Daniel Klein ~ The Status And Participation Of ‘Mizrahim’ In Israeli Society

Immediately prior to Israeli independence in May 1948, Jews of non-Ashkenazi origin made up only twenty-three-percent of the 630,000-strong Yishuv. Between 1948 and 1981 757,000 Jews immigrated to Israel from African and Asian countries, 648,000 of these before 1964, and the majority in the first few years of the state’s existence. This initial mass-immigration wave alone transformed the non-Ashkenazi segment of the population from a minority, mostly well-rooted Sephardi community, concentrated especially in Jerusalem, to a highly diversified, mostly first-generation-immigrant grouping that made up a slim majority of all Jews in Eretz Israel. Ben-Gurion referred to these uprooted individuals, who had permanently fled the hostile environment in their home countries, as “human dust” out of which it was the state’s duty to form “a civilised, independent nation”, reflecting the bureaucratic, modernist, and even authoritarian ethos of early Israeli elites.

The term ‘Mizrahi’ (‘Eastern’) first developed among Ashkenazim as a general descriptor for the non-European ‘edot (communities), owing to the perceived cultural similarity between them, and their lack of overarching, geographically-extended identifiers such as that shared by Ashkenazim. However, we shall see that, in consequence of their shared experience in the new country, a genuinely ‘Mizrahi’-identified bloc emerged in the decades following the great immigration wave, the founding event of this new syncretic ethnic-group. This is the first period I will discuss. The second begins by the 1980s and is characterised by the development of an ‘Israeli-Jewish’ ethnic-group, out of two consolidated (Ashkenazi and Mizrahi) blocs. I will argue that despite confronting harsh challenges in the first period, it is clear today that Mizrahim have affected a substantial long-term reshaping of Israeli society, whilst simultaneously maintaining its core values and stability, thus demonstrating the massive extent of their solidarity and cooperation with fellow Israelis.

The complete paper on academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/The_Status

Naeim Giladi ~ World Organization Of Jews From Islamic Countries

11-07-94 Original Air Date – Naeim Giladi (Hebrew: נעים גלעדי‎) (born 1929, Iraq, as Naeim Khalaschi) is an Anti-Zionist, and author of an autobiographical article and historical analysis entitled The Jews of Iraq. The article later formed the basis for his originally self-published book Ben Gurion’s Scandals: How the Haganah and the Mossad Eliminated Jews.

Giladi was born in 1929 to an Iraqi Jewish family and later lived in Israel and the United States.[Giladi describes his family as, “a large and important” family named “Haroon” who had settled in Iraq after the Babylonian exile. According to Giladi his family had owned, 50,000 acres (200 km²) devoted to rice, dates and Arab horses. They were later involved in gold purchase and purification, and were therefore given the name, ‘Khalaschi’, meaning ‘Makers of Pure’ by the Turks who occupied Iraq at the time. He states that he joined the underground Zionist movement at age 14 without his parent’s knowledge and was involved in underground activities. He was arrested and jailed by the Iraqi government at the age of 17 in 1947. During his two years in the prison of Abu Ghraib, he was expecting to be sentenced to death for smuggling Iraqi Jews out of the country to Iran, where they were then taken to Israel. He managed to escape from prison and travel to Israel, arriving in May 1950.

While living in Israel, his views of Zionism changed. He writes that, he “was disillusioned personally, disillusioned at the institutionalized racism, disillusioned at what I was beginning to learn about Zionism’s cruelties. The principal interest Israel had in Jews from Islamic countries was as a supply of cheap labor, especially for the farm work that was beneath the urbanized Eastern European Jews. Ben Gurion needed the “Oriental” Jews to farm the thousands of acres of land left by Palestinians who were driven out by Israeli forces in 1948″.
I organized a demonstration in Ashkelon against Ben Gurion’s racist policies and 10,000 people turned out.”
After serving in the Israeli Army between 1967-1970, Giladi was active in the Israeli Black Panthers movement.

The Meaning Of Galut | On Friendship/(Collateral Damage) III

I went to perform with Joseph Semach in Amsterdam as part of the his art exhibition “On Friendship/(Collateral Damage) III“. His artistic partner Linda Bouws interviewed me about the meaning of “GALUT” (Exile in Hebrew).

Here is my site: https://mati-s.com/

שיר פטריוטי – Patriotic Poem

Ronnie Someck. Ills. Joseph Sassoon Semah

שיר פטריוטי

ֲאנִי ִעיָרִקי-ִפּיָג’ָמה,ִאְשִׁתּי רוָֹמנִיָּה
וְַהַבּת ֶשָׁלּנוּ ִהיא ַהַגּנָּב ִמַבְּגָדד.
אָמּא ֶשִׁלּי ַמְמִשׁיָכה ְלַהְרִתּיַח ֶאת ַהְפָּרת וְַהִחֶדֶּקל, ֲאחוִֹתי ָלְמָדה ְלָהִכין ִפּירוְּשִׁקי ֵמִאמּוֹ ָהרוִּסיָּה ֶשׁל ַבֲּעָלהּ.
ֶהָחֵבר ֶשָׁלּנוּ, ָמרוֹקוֹ-ַסִכּין, תּוֵֹקַע ַמזְֵלג
ִמְפָּלָדה נְְגִלית ְבָּדג ֶשׁנּוַֹלד ְבּחוֵֹפי נוְֹרֶבְגיָה. ֻכָּלּנוּ פּוֲֹעִלים ְמֻפָטִּרים ֶשׁהוְּרדוּ ִמִפּגּוֵּמי ַהִמְּגָדּל ֶשָׁרִצינוּ ִלְבנוֹת ְבָּבֶבל.
ֻכָּלּנוּ ֲחנִיתוֹת ֲחֻלדּוֹת ֶשׁדּוֹן ִקישוֹט ֵהִעיף
ַעל ַטֲחנוֹת ָהרוַּח.
ֻכָּלּנוּ ֲעַדיִן יוִֹרים ְבּכוָֹכִבים ְמַסנְוְֵרי ֵעינַיִם ֶרַגע ִלְפנֵי ֶשֵׁהם נְִבָלִעים
ִבְּשִׁביל ֶהָחָלב.

PATRIOTIC POEM

I’m a pajama Iraqi, my wife’s a Romanian gal
and our daughter is the thief of Baghdad.
My mother still boils the Euphrates and the Tigris,
my sister has learned how to make piroshki
from her Russian mother-in-law.
Our friend, a knife Moroccan, stabs an English
steel fork into a fish born on Norwegian shores.
All of us are workers sacked from the scaffoldings
of the tower we wanted to build in Babel.
All of us are rusty spears
that Don Quixote threw at the windmills.
All of us are still shooting at dazzling stars
a moment before they are swallowed up
into the Milky Way.

Translated by Vivian Eden

The Art Of Cooking – Sabich

Sabich is one of my favorite street food! Whenever I go to Israel I have to visit Oved’s Sabich, to enjoy this delicious Iraqi Jewish Pita sandwich.
The ingredients inside the Pita bread are a mix of classic Iraqi ingredients combined with Israeli ones, and together they blend into a perfect taste.
There are a lot of components in the Sabich which actually take time to prepare but it is definitely worth it.

Ingredients:

Israeli salad:
1 Cucumber
2 Tomatoes
1 Large onion
1 Lemon
Parsley

Sabich:
Large Pita bread
Hard-boiled eggs
Large eggplant
Hummus
Salt
Oil to pan fry with

The Sauces:
Amba sauce
(Amba sauce is a very important ingredient but hard to find at local grocery stores. It is a spicy pickled mango sauce, and maybe in the future I will write a recipe. But a good substitute could be the mango chutney.)
Tahini sauce (This is the sauce not the paste, one can make it simply by mixing the tahini, lemon juice, and minced garlic. Season with salt to test.)
Harissa (If you like spicy food!)

Making the eggplant:
First cut the eggplant in large slices and lay them flat on paper towels.
salt generously and wait for about 15 minutes.
There will be a lot of moisture rising out of the eggplant.
Remove the moisture with a paper towel and flip them and do the same process on the other side.
Once the sliced eggplant is done “crying” removes all the moisture from them.
In a skillet fry the sliced eggplant with oil on a low fire until golden brown on both sides.

Making the hard-boiled eggs:
Hard-boiled the eggs and let them chill afterward. Peel the hard-boiled eggs and place them in a box full of water with some tea bags and cover the box.
Let the hard-boiled eggs marinated in the fridge.

Making the Israeli salad:
Dice the cucumber, tomato, and onion and mix them in a bowl. Add chopped parsley and lemon juice.

Create the Sabich!:
Make sure the Pita bread is warm. When reheating Pita bread in the oven make sure to make it wet first, this will keep the Pita bread soft.
Open up the Pita bread and smear a thick layer of hummus on both insides.
Cut the hard-boiled eggs in slices and fill the Pita bread with the hard-boiled eggs and eggplant.
Then add the Israeli salad on top and the sauces!

Once again, this Pita sandwich has a lot of components, but all of them matter and make a perfect Sabich.
So, I hope you will try it out yourself!
Beteavon!

Who Owns Iraqi Jewish History? A Personal Story

In 2013, Maurice Shohet, an Iraqi Jew who now lives in Washington, D.C., received a surprising email from the National Archives. A librarian had recovered his elementary school record that was left behind nearly 40 years ago when he and his family fled Iraq. The record is part of a cache of thousands of personal documents and religious texts that were found at the start of the Iraq War, drowning in the cellar of a building run by one of the world’s most wanted men.

Visit http://www.ija.archives.gov for more information.