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EspañolMIZRAHI JEWS
(Redirected from Mizrahi Jew)
'Mizrahi Jews' or 'Mizrahim', also written ''Mizrachi'', (), also referred to as 'Edot HaMizrah' (communities of the East) are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Middle East. Included in the ''Mizrahi'' category are Jews from the Arab world, as well as other communities from other Muslim countries, including the Arab Jews, Georgian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Persian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Syrian Jews, Lebanese Jews, Mountain Jews, Yemenite Jews, Indian Jews (including many of Iraqi descent), Maghrebi Jews, Berber Jews and Kurdish Jews. Despite their heterogeneous origins, Jews from these areas generally practise traditional Sephardic Judaism, with some differences between the minhagim of the particular communities.
"Mizrahi" is literally translated as "Eastern", מזרח (Mizrach) being 'East" in Hebrew. The original use of the terms "Mizrahi" and "Edot ha-Mizrach" was as a translation of the Arabic term ''Mashriqiyyun'' (Easterners), referring to the people of Syria, Iraq and other Asian countries, as distinct from those of North Africa (''Maghrabiyyun'').
In modern Israeli usage, it refers to all Jews from Arabic and Asian countries. The term came to be widely used by Mizrahi activists in the early 1990s, and since then has become a widely accepted designation. [1]
Many Mizrahim today reject this (or any) umbrella description and prefer to identify themselves by their particular country of origin, or that of their immediate ancestors, e.g. "Iraqi Jew", "Tunisian Jew", "Persian Jew", etc. Another description sometimes heard is "Oriental Jews", this term being still quite common in the western hemisphere, though some find it demeaning following the sense given to "Orientalism" by Edward Said.
Many speakers, especially in Israel, identify all non-Ashkenazi Jews as Sephardim. This is widely perceived as illogical, as the literal meaning of "Sepharad" in medieval and modern Hebrew is "Spain" or "Iberia", and most Mizrahim are not in fact of Spanish or Portuguese descent.
The reason for this usage is that most Mizrahi communities use much the same religious ritual as Sephardim proper (i.e. descendants of the Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, that is, modern Spain and Portugal). Thus, though they are not "Spanish Jews" they are "Jews of the Spanish rite". (In the same way, "Ashkenazim" is used for "Jews of the German rite", whether or not they originate from Germany.) This broader definition of "Sephardim" is common in religious circles, especially those associated with the Shas political party.
Others prefer to differentiate between Sephardim proper and Mizrahim. There is some disagreement on whether Iberian-descended Sephardim from Eastern countries (e.g. Turkish Jews) should be described as "Mizrahim" or not.
Another description sometimes used is "Arab Jews": for the arguments for and against that term, see the article of that name.
In many Arab countries there was a social distinction between Judeo-Romance-speaking Sephardim arriving after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, plus the ones expelled by order of King Manuel I of Portugal in 1497, and the older Arabic-speaking communities. The latter were often referred to by themselves as "Musta'arabim" or by the Sephardim as "Moriscos" (equivalent to "Moors" in English).
Main articles: Judeo-Arabic languages
Mizrahi communities spoke a number of Judeo-Arabic dialects such as Maghrebi, though these are now mainly used as a second language. Most of the many notable philosophical, religious and literary works of the Mizrahim were written in Arabic using a modified Hebrew alphabet.
Among other languages associated with Mizrahim are Judeo-Persian (Dzhidi), Gruzinic, Bukhori, Kurdish, Judeo-Berber, Juhuri, Judeo-Marathi, Judeo-Malayalam and Judeo-Aramaic dialects.
Aramaic is a close sister of Hebrew and is identified as a "Jewish language", since it is the language of major Jewish texts (the Talmuds, Zohar, and many ritual recitations such as the Kaddish). Aramaic has traditionally been a language of Talmudic debate in yeshivoth, as many rabbinic texts are written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic. Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects, as spoken by the Jews of Kurdistan, are descended from Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (as can be seen from its hundreds of reflexes in Jewish Neo-Aramaic). By the early 1950s virtually the entire Jewish community of Kurdistan — a rugged, mostly mountainous region comprising parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Caucasus, where Jews had lived since antiquity — had been completely relocated to Israel. The vast majority of Kurdish Jews, who were primarily concentrated in northern Iraq, left Kurdistan in the mass aliyah (immigration to Israel) of 1950-51, which brought almost all Kurdish Jews to Israel, ending thousands of years of Jewish history in Assyria and Babylonia. In addition to Judeo-Aramaic, some Kurdish Jews speak an unrelated language called "Judeo-Kurdish" which is a "Jewish" form of the Indo-European Kurdish language.
Most Persian Jews speak standard Persian.
''See also ''Mizrahi Hebrew language.
Main articles: Jewish exodus from Arab lands
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and subsequent establishment of the state of Israel, most Mizrahi Jews emigrated to the new state where they could become citizens.
Anti-Jewish actions by Arab governments in the 1950s and 1960s, including in particular the expulsion of 25,000 Mizrahi Jews from Egypt after the 1956 Suez Crisis, led to the overwhelming majority of Mizrahim being obliged or pressured to leave Arab countries, becoming, in a sense, refugees. Most went to Israel. Many Moroccan and Algerian Jews went to France, and thousands of Syrians and Egyptians to the United States.
Today, as many as 40,000 Mizrahim still remain in communities scattered throughout the non-Arab Muslim world, primarily in Iran, but also Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey [2]. There are few remaining in the Arab world, with just over 5,000 left in Morocco and less than 2,000 in Tunisia. Other countries with remnants of ancient Jewish communities with official recognition, such as Lebanon, have 100 or fewer Jews. A trickle of emigration continues, mainly to Israel and the United States. Many Jews in Iran feel actively persecuted and a number have been arrested, mostly for alleged connections with Israel and the United States. Some have been executed, with religious intolerance often cited as the main contributing factor. [3]
Since their arrival in Israel, the Mizrahim have distinguished themselves from their Ashkenazi counterparts in culture, customs and language. Arabic dialects were the mother tongue of some—especially those from North Africa—Persian for those from Iran, English for the Baghdadi Jews from India and Gruzinic, Georgian, Tajik, Juhuri and various other languages for those who emigrated from elsewhere. Some Israeli Mizrahim still primarily use these languages. Hebrew was a language of prayer only for most Jews not living in Israel, including the Mizrahim.
The Mizrahim were at first accommodated in rudimentary and hastily erected tent cities and later sent to development towns. Settlement in Moshavim (cooperative farming villages) was only partially successful, because many Mizrahim had been craftsmen and merchants with little farming experience.
Mizrahi Jews do have specific cultural differences from Ashkenazi Jews and from each other which can make assimilation into Israeli society a difficult, decades-long process. Sociologists have noted many factors that influence the rate of integration, among them the amount of education a community possesses before it arrives and the presence or lack of a professional class within each community. However intermarriage between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim is now relatively common in Israel and the Hebrew language is so universal among the most recent generations that later newcomers, such as immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopians, consider Mizrahim to be a branch of Israeli society.
According to a survey by Adva Center, the average income of Ashkenazim was 36 percent higher than that of Mizrahim in 2004 (Hebrew PDF - [4]), but this difference is declining as the communities integrate.
According to a study conducted by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Mizrahi Jews are less likely to pursue academic studies than Ashkenazi Jews, and the percentage of Arabs or Mizrahi Jews pursuing a doctorate is less than 10% of the total among doctoral students. [5],[6].
Although most of the Mizrahi Jews in Israel are second-generation immigrants, the percentage who seek a university education remains low compared to second-generation immigrant groups of Ashkenazi origin, such as the Russians. According to the CBS study, Ashkenazi immigrants of post-high school age are up to 10 times more likely to study in a university than an Israeli-born Mizrahi.[7]
★ Yitzhak Navon, fifth president of Israel
★ Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, current Minister of Infrastructure, former Israeli Minister of Defense and Israel Labor Party chairman
★ Avigdor Kahalani, former minister of Internal Security and decorated IDF tank commander
★ Moshe Katsav, former President of the State of Israel
★ David Levy, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister
★ Shaul Mofaz, former Israeli Minister of Defense and chief of the IDF General Staff
★ Yitzhak Mordechai, retired IDF general, former Israeli Minister of Defense, former Minister of Transport
★ Amir Peretz, former Israeli Minister of Defense, former Israeli Labor Party chairman, former chairman of the Histadrut labor federation
★ Silvan Shalom, former Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister
★ Aryeh Deri, former leader of Shas Party
★ Meir Sheetrit
★ Dalia Itzik, current Knesset speaker
★ Sasson Somekh, professor
★ Sami Michael, author
★ Daniel Ben Simon, journalist
★ Yehouda Shenhav, professor
★ Sasson Sofer, professor
★ Shlomo Ben Ami, professor and diplomat
★ Elliott Yamin, American singer, (Jewish Iraqi father)
★ Paula Abdul, American singer,dancer, American Idol judge, Syrian Jewish family
★ Sacha Baron Cohen, British actor, comedian, aka Ali G, Persian Jewish family
★ Jerry Seinfeld, American actor, comedian (mother is a Jew from Damascus, Syria)
★ Zohar Argov, Israeli born, Yeminite, King of Mizrahi music
★ Gali Atari, Israeli born, Yemenite family, singer and actress, won the Eurovision Song Contest
★ Shoshana Atari, Israeli born, Yemenite family, actress, character on Sesame Street in English
★ Yizhar Cohen, Israeli born, Yemenite family, singer, won the Eurovision Song Contest
★ Shoshana Damari, Yemen born, Israeli singer
★ Boaz Sharabi Israeli born, Yemenite, Tunisian & Moroccan ancestors, singer
★ Dana International, Israeli born, Yemenite pop singer, won the Eurovision Song Contest
★ Ninette Tayeb, Israel born, Moroccan singer, won "A Star is Born" (Kohav Nolad) Contest
★ Ofra Haza, Israel born, Yemenite pop and oriental music
★ Shoista Mullodzhanova, Bukharan Jewish Shashmakon singer
★ Farhat Ezekiel Nadira (Nadira), Bollywood actress of the 1940s and 50s
★ Achinoam Nini, Israel born, Yemenite pop singer
★ Rita, Iranian born, Israeli pop singer
★ Bahar Soomekh, Persian Jewish-American actress
★ Subliminal, Israeli rapper of Persian descent
★ Kenan Dogulu, Turkish pop singer (Dogulu means "easterner")
★ Charles Saatchi, advertising executive and art collector (of Iraqi descent)
★ Maurice Saatchi, Baron Saatchi, advertising executive and chairman of the British Conservative Party
★ David Sassoon, Indian businessman and philanthropist (of Iraqi decent)
★ Michael Kadoorie, prominent businessman from Hong-Kong
★ Victor Choua Moche, prominent member of the community in Kobe, Japan
★ Lev Leviev, Israeli businessman of Bukharan descent
★ David and Simon Reuben, British Baghdadi Jewish businessman
★ Isaac Mizrahi, fashion designer
★ Ovadia Yosef, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel and current spiritual leader of Shas
★ Mordechai Eliyahu, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel
★ Ben Ish Chai was a leading Hakham (Sephardic Rabbi), authority on Jewish law (Halakha) and Kabbalist
★ Amnon Yitzhak, is a well-known Orthodox Haredi Israeli rabbi of Yemenite origin
★ J.F.R. Jacob, celebrated Indian Army officer and participant in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
★ Sami Shalom Chetrit, activist, Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow
★ Ella Shohat, "The Invention of the Mizrahim" in: ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 29, No. 1. (Autumn, 1999), pp. 5-20.
★ Arab Jews
★ Jewish ethnic divisions
★ History of the Jews under Muslim rule
★ History of the Jews in Algeria
★ History of the Jews in Egypt
★ History of the Jews in Iran
★ History of the Jews in Iraq
★ History of the Jews in Morocco
★ History of the Jews in Tunisia
★ History of the Jews in Syria
★ Bukharian Jews
★ Mountain Jews
★ Syrian Jews
★ Persian Jews
★ Iran-Israel relations
★ Yemenite Jews
★ Indian Jews
★ Georgian Jews
★ Jews of the Bilad el-Sudan (West Africa)
★ Israeli Black Panthers
★ Jewish exodus from Arab lands
★ Sephardi Jews
★ Arab Jewish tribes
★ PersianRabbi.com An online forum for the Persian Sephardic Jewish Community.
★ JIMENA Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa.
★ Mizrahi Wanderings - Nancy Hawker on Samir Naqqash, one of Israel’s foremost Arab-language Mizrahi novelists.
★ The Middle East's Forgotten Refugees A chronicle of Mizrahi refugees by Semha Alwaya.
★ The Forgotten Refugees
★ Moshe Levy The story of an Iraqi Jew in the Israeli Navy and his survival on the war-ship Eilat.
★ My Life in Iraq Yeheskel Kojaman describes his life as a Mizrahi Jew in Iraq in the 50s and 60s.
★ Multiculturalism Project - Middle Eastern and North African Jews
★ Loolwa Khazzoom - Multiculturalism movement for non-European Jewish history, heritage & social justice.
★ Hakeshet Hademocratit Hamizrachit - An organization of Mizrahi Jews in Israel.
★ Kurdish Jewry (יהדות כורדיסתאן) An Israeli site on Kurdish Jewry. (in Hebrew)
★ The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center Disseminating the rich 3000 year old heritage of Babylonian Jewry. (in English and Hebrew)
★ Iraqi Jews (יהודי עיראק - يهود العراق) Iraqi American Jewish Community in New York. Perpetuating the history, heritage, culture and traditions of Babylonian Jewry.
★ Audio interview with Ammiel Alcalay discussing Mizrahi literature
★ Excerpt from ''The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times'' by Norman Stillman
★ World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries
★ Etan Bloom, ''The Reproduction of the Model ‘Oriental’ in the Israeli Social Space; the 50s and the speedy immigration.''Tel-Aviv Univ. M.A in the Unit for Culture Research, 2003. Available (including summary in English) in: www.tau.ac.il/tarbut/tezot/bloom
'Mizrahi Jews' or 'Mizrahim', also written ''Mizrachi'', (), also referred to as 'Edot HaMizrah' (communities of the East) are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Middle East. Included in the ''Mizrahi'' category are Jews from the Arab world, as well as other communities from other Muslim countries, including the Arab Jews, Georgian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Persian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Syrian Jews, Lebanese Jews, Mountain Jews, Yemenite Jews, Indian Jews (including many of Iraqi descent), Maghrebi Jews, Berber Jews and Kurdish Jews. Despite their heterogeneous origins, Jews from these areas generally practise traditional Sephardic Judaism, with some differences between the minhagim of the particular communities.
History and usage
"Mizrahi" is literally translated as "Eastern", מזרח (Mizrach) being 'East" in Hebrew. The original use of the terms "Mizrahi" and "Edot ha-Mizrach" was as a translation of the Arabic term ''Mashriqiyyun'' (Easterners), referring to the people of Syria, Iraq and other Asian countries, as distinct from those of North Africa (''Maghrabiyyun'').
In modern Israeli usage, it refers to all Jews from Arabic and Asian countries. The term came to be widely used by Mizrahi activists in the early 1990s, and since then has become a widely accepted designation. [1]
Many Mizrahim today reject this (or any) umbrella description and prefer to identify themselves by their particular country of origin, or that of their immediate ancestors, e.g. "Iraqi Jew", "Tunisian Jew", "Persian Jew", etc. Another description sometimes heard is "Oriental Jews", this term being still quite common in the western hemisphere, though some find it demeaning following the sense given to "Orientalism" by Edward Said.
Other designations
Many speakers, especially in Israel, identify all non-Ashkenazi Jews as Sephardim. This is widely perceived as illogical, as the literal meaning of "Sepharad" in medieval and modern Hebrew is "Spain" or "Iberia", and most Mizrahim are not in fact of Spanish or Portuguese descent.
The reason for this usage is that most Mizrahi communities use much the same religious ritual as Sephardim proper (i.e. descendants of the Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, that is, modern Spain and Portugal). Thus, though they are not "Spanish Jews" they are "Jews of the Spanish rite". (In the same way, "Ashkenazim" is used for "Jews of the German rite", whether or not they originate from Germany.) This broader definition of "Sephardim" is common in religious circles, especially those associated with the Shas political party.
Others prefer to differentiate between Sephardim proper and Mizrahim. There is some disagreement on whether Iberian-descended Sephardim from Eastern countries (e.g. Turkish Jews) should be described as "Mizrahim" or not.
Another description sometimes used is "Arab Jews": for the arguments for and against that term, see the article of that name.
In many Arab countries there was a social distinction between Judeo-Romance-speaking Sephardim arriving after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, plus the ones expelled by order of King Manuel I of Portugal in 1497, and the older Arabic-speaking communities. The latter were often referred to by themselves as "Musta'arabim" or by the Sephardim as "Moriscos" (equivalent to "Moors" in English).
Language
Main articles: Judeo-Arabic languages
Among other languages associated with Mizrahim are Judeo-Persian (Dzhidi), Gruzinic, Bukhori, Kurdish, Judeo-Berber, Juhuri, Judeo-Marathi, Judeo-Malayalam and Judeo-Aramaic dialects.
Aramaic is a close sister of Hebrew and is identified as a "Jewish language", since it is the language of major Jewish texts (the Talmuds, Zohar, and many ritual recitations such as the Kaddish). Aramaic has traditionally been a language of Talmudic debate in yeshivoth, as many rabbinic texts are written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic. Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects, as spoken by the Jews of Kurdistan, are descended from Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (as can be seen from its hundreds of reflexes in Jewish Neo-Aramaic). By the early 1950s virtually the entire Jewish community of Kurdistan — a rugged, mostly mountainous region comprising parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Caucasus, where Jews had lived since antiquity — had been completely relocated to Israel. The vast majority of Kurdish Jews, who were primarily concentrated in northern Iraq, left Kurdistan in the mass aliyah (immigration to Israel) of 1950-51, which brought almost all Kurdish Jews to Israel, ending thousands of years of Jewish history in Assyria and Babylonia. In addition to Judeo-Aramaic, some Kurdish Jews speak an unrelated language called "Judeo-Kurdish" which is a "Jewish" form of the Indo-European Kurdish language.
Most Persian Jews speak standard Persian.
''See also ''Mizrahi Hebrew language.
Post-1948 dispersal
Main articles: Jewish exodus from Arab lands
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and subsequent establishment of the state of Israel, most Mizrahi Jews emigrated to the new state where they could become citizens.
Anti-Jewish actions by Arab governments in the 1950s and 1960s, including in particular the expulsion of 25,000 Mizrahi Jews from Egypt after the 1956 Suez Crisis, led to the overwhelming majority of Mizrahim being obliged or pressured to leave Arab countries, becoming, in a sense, refugees. Most went to Israel. Many Moroccan and Algerian Jews went to France, and thousands of Syrians and Egyptians to the United States.
Today, as many as 40,000 Mizrahim still remain in communities scattered throughout the non-Arab Muslim world, primarily in Iran, but also Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey [2]. There are few remaining in the Arab world, with just over 5,000 left in Morocco and less than 2,000 in Tunisia. Other countries with remnants of ancient Jewish communities with official recognition, such as Lebanon, have 100 or fewer Jews. A trickle of emigration continues, mainly to Israel and the United States. Many Jews in Iran feel actively persecuted and a number have been arrested, mostly for alleged connections with Israel and the United States. Some have been executed, with religious intolerance often cited as the main contributing factor. [3]
Mizrahim in modern Israel
Since their arrival in Israel, the Mizrahim have distinguished themselves from their Ashkenazi counterparts in culture, customs and language. Arabic dialects were the mother tongue of some—especially those from North Africa—Persian for those from Iran, English for the Baghdadi Jews from India and Gruzinic, Georgian, Tajik, Juhuri and various other languages for those who emigrated from elsewhere. Some Israeli Mizrahim still primarily use these languages. Hebrew was a language of prayer only for most Jews not living in Israel, including the Mizrahim.
The Mizrahim were at first accommodated in rudimentary and hastily erected tent cities and later sent to development towns. Settlement in Moshavim (cooperative farming villages) was only partially successful, because many Mizrahim had been craftsmen and merchants with little farming experience.
Mizrahi Jews do have specific cultural differences from Ashkenazi Jews and from each other which can make assimilation into Israeli society a difficult, decades-long process. Sociologists have noted many factors that influence the rate of integration, among them the amount of education a community possesses before it arrives and the presence or lack of a professional class within each community. However intermarriage between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim is now relatively common in Israel and the Hebrew language is so universal among the most recent generations that later newcomers, such as immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopians, consider Mizrahim to be a branch of Israeli society.
According to a survey by Adva Center, the average income of Ashkenazim was 36 percent higher than that of Mizrahim in 2004 (Hebrew PDF - [4]), but this difference is declining as the communities integrate.
According to a study conducted by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Mizrahi Jews are less likely to pursue academic studies than Ashkenazi Jews, and the percentage of Arabs or Mizrahi Jews pursuing a doctorate is less than 10% of the total among doctoral students. [5],[6].
Although most of the Mizrahi Jews in Israel are second-generation immigrants, the percentage who seek a university education remains low compared to second-generation immigrant groups of Ashkenazi origin, such as the Russians. According to the CBS study, Ashkenazi immigrants of post-high school age are up to 10 times more likely to study in a university than an Israeli-born Mizrahi.[7]
Prominent Mizrahi figures
Former Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, current spiritual leader of Shas
Politicians
★ Yitzhak Navon, fifth president of Israel
★ Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, current Minister of Infrastructure, former Israeli Minister of Defense and Israel Labor Party chairman
★ Avigdor Kahalani, former minister of Internal Security and decorated IDF tank commander
★ Moshe Katsav, former President of the State of Israel
★ David Levy, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister
★ Shaul Mofaz, former Israeli Minister of Defense and chief of the IDF General Staff
★ Yitzhak Mordechai, retired IDF general, former Israeli Minister of Defense, former Minister of Transport
★ Amir Peretz, former Israeli Minister of Defense, former Israeli Labor Party chairman, former chairman of the Histadrut labor federation
★ Silvan Shalom, former Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister
★ Aryeh Deri, former leader of Shas Party
★ Meir Sheetrit
★ Dalia Itzik, current Knesset speaker
Writers and Academics
★ Sasson Somekh, professor
★ Sami Michael, author
★ Daniel Ben Simon, journalist
★ Yehouda Shenhav, professor
★ Sasson Sofer, professor
★ Shlomo Ben Ami, professor and diplomat
Entertainers
★ Elliott Yamin, American singer, (Jewish Iraqi father)
★ Paula Abdul, American singer,dancer, American Idol judge, Syrian Jewish family
★ Sacha Baron Cohen, British actor, comedian, aka Ali G, Persian Jewish family
★ Jerry Seinfeld, American actor, comedian (mother is a Jew from Damascus, Syria)
★ Zohar Argov, Israeli born, Yeminite, King of Mizrahi music
★ Gali Atari, Israeli born, Yemenite family, singer and actress, won the Eurovision Song Contest
★ Shoshana Atari, Israeli born, Yemenite family, actress, character on Sesame Street in English
★ Yizhar Cohen, Israeli born, Yemenite family, singer, won the Eurovision Song Contest
★ Shoshana Damari, Yemen born, Israeli singer
★ Boaz Sharabi Israeli born, Yemenite, Tunisian & Moroccan ancestors, singer
★ Dana International, Israeli born, Yemenite pop singer, won the Eurovision Song Contest
★ Ninette Tayeb, Israel born, Moroccan singer, won "A Star is Born" (Kohav Nolad) Contest
★ Ofra Haza, Israel born, Yemenite pop and oriental music
★ Shoista Mullodzhanova, Bukharan Jewish Shashmakon singer
★ Farhat Ezekiel Nadira (Nadira), Bollywood actress of the 1940s and 50s
★ Achinoam Nini, Israel born, Yemenite pop singer
★ Rita, Iranian born, Israeli pop singer
★ Bahar Soomekh, Persian Jewish-American actress
★ Subliminal, Israeli rapper of Persian descent
★ Kenan Dogulu, Turkish pop singer (Dogulu means "easterner")
Business people
★ Charles Saatchi, advertising executive and art collector (of Iraqi descent)
★ Maurice Saatchi, Baron Saatchi, advertising executive and chairman of the British Conservative Party
★ David Sassoon, Indian businessman and philanthropist (of Iraqi decent)
★ Michael Kadoorie, prominent businessman from Hong-Kong
★ Victor Choua Moche, prominent member of the community in Kobe, Japan
★ Lev Leviev, Israeli businessman of Bukharan descent
★ David and Simon Reuben, British Baghdadi Jewish businessman
Others
★ Isaac Mizrahi, fashion designer
★ Ovadia Yosef, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel and current spiritual leader of Shas
★ Mordechai Eliyahu, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel
★ Ben Ish Chai was a leading Hakham (Sephardic Rabbi), authority on Jewish law (Halakha) and Kabbalist
★ Amnon Yitzhak, is a well-known Orthodox Haredi Israeli rabbi of Yemenite origin
★ J.F.R. Jacob, celebrated Indian Army officer and participant in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
★ Sami Shalom Chetrit, activist, Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow
Bibliography
★ Ella Shohat, "The Invention of the Mizrahim" in: ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 29, No. 1. (Autumn, 1999), pp. 5-20.
See also
★ Arab Jews
★ Jewish ethnic divisions
★ History of the Jews under Muslim rule
★ History of the Jews in Algeria
★ History of the Jews in Egypt
★ History of the Jews in Iran
★ History of the Jews in Iraq
★ History of the Jews in Morocco
★ History of the Jews in Tunisia
★ History of the Jews in Syria
★ Bukharian Jews
★ Mountain Jews
★ Syrian Jews
★ Persian Jews
★ Iran-Israel relations
★ Yemenite Jews
★ Indian Jews
★ Georgian Jews
★ Jews of the Bilad el-Sudan (West Africa)
★ Israeli Black Panthers
★ Jewish exodus from Arab lands
★ Sephardi Jews
★ Arab Jewish tribes
External links
★ PersianRabbi.com An online forum for the Persian Sephardic Jewish Community.
★ JIMENA Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa.
★ Mizrahi Wanderings - Nancy Hawker on Samir Naqqash, one of Israel’s foremost Arab-language Mizrahi novelists.
★ The Middle East's Forgotten Refugees A chronicle of Mizrahi refugees by Semha Alwaya.
★ The Forgotten Refugees
★ Moshe Levy The story of an Iraqi Jew in the Israeli Navy and his survival on the war-ship Eilat.
★ My Life in Iraq Yeheskel Kojaman describes his life as a Mizrahi Jew in Iraq in the 50s and 60s.
★ Multiculturalism Project - Middle Eastern and North African Jews
★ Loolwa Khazzoom - Multiculturalism movement for non-European Jewish history, heritage & social justice.
★ Hakeshet Hademocratit Hamizrachit - An organization of Mizrahi Jews in Israel.
★ Kurdish Jewry (יהדות כורדיסתאן) An Israeli site on Kurdish Jewry. (in Hebrew)
★ The Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center Disseminating the rich 3000 year old heritage of Babylonian Jewry. (in English and Hebrew)
★ Iraqi Jews (יהודי עיראק - يهود العراق) Iraqi American Jewish Community in New York. Perpetuating the history, heritage, culture and traditions of Babylonian Jewry.
★ Audio interview with Ammiel Alcalay discussing Mizrahi literature
★ Excerpt from ''The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times'' by Norman Stillman
★ World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries
★ Etan Bloom, ''The Reproduction of the Model ‘Oriental’ in the Israeli Social Space; the 50s and the speedy immigration.''Tel-Aviv Univ. M.A in the Unit for Culture Research, 2003. Available (including summary in English) in: www.tau.ac.il/tarbut/tezot/bloom
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