Coming from an American oleh this is by far the best essay I have ever read... certainly in English on Israeli society. If you are an American Jew and want to understand Israeli society skip Ari Shavit's book and read this. It also explains why American style Reform and Conservative Jewry will never gain a significant foothold in Israel. Interestingly the influx of French Jews -- also Mizrahi in roots -- adds another wrinkle to this development, a mix of Paris+Casablanca.

Few things:
1. Ovadia Yosef is not the "most important Mizrahi religious figure of the last century". If you want to know about truly great Sephardi\Mizrahi religious figures look up Rabbi Uziel (Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel), the first Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel. This was a great rabbi, a thoughtful, humanist, who continued the centuries-old tradition of moderate Sephardi religious thought. Ovadia Yosef on the other hand adopted the values of the Haredi Ashkenazi society just to make a Sephardi version of them. Recommended reading; the books of Proff. Zvi Zohar on Sephardi religious thought.

During his life Yosef received very little respect in the Israeli society, including most Mizrahim I know and myself. He was made a caricature in eyes of the Israeli mainstream. Only after he died he became suddenly canonized.

2. It's not true that Herzl (i.e. modern Zionism) is not part of the Mizrahim's story. In each and every Jewish community in the Middle East and North Africa there was modern Zionist activism (newspapers, publications, associations, etc) even before WWI. Mentioning Herzl, when he died in 1904 there were many events in these communities commemorating him. Some of these events were even ordered by rabbis - while most Ashkenazi rabbis in the beginning of the century disapproved of Zionism seeing it as a secular reformist movement, most Sephardi rabbis showed great sympathy towards it. Seeing Modern Zionism as a European phenomenon is a stereotype that has little basis in reality. It's derived from the thought that the Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa were traditional pre-modern communities, when in fact the Jews of Egypt were for example more modern than the Jews of many Eastern European countries in the first half of the century. And indeed there was great Zionist activity in Egypt, which faced only little opposition by the Egyptian-Muslim society until 1937 (until pan-Arabism rose, they didn't really care about what's going on in Palestine). When the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was declared, there were celebration events with thousands of participants in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, as amazing as it sounds today. The celebrating crowd was the Jews, and not only they were uninterrupted, there were even Muslim and Coptic delegations congratulating them.

3. Overall you did a good job understanding how the history and sociology of Mizrahim is commonly understood in Israel today. The thing is, that there is a lot of stereotypical thinking that leads to mistakes in the understanding their history and sociology, so it's recommended to dig a bit deeper than that, to the facts themselves.

Excellent article - it's about time the Jews from Arab and Islamic countries moved from margins to mainstream, if only the Ashkenazi media, government and academe would recognize it.

Just a few minor corrections.

Our nation has existed for well over 3000 years. It's the modern state of Israel, formed by Jews returning from diaspora, that is 7 decades old. The only difference is that we spent a good portion of the last 2 millennia or so in exile. Israel's population and the Jewish diaspora as a whole, Ashkenazi or otherwise, are indigenous/native to Eretz Yisra'el.

Israelis should have been seen/viewed as non-Europeans from the very beginning, and not just because of Mizrahim/Sephardim like me.

Brilliant analysis, and this line - "the sense of humiliation in the Islamic world at being defeated militarily by Israel" - is a point not made nearly enough.

So important! especially to North American readership. Thanks!

Really important article. Thank you so much Matti for your research and your clear presentation here. That many of these Jews predate the Common Era in the Middle East is such an important and overlooked point! What a loss to the region they have been but given their treatment in most "Arab" lands, Israel was clearly the only and the best solution.

Very good article. Just a little mistake: Oriental Jews were Zionists since the beginning. The first Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897 had Oriental Jews representatives, and the Zionist movement was very strong in North Africa or Irak. Syria, and Aleppo in particular, may have been slightly different but overall oriental Jews were probably more zionists than Ashkenazim.

As someone who moved to Israel 30 years ago and married someone from Aleppo I actually see very little discrimination against Mizrachim. Frankly most of the Mizrachim who play the discrimination card are failures who use it to justify their failures.
This was an excellent article especially for those from outside Israel who think that Israel is some sort of Manhattan on the Mediterranean. Israel (for better or worse) is firmly plated in the middle east.

Mizrahim who could demonstrate significant westernization did not experience labor market discrimination, at least as measured by their 1961 occupations. Those who appeared "eastern" did experience discrimination. That distinction explains a lot of difference in personal experiences of discrimination. See my book entitled Shifting Ethnic Boundaries and Inequality in Israel, published by Stanford University Press in 2008.

Fabulous! Thanks so much for this. I, too, have noticed that the Israel described so often in print is not the Israel I live in, which is very Mizrachi (and I wouldn't have it any other way).

This is an excellent article, but drawn to extremes at points. I was a founding member of Kibbutz Kissufim, and we had "mizrahim" in our kibbutz at a time when that term was not yet current when we founded the kibbutz in the western Negev in 1951. We had Jews whose families originated in places from Yemen to Trieste, including of course, Iraq and Morocco. True, they were young, but we also had an entire Iraqi family, two daughters who married kibbutz members and and their brother with an old mother.

I believe that the Mapai (Labor Zionists) took a bad rap at the time, because they comprised the nascent bureaucracy of Israel at the time. They had to deal with the problems of receiving immigrants en masse who did not understand these "frenjis" (people wearing western garb). At a time of (tzena) austerity, they had to provide these immigrants their first needs. Immigrants from the West did not find such an element of strangeness in the bureaucrats of immigrant absorption.

There were other "frenjis" as well who on the right. The right had to make the new citizens of IsraeI support them against Labor. I recall a reportage of a pre-election rally of the Herut (precurser of Likkud) at a place called "kikar hatemenim" (Yemenite Square) which is in south Tel Aviv and at which Menachem Begin spoke. Normally, he identified with secular Israelis, but he came from the back of the crowd wearing a kipah and carrying a torah scroll. He knew his crowd. By the time he reached the speaker's platform the crowd was ecstatic, and he spoke as though he was a messianic messenger to a now very eager and accepting audience.

Current history of this period is being written by the powers of today, and while I've no doubt that a large number of Ashkenazi Jews tended to look down on Mizrahi Jews, I don't believe it was dependent on who was right and who was left

That "most Mizrahi Jews have generally been stalwarts of the Right" is possibly an understatement. I've read reports claiming that Mizrahi Jews comprise a full 80% of the Likud electorate -- a phenomenal statistic if true.

Wow! Excellent, excellent! Well researched, well presented, food for thought and for the soul. Some of us think the same way, not many of us are good writers though...

Lot of good information here. I think it's important, however, to take into account some other experiences and perspectives by Arab Jews themselves:

1) "The Invention of the Mizrahim" by Ella Shohat, an Iraqi Jewish professor
https://docs.google.com/fil...

2) "Reflections by an Arab Jew" by Ella Shohat
http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/...

3) "The Jews of the Arab world: A Community Unto Itself"
http://www.bintjbeil.com/ar...

4) "The Jews of Iraq" by Naeim Giladi
http://www.naba.org.uk/Cont...

5) Documentary titled "Jews of Egypt"
http://www.independent.co.u...

"perspectives by Arab Jews themselves"

Sefaradim and Oriental Jews do not call themselves "Arab Jews". We are not Arabs, we are Jews. We were here before them.

Bravo! I find "Arab Jew" to be highly insulting. :-))

I have heard Mizrachi Jews call themselves Arab or Arab Jews. So your perspective is not shared by all. Just saying.

Usually in an attempt to describe to ignorant Westerners a cultural background they know nothing about. Why most Westerners think that there were even such things as Arab Muslims before the 620's C.E., and haven't a clue as to the Histories of the MENA Region....

Ella Shohat and Naeim Giladi are not representative of Mizrahim:
http://jewishrefugees.blogs...

No, they are not. In fact they make most of the rest of the Mizrahi look like snivelers, which we are not.

I never said they were both representative of ALL Mizrahim. But there are different perspectives, experiences, and viewpoints, even among the Mizrahim. Also none of links I provided were meant to justify anti-Jewish sentitment that had existed before and after Israel's creation. But one needs to admit that the creation of Israel created a bigger problem for them especially with how Zionist agents recruited among the local Jewish populations to advance their agenda (Lavon Affair a good example in Egypt). The treatment of the Palestinians also helped exacerbate the problem as many Arabs connected with their situation. Things are different now and it's unfortunate that the terms "Jews" and "Zionists" have become interchangeable in many areas of the Middle East. But let's face it, that's just how Netanyahu and those who think like him want it.

Wrong -- Israeli Mizrahi Jews can and do speak for themselves, and while there has been prejudices our Ashkenaz cousins picked up during their sojourn in Europe, those are disappearing in our commonalities, and now that we don't teeter every day on the bare edges of survival. This is the third return to the homeland for most Jews, as with most indigenous groups to the region, our ancestors were often conquered by the army de jour, but everyone has always know where we come from. But Westerners fail to even bother to know the history of the Levant and the region prior to barging in and laying down their opinions.

Another take on that film:
http://blogs.timesofisrael....

I welcome this timely article, having witnessed the misunderstanding of Israel by my left-leaning friends.

While the label "Israeli" may be useful to designate the fusion of Ashkenazi and Mizrahi strains of Judaism by reason of the melting pot of Israel, the term itself is as old as the Torah. See Lev. 24:10.

My ancestor left Spain during the Inquisition and settled in Greece. I consider myself and furthermore I am a Sephardic Jewess. My parent and I speak an old castillian dialect generally refer to as "Judesmo". In your article I did not see a reference to Sephardic Jews in Israel. Please do not lump us with the Mizrahi Jews.

It may be immaterial shortly -- in my family, the Sephardim, the Mitzrachim and the Ashkenazim are all married to each other....our children are "Israeli."

This openness to not having to be religious or secular is what Chabad has been saying all along. Jews are Jews.

Thanks for the article. I wrote a book called "Daughters of Iraq", that speaks about the Jewish Iraqi part of History, focusing on women. I also lecture about the Jew of Iraq everywhere I am invited, because I am eager to finally
give a voice to this part of History which is shattered. Here is a link on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref...

Recently finished reading, "The Aleppo Codex," and I would really like to find out the rest of the story.

I'm an Arab Jew, alive and well and living in NYC, and Israel will never be my homeland. I was born in Aleppo (in 1936). Though I left in 1949, I consider Syria my true homeland, even if Syria does not recognize me, Syrians don't count me as their countryman, and other Arabs reject it. Furthermore, Israel (the modern country) will never dominate or monopolize my identity as a Jew. No nation-state ever will.

Mizrahi Jews could be the closest relatives to the original Hebrew Israelites. I know that the Polish-Jewish surname "Abramczyk" has some Sephardic origin, but there is a rumour, that it was given to Jews who came from the Ottoman Empire and who were Mizrahi Jews of Sephardic rite.

Is it not true that from Israel's inception, there were always more Mizrahi Jews than Ashkenazim?

Dumisami, Families like mine who were from Hebron and Jerusalem had already experienced a huge amount of persecution from our Muslim neighbors prior to Israel's birth. My own family was butchered by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem's Men in 1929, and our Mizrahi Communities in the British Mandate were decimated right up until Israel was born. Our homes and properties taken, and then the last holdings in Jerusalem were taken when the Jordanians took East Jerusalem, and the ethnic cleansing of Jews from what is now called the West Bank and East Jerusalem occurred. If Israel had not existed, deaths of the remaining survivors of the persecutions would have been complete, and the "Palestinians" (which is what the British and we ourselves called us, the Arabs wanting to be called Arabs at that time) would have been truly genocided. The Iraqi Jews, many came to the British Mandate for Palestine from the British Mandate for Mesopotamia because the British had already created Iraq out of that Land, and the Farhud happened.....terrible times......two sites you might like to look at: http://firstonethrough.word... and http://jewishrefugees.blogs...

No, they came in the 50s, and had a higher birth rate. But in the 90s came the jews from the former Soviet Union, and demography changed again.

All the Muslims living in West Bank and Gaza, as well as 23% of Israeli Muslims, could be given properties and lands that these Arabian Jews (Mizrahi Jews) had to leave behind when they fled with their lives, and now form over 50% of the Jewish population of Israel. That would finally complete the First partition of Palestine in 1922, when 78% of Palestine territory was given to Jordan, which IS a Palestinian Muslim state.

People must read Koran (www.cspipublishing.com/pdfs... to understand why there can be NO end to violence or terrorism and no people in the Middle East, as long as Islam teaches hatred of Jews and Christians, who were barely tolerated by the Muslims as dhimmis (second class citizens who had to pay an often steep tax, Jizyya, for the privilege of not being killed by the Muslims. Unlike Judaism and Christianity (or Buddhism, Hinduism, Bahaism, Mormonism etc.) Islam ITSELF is not compatible with either the US Constitution or the Universal declaration of Human Rights.

If one moves Muslims out of Gaza and West Bank, perhaps, Muslims will realize that their genocidal dreams of "wiping Israel form the map of the world" is not going to happen and perhaps they will give up their genocidal dreams. At least, Jews in Israel (and West Bank) would not have to worry about being kidnapped, or have rockets falling on their heads from Gaza. Perhaps the Muslim terrorists of Hezbollah would also stop shooting rockets on Northern Israel.

Exactly Gea. And while we accepted Jewish refugees, the Muslim world never accepted the Palestinians, keeping them in a state of perpetual state of suffering to advance their hatred and war of legitimacy, against the one Jewish State. They hate us more then they love their own. Their entire preoccupation is just an excuse to focus the attention of the masses away from their very real problems, and towards their raison d'etre, the destruction of the Jewish state.

Nice piece, but I think the discrimination from the Israeli govt was played down. Mizrahim (I was married to a Tunisian Israeli for over a decade and lived in Jerusalem then) were in those tent camps for years. During that time numerous babies were stolen and the govt sat on that scandal for decades. Afterwards they were placed in housing in Development towns and directed both via schools and otherwise to factory jobs and carpentry classes, not towards higher education. Factories were bloated and non-competitive and when they ultimately failed, you had high unemployment.

In Jerusalem (don't know elsewhere), they were also directed towards two bedroom housing like the "train" apartments in Katamon Tet where my in-laws lived). With large families lived under overcrowded conditions.

Contrast with the '90s when the govt knew the Russians were coming and started building immediately. Then again, the Ethiopians were also not treated well, pushed to specific places to live almost in segregation.

You could argue that bias in this difference in treatment towards Ashkenazim and Mizrahim as well.

With music, I think it began softening back in the day of Zohar Argov, but still, for years you could only buy Mizrahi music on the street; music stores wouldn't carry it. I happen to love mizrahi music and am glad it's more widely listened to now...

"apologies for the lack of geographical logic, Jews from the Middle East"
better: Mediterranian Jews

I would consider myself as a bad father, as a worse educator, if my kids will need such articles to know what are the "Ashkenazi Jews".
And its now, after 66 years of independence.
For me its seems so disconnected.

A continuación, el reconocimiento de los hablantes de djudeoespañol