish populations - more closely related to Jews of other diasporic origins than to the non-Jewish populations that surround them. Jews who have ancestry from Iran and Iraq tend to genetically cluster with Druze populations in the Levant, while Yemenite Jews mostly cluster with Bedouins. North African Jews generally form their own distinctive cluster while still maintaining a genetic proximity to ethnically Jewish people than their neighboring non-Jewish North Africans. Therefore, we can deduce that Mizrahi Jews, while genetically close enough to maintain their own position in the broader category of ethnic Judaism, definitely still fit within the broader scope of West Asian and North African identities.

Genetic clustering map of Jewish populations and other ethnic groups (source)

Given the complexities and controversies that come with ethnically categorizing Middle-Eastern populations, one begs the question: What is the purpose of defining such ethnicities in the first place? Why should we pursue such a task if it only creates more problems in a region already teeming with esoteric conflicts? 

An accurate and well-researched approach to characterizing the ethnic makeup of the Middle-East can provide valuable insight as to the region’s history of sociopolitical and religious interactions, partnerships, and conflicts. I will dive more deeply into the political implications of ethnically categorizing the Middle East in a second article that will follow this one in the coming weeks.

[messyonmain]

thanks. i have degree in middle east history actually. i’ve read academic papers from Israeli scholars of Jewish studies, Mizrahi studies, Sephardic studies, etc. i’ve also read the works of Theodore Herzl and works of early “progressive zionists” who pretend to care about Palestinian lives. i’ve read the Balfour Declaration and the UN charts of 1948. i will not be reading random articles and opinion pieces.

i suggest you read:

-The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine & Palestinian Identity by Rashid Khalidi.

-Orientalism & The Question of Palestine by Edward Said

-Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

-Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis

-Nations and Nationalism by Eric Hobsbawm

-Palestine by Joe Sacco

-ID Card by Mahmoud Darwish

don’t come to me and tell me to do my research. i’ve done years of research. you read OUR texts then come back to talk to me.

the fact is, the occupying state of Israel was born out of three major waves of Jewish people from Europe going into Palestine—the First and Second Aliyah and the Nakba. this makes them not indigenous. the only way for the state of Israel to exist is through land theft and colonization.

second, the plan was always to displace and kill off the Palestinians. that’s always been the goal. we’re witnessing that goal now. carpet bombing Gaza with 10,000 bombs over a 20 day period is an act of genocide. if you believe anything else, i beg you to search your soul and really question everything you know because you’ve been fed lies. and i mean this genuinely, you’ve been lied to. everything you know is a lie and you have to start questions it critically.

i’ve grown up all my life hearing the Zionist narrative and being fed Zionist media and news and history. i’ve walked the path of “two states solutions,” and “it’s complicated,” and “both people deserve to be on this land.” and then i dug further. and i opened my eyes and ears to writers, witnesses, and historians from my people and learned that i had been lied to by American media and politics.

have you ever truly read or listened to Palestinian academics, writers, poets, etc? have you read the works of our allies?

if you haven’t, ask yourself why? what are you so afraid of? what might you discover if you did?

"Zionism" is to the Left what "Woke" is to the Right--a minority's own term conceived of in relation to the prejudice they face, taken by the majority, twisted, and used as a pejorative, rather than come to terms with the bigotry that originally created it.