This year, JIMENA is proud to highlight our Holocaust page specially designed for Jewish K-12 educators, part of our Sephardi & Mizrahi Education Toolkit.
This resource is crafted to help educators introduce students to the experiences and stories of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews during the Holocaust—a perspective often underrepresented in Holocaust education.
Our toolkit provides educational materials that include first-hand accounts, lesson plans, and multimedia resources to ensure a comprehensive and inclusive approach to Holocaust education. By bringing these narratives into classrooms, we aim to foster a deeper understanding of the Holocaust's impact on all Jewish communities and the diverse histories of our people.
Soon, Jews around the world will celebrate Passover, a story of resistance and return. From persecution and slavery under a tyrannical ruler to liberation and the beginning of our return to Eretz Israel, it is a story foundational to the Jewish experience. In the face of threats by tyrannical rulers today, we stand steadfast in our identity as Jews, as Jews whose diasporic experience heralds from the Middle East and North Africa, and as Jews who support the existence of Jewish life in our ancestral homeland. Just as before, we will triumph over those who wish to destroy us, and we will continue to advocate for peaceful coexistence for all peoples in the region, so we may live our lives free from persecution, antisemitism, and hate.
The People of Israel Live, today, tomorrow, and forever. Am Israel Chai.
Sarah Abrevaya Stein is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, as well as Professor of History and the Viterbi Family Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies at UCLA. She is the award-winning author or editor of ten books, including, most recently, Wartime North Africa: a Documentary History, 1934-1950 (Stanford University Press, co-authored with Aomar Boum). She lives and surfs in Santa Monica, CA.
MPORTANT: Please note that no registration is required but for security reasons, in the Zoom room only participants identified by name (ie not 'Ipad' or "Wonderwoman') will be admitted. The event will also be livestreamed to the Harif Facebook page.
The event is sponsored by JIMENA.org, JCCSF and will be moderated by podcaster Asal Ehsanipour. About the Speakers:
Danielle Dardashti: ...is an Emmy award-winning documentary writer/producer, a former on-air TV news reporter, and a Moth StorySLAM champion who has been featured on NPR’s Moth Radio Hour. She is the co-author of the Jewish Family Fun Book (Jewish Lights) and co-founder & Creative Director of live storytelling show StoryBoom...
Dr. Galeet Dardashti: ...is a trailblazing vocalist, composer, and anthropologist of Middle Eastern Jewish culture. She is widely known as leader of the all-woman Sephardi/Mizrahi ensemble, Divahn. In her new award-winning release, Monajat, she sings and composes around remixed samples of her famed Iranian grandfather with an acclaimed ensemble of musicians...
Jewish schools must embrace Sephardi and Mizrahi culture
What do students learn about Sephardi and Mizrahi artists? What melodies are used in prayer? How are holiday programs structured?
By TY ALHADEFF
"...Our resources on the devastating impact of the Holocaust on Sephardi & North African communities will provide useful guidance for many Jewish educators and be able to offer a more thorough & comprehensive lesson plan.
We are excited about the potential to create change on a large scale in day schools across the country. Adaptations and adoptions of Sephardic pedagogies and worldviews into modern educational spaces can naturally help Jewish schools become more inclusive of all students, especially those who are ethnically & culturally diverse. With this approach, schools will be able to provide students with a deeper & more accurate understanding of Jews worldwide & in the United States in particular..."
How Israel’s Black Panthers radicalized its Mizrahi Jews, and changed the country by Andrew Silow-Carroll March 17, 2024
"...[Golda] authorized the police to arrest 15 people under what today is called administrative detention, where you don’t need to bring actual charges. This was in the emergency code enacted by the British...
And of course, it backfired. Anyone with any kind of liberal leaning in Israel was asking, “Why are you arresting people?” Word gets out very quickly that raids are happening. And then every bohemian, every left-winger, every kind of professor, all these respectable people descend on City Hall to join the protest. And then they marched over to the police station where some of the Panthers are being held & demand their release. And that taught the Panthers a lesson that what they were doing was very provocative and...they knew that they were onto something.
"Does your Jewish day school expect students to understand Yiddish terms? When learning about Jewish practices, which customs and traditions are discussed? What does “Jewish food” look like at your school?
These are some of the questions that JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa poses to Jewish day schools as the first stage — a self-assessment — in its Sephardi & Mizrahi Education Toolkit, a new guide released on Thursday offering “content, resources, and strategies” to better teach Sephardi and Mizrahi culture and history and to make students of all backgrounds feel more welcomed and included."
@DrALJONES lots and lots of inaccuracies here, but most importantly the term “Mizrahi” to refer to Arab Jews and Jews from Muslim majority countries.
Many reasons for migration to Israel before and after 1948, some of it Zionism (ie Tunisian Jews), some blocked (ie Moroccan Jews) some completely uninterested (Algerian Jews, who were all French citizens) some “forced” (Iraqi and Iranian). Yemenite Jews started arriving before the first Russia immigrant came to Palestine (so called first Aliya).
Throwing them all into a pot and putting the label #Mizrahi on top is what Eastern European Jews did. Themselves marginalized by Ashkenazi Jews.
Complicated, I understand.
The term itself, Mizrahi was used originally by Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews to refer to to Eastern European Jews, not Arab Jews. Part of the de-orientalization process of that group (anyone speaking Yiddish at home is Eastern European, not Ashkenazi = German Jew) upon arriving to Israel was labeling another group “Mizrahi”, and marginalizing them as part of the inevitable allocation of limited resources in early years of Israel. See “How the Polish Peddler Became a German Intellectual” by Aziza Khazzoom for analysis of the process.
The demographer prof Sergio Della Pergola researched this dynamics as well and was able to show how the two main groups diverged upon migrating to Israel, despite arriving with very similar demographic profiles (I can refer you to the data if needed).
Specifically though, after the holocaust the Zionist movement turned to the Arab Jewish diaspora for obvious reasons. Indeed many were not interested. The wealthiest for sure had zero interest in Zionism.
Also see my post from earlier about Hertzl and western Zionists (many Sephardi Jews, like Hertzl himself) as described by Hannah Arendt: a project to transport Eastern European Jews which they saw as a primitive backward community, unable to salvage itself from antisemitism in south of Russia.
What Zionism turned out to be after Hertzl’s death is something very different than he intended.
This video is probably the best summarization of the various Jewish denominations/branches, the history of Judaism, including the various geographic changes that lead to changes, belief structures, understanding of Judaism as different from Christianity, differences on observance, and more.
It's such a great explainer video, I highly recommend it!
Shalom LeKulam, I am Ayali (also known as Ladymaimonides on the old Jtwitter), and this is my #introduction! French Israeli currently living in the US, but I am really from all over. I am into #languages and #poetry. Also, I am into #sephardi and #mizrahi culture and traditions, I follow #andalusi minhag and mesorah. I am looking to connect with some of my old Jtwitter friends and more of the #Jewish community here. Yallah let's go
"It appears that the New York Times manipulated a working-class Mizrahi family in the service of Israeli hasbara in order to score a journalistic achievement, which in reality is nothing more than a repetition of fake news and government propaganda."
@serge the therm #Mizrahi is in fact a repurposed term, #Ostjuden, used by #Ashkenazi Jews to refer to #Yiddish speaking Jews in Eastern Europe. The preferred term by so Israelis and non Israeli is #ArabJews. Like European Jews, Russian Jews, Eastern European Jews.
Further education, if I may:
How the Polish Peddler Became a German Intellectual: Orientalism, Jewish Identity, and the Antecedents to Social Closure in Israel
TIL that the term "Mizrahi" is a reclaimed term, originally a racist term and slurrish, it's since been reclaimed by those Jews as a way to self-identify, especially for those Jews who live in Israel.
I've only heard it in the context of its reclaimed use, but knowing the history is important.
@serge the term #Mizrahi is in fact a repurposed term, #Ostjuden, used by #Ashkenazi Jews to refer to #Yiddish speaking Jews in Eastern Europe. The preferred term by some Israelis (and non Israelis) these days is #ArabJews, as in European Jews etc.
Further education, if I may:
How the Polish Peddler Became a German Intellectual: Orientalism, Jewish Identity, and the Antecedents to Social Closure in Israel
“When many people think of #antisemitism, they tend to think of the six million Jews murdered across Europe by the Nazis and their collaborators, a genocide that took the lives of one third of the #Jewish people,” wrote Lipstadt. “Sadly, many people don’t think of the struggles that #Sephardi and #Mizrahi#Jews have faced in their homelands throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Iran. Though they often lived in harmony with their non-Jewish neighbors, there were far too many moments of discrimination and persecution. Far too many people fail to recall that one million Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews were displaced from their ancestral lands in the past century.”
Smadar #Lavie: "The refusal of elite #military reservists to attend to their periodic training […] is conceived as another Ashkenazi privilege. In general, being pro-Palestinian in #israel often requires contacts and funds to pay bail rather than rot in prison in case one is arrested during a solidarity visit to West Bank villages."
Smadar #Lavie: #israel#Mizrahi left "#NGOs are budget dependent. If there are donations, they usually come from progressive Zionist donor organizations of the American-Jewish diaspora, and NGOs need to adapt their activism so that they don’t offend the donors. The image diaspora Jews have of Israel is that all Jews are equal in the homeland of the Jews."
This week I am joined by Matthew Nouriel, also known as The Empress Mizrahi. They talk about coming out several times, Mizrahi identity, Jewish pride and Zionism. I loved our chat and I’m so excited to be sharing it with you!