Reimagining Jewish Life in the Modern Middle East, 1800-Present: Culture, Society, and History

FAIN: RZ-279900-21

Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA 16802-1503)
Michelle Ursula Campos (Project Director: December 2020 to present)
Orit Bashkin (Co Project Director: February 2021 to present)
Lior B. Sternfeld (Co Project Director: February 2021 to present)

Preparation for print publication of a multi-authored monograph on the history of Jewish life in the Middle East from 1800 to the present, for preparation of a special journal issue, and a website. (36 months)

We propose a large-scale collaborative project to rewrite the histories, narratives, and memories of and by Jews in the Middle East in the 19th-21st centuries. Drawing on original primary sources in numerous languages, diverse interdisciplinary approaches, and creative synthesis of the recent scholarship, we reframe Jews at the center of the modern Middle East and globe rather than on its margins. By analyzing, historicizing, and contextualizing the multifaceted processes of minoritization and sectarianization that took place in different contexts (imperial, colonial, national) beginning in the mid-19th century, we examine the overlapping ways that Jews were both incorporated into and excluded from Middle Eastern polities and societies. These varying trajectories across the region impacted the changing and ongoing political salience of remembering and erasing Jewish presence in the Middle East. We will publish a journal special issue, a multi-authored book, and a robust, dynamic website.

Associated Products

MENA Jewry after ‘the Middle Eastern Turn’: Modernity and Its Shadows (Article)
Title: MENA Jewry after ‘the Middle Eastern Turn’: Modernity and Its Shadows
Author: Campos, Michelle U.
Author: Bashkin, Orit
Author: Sternfeld, Lior B.
Abstract: In the fall of 2021 Netflix began broadcasting an original Turkish dramatic series, "Kulüp" (The Club), which centered on the tragic story of a Sephardi Jewish convicted murderer, Matilda Aseo, as she earned early release from prison and attempted to rebuild her new life. Based on the family story of one of the screenwriters, Rana Denizer, and directed by Zeynep Günay Tan and Seren Yüce, the series' ten episodes follow Matilda as she navigates old ghosts and new relationships in 1950s Istanbul. The streets are peopled with Matilda's fellow Jews but also with Armenians, Greeks, secret crypto-Greeks and various other characters who "pass" as Muslims, and migrant Muslims from the countryside struggling to survive in the big city.1 The viewer is exposed to Ladino conversations and songs in the homes, synagogues, courtyards, and streets of Istanbul, as well as in Matilda's place of employment, a cutting-edge nightclub owned by "Orhan Bey," the crypto-Greek Niko who, battling his own ghosts, employs numerous minorities in addition to its star entertainer, a closeted gay Muslim singer who has been disowned by his family.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.2979/jss.2023.a901511
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Jewish Social Studies
Publisher: Indiana University Press

"Our Cruel Polish Brothers": Moroccan Jews between Casablanca and Wadi Salib, 1956–59 (Article)
Title: "Our Cruel Polish Brothers": Moroccan Jews between Casablanca and Wadi Salib, 1956–59
Author: Hazkani, Shay
Abstract: This article reconsiders three years in the lives of Jews in Morocco and their families who chose to immigrate to Israel. Relying on private correspondence between Moroccan Jews in Israel and in Morocco that was secretly intercepted by the Israeli intelligence apparatus, I argue that Moroccan Jews in Israel underwent a major process of radicalization between Moroccan independence in 1956 and the Moroccan uprising in Israel in 1959, known as the Wadi Salib revolt. In the Moroccan-Israeli case, Moroccan Jews introduced race into the Israeli discourse, and sought to leverage this discourse for a redistribution of resources, primarily among Jews. This radicalization initially developed against the backdrop of the Moroccan struggle for independence against French colonialism; however, other anticolonial and antiracist struggles of the 1950s were also influential. Thus, the prevailing assessment of the Wadi Salib revolt solely as "an Israeli event" diminishes the longer trajectories of Moroccan radicalization.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.2979/jss.2023.a901512
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Jewish Social Studies
Publisher: Indiana University Press

Between the Border of Despair and the "Circle of Tears": Musrara on the Margins of Jewish-Arab Existence in Jerusalem (Article)
Title: Between the Border of Despair and the "Circle of Tears": Musrara on the Margins of Jewish-Arab Existence in Jerusalem
Author: Naor, Moshe
Author: Jacobson, Abigail
Abstract: This article focuses on Jerusalem's Musrara—a neighborhood trapped between borders—between 1948 and 1967. Barbed wire running along the eastern side of the neighborhood divided the city of Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967. Musrara's western border separated it from West Jerusalem, thus enhancing the division between its residents—new immigrants of Middle Eastern descent—and the mainly Ashkenazi population of the western part of Jerusalem. Our analysis of a neighborhood on the margins of Jewish and Arab existence in post-1948 Jerusalem considers the perspectives of immigrants and refugees living on a double border that separated the Eastern-Arab part of the city from its Western-Jewish part, or between "old Jerusalem" and "new Jerusalem." The border also signified the boundary between "first Israel" and "second Israel," or the Jewish frontier and neighborhoods in the city center.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.2979/jss.2023.a901513
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Jewish Social Studies
Publisher: Indiana University Press

Jews, Law, and the Modern State: Legal Nationalization in Colonial North Africa (Article)
Title: Jews, Law, and the Modern State: Legal Nationalization in Colonial North Africa
Author: Marglin, Jessica M.
Abstract: This article explores the transformation of Jewish law in the French colonial Maghrib (late nineteenth century to mid-twentieth century). Drawing primarily on Jewish newspapers in French and Judeo-Arabic and responsa in Hebrew, it explores how the perception and practice of Jewish law shifted in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. First, westernizing Jews came to think about Jewish law through the lens of French law. The status of women under Jewish law became a particular concern for many self-styled modernizers, though of course questions about women's rights were never absent from rabbinically oriented discourse. Second, Jewish law was nationalized—that is, authorities made efforts to both standardize and modernize Jewish law in a national mode, creating a Moroccan Jewish law, a Tunisian Jewish law, etc. Third, the elevation of Jewish law to a national, state-sanctioned jurisdiction imposed on all Jews—regardless of whether they believed or even whether they had converted out of Judaism—posed thorny legal problems. The legal history of Jews in twentieth-century North Africa offers an opportunity to rethink both the engagement of Jewish law with the state and the emergence of new ways of understanding Judaism and Jewish identity in the modern Middle East.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.2979/jss.2023.a901514
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Jewish Social Studies
Publisher: Indiana University Press

"It Was our Home and Sadly We Will Never Return": Nostalgia and the Circulation of Images in Lebanese Jewish Virtual Communities (Article)
Title: "It Was our Home and Sadly We Will Never Return": Nostalgia and the Circulation of Images in Lebanese Jewish Virtual Communities
Author: Oringer, Molly Theodora
Abstract: By focusing on photographs pertaining to Beirut's historic Jewish neighborhood and central synagogue, I address in this article the mobilization of collective nostalgia on three Lebanese Jewish Facebook groups that provide a realm for debating, challenging, and reconstructing concepts of belonging while remembering a shared homeland from the diaspora. Furthermore, I explore how the nostalgic circulation and sharing of family photographs and anonymous snapshots of the community's pre-Civil War life privileges a particular perspective on how life once was, and by excluding other realities from both the photographic frame and historical narrative, creates a community history through which to imagine the future.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.2979/jss.2023.a901515
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Jewish Social Studies
Publisher: Indiana University Press

The Oufran "Letters of Tzaddikim Burials": Cross-Translations between Charms, Epitaphs, and Historiography (Article)
Title: The Oufran "Letters of Tzaddikim Burials": Cross-Translations between Charms, Epitaphs, and Historiography
Author: Ouaknine-Yekutieli, Orit
Abstract: In this article, I focus on two themes connected to the Jewish community of the southern Moroccan town of Oufran and its place within conceptions of Moroccan Jewishness and Jewish Moroccanness. The first theme is the story of Oufran's burned martyrs—ha-nisrafim in Hebrew—and the second, the topos of this community's antiquity. I analyze the intertextual creation, circulation, evolution, and use of the stories of Oufran by Jews, Muslims, and French-Christian colonial agents and discuss how these stories derive from and have sustained Judeo-Muslim imaginings and shared experiences. I also claim that Oufran's story and history are deeply affected by "translations" between different realms of knowledge.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.2979/jss.2023.a901516
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Jewish Social Studies
Publisher: Indiana University Press

Resurrecting Maghreb Pluriel?: Jews and Postauthoritarian Tunisia (Article)
Title: Resurrecting Maghreb Pluriel?: Jews and Postauthoritarian Tunisia
Author: Rohde, Achim
Abstract: The Tunisian revolution of 2011 marked a partial reconfiguration of the political elite and the beginning of a protracted democratization process whose long-term success is far from secured. In this article, I discuss societal/political/cultural transformations toward democracy in Tunisia since 2011 through the prism of its tiny Jewish minority. The perceived homogeneity of Tunisian society has come under increasing scrutiny since the revolution, and this includes a heightened visibility of the country's Jewish community and a degree of public debate on related topics. I focus on three cases: the preservation of Jewish cultural heritage, the demise of an NGO designed to fight racism and antisemitism in Tunisia, and the commemoration of the German occupation of Tunisia during World War II. Addressing contemporary Tunisian history "from the margins" enables a more nuanced understanding of political struggles that accompany processes of de-/re-territorializing Tunisian collective identities.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.2979/jss.2023.a901517
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Jewish Social Studies
Publisher: Indiana University Press

Between "Ḥarat al-Yahud" and "Paris on the Nile": Social Mobility and Urban Culture among Jews in Twentieth-Century Cairo (Article)
Title: Between "Ḥarat al-Yahud" and "Paris on the Nile": Social Mobility and Urban Culture among Jews in Twentieth-Century Cairo
Author: Tam, Alon
Abstract: In this article I examine out-migration from old Cairo's Ḥarat al-Yahud (The Jews' Alley) to that city's urban expansions in the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth. This migration was coupled with large-scale Jewish immigration to Cairo and intersected with its modern urban culture, which Jews shared with Muslim and Christian Cairenes. I argue that for Cairene Jews, these migrations, urban spaces, and regular itineraries within them held the promise of upward social mobility and integration into an urban middle-class culture that did not erase their Jewishness but removed it as a social barrier. This argument works against common narratives that saw Jewish Egyptians as foreigners living separately from Muslim Egyptians in another cultural milieu.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.2979/jss.2023.a901518
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Jewish Social Studies
Publisher: Indiana University Press

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