The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity

272 Pages·2006·5.28 MB·English

by  Yehouda Shenhav

A Postcolonial Reading of
Nationalism,
Religion,
and Ethnicity
The Arab Jews
A Postcolonial Reading of
Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity
Yehouda Shenhav
S T A N F O R D
U N I V E R S I T Y
PRESS
Stanford,
California
2006
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2006 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior
University. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo­
copying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system without the prior written permission of Stanford University
Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-
quality paper
Library' of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shenhav, Yehouda A.
[Yehudim-ha-’Arvim. English]
The Arab Jews : a postcolonial reading of nationalism,
religion, and ethnicity / Yehouda Shenhav.
p. cm. — (Cultural sitings)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-8047-5296-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Jews, Oriental — Cultural assimilation — Israel.
2. Jews —Arab countries —Migrations. 3. Politics and
culture. 4. Ethnicity—Israel. 5. Israel — Emigration
and immigration. 6. Israel — Ethnic relations.
I. Title. II. Series.
DS113.8.S4S5413 2006
956.9405 — dc22 2006004889
Original Printing 2006
Last figure below indicates year of this printing:
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06
Typeset by BookMatters in 10/13 Electra
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
History Begins at Home 1
1 The “Discovery” of the Arab Jews 19
2 Encounter in Abadan: Colonialism, Eurocentrism, and
Jewish Orientalism 49
3 How Did the Arab Jews Become Religious and Zionist? 77
4 What Do the Arab Jews and the Palestinians Have in
Common? Population Exchange, the Right of Return,
and the Politics of Reparations 110
5 The Arab Jews and Zionist Historical Memory 136
Beyond Methodological Zionism 185
Notes 205
Select Bibliography 231
Index 249
Acknowledgments
This book summarizes five years of archival research on the social history of
the Arab Jews against the backdrop of Zionist nationalism. The story' I tell di­
verges from mainstream studies of Israeli society in several respects. First,
using the term “Arab Jews” (rather than “Mizrahim,” which literally means
“Orientals”) challenges the binary opposition between Arabs and Jews in
Zionist discourse, a dichotomy that renders the linking of Arabs and Jews in
this way inconceivable. Second, I argue that the study of the Arab Jews
should begin in the early 1940s, when the Zionist movement turned to the
Arab Jews as a reservoir for Jewish immigration, rather than with their arrival
in Israel in the 1950s. This enables me to situate the study of the relationships
between Mizrahi Jews and Ashkenazi Jews in the context of early colonial en­
counters between the Arab Jews and the European Zionist emissaries — prior
to the establishment of the state and outside of Palestine — and to examine
the manner in which these relationships were reproduced upon the arrival of
the Arab Jews in Israel. Third, I provide a new prism for understanding the
intricate relationships between the Arab Jews and the Palestinian refugees of
1948, a link that is usually obscured or omitted by studies informed by Zionist
historiography and epistemology. This book, however, does not merely tell a
new story about the relationships between social groups or the history of their
construction, but also uses that history to look beneath the surface of Zionism
itself. I use that history, not only to transcend what I call “methodological
Zionism,” but to open the door to an epistemology that sheds new light on
the basic assumptions upon which Zionism was founded, and on the articu­
lation of those assumptions in Israeli politics and culture today.
rrhe personal and professional context within which this book was written
is described at length in the introduction. Here, I would like to thank and ac­
knowledge my dear colleagues, friends, and students who helped, read, ad­
vised, and encouraged me at various stages of the project. First and foremost,
I owe special thanks to three devoted students and friends who shared the
process of research and writing with me. Nadav Gabay, now a Ph.D. student
Acknowledgments
at the University of California in San Diego, was there from day one. He
helped me collect the archival documents and shape some of the theoretical
ideas presented in the book. Shoham Melamed, now a Ph.D. student at Yale,
helped me organize the empirical materials, provided a great deal of wisdom
on ideas, and encouraged me to see the novelty in the project beyond the
agony of writing. Shirley Hauser gave me detailed comments and wonderful
suggestions for improvements. Four colleagues and friends provided invalu­
able contribution to the development of the theses presented in the book:
Hannan Hever, Adriana Kemp, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, and Yossi Yonah.
Their fingerprints are to be found on every page.
This project thrived and developed owing to several institutional com­
munities. Initial thoughts were first presented to my students in the
Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University. I benefited from the differ­
ences, controversies, and intellectual debates that it generated. Large parts of
this book were developed within the framework of the Van Leer Jerusalem
Institute (VLJI) and the Forum for Social and Cultural Studies. The book
benefited from the unique intellectual atmosphere that emerged in the
Forum over a period of four years. I thank the members of the Forum during
these years: Meir Amor, Abed Azam, Yehuda Goodman, Shlomo Fischer,
Hannan Hever, Adriana Kemp, Aziza Khazzoom, Yossi Loss, Pnina
Mutzaphi-Haler, Boas Noiman, and Yossi Yonah. I would like to extend a
special thanks to Shimshon Zelniker, the head of the VLJI, for his vision, his
generosity in establishing the Forum, and his unconditional support. Sara
Soreni from the VLJI provided me with invaluable advice throughout these
years and on the professional work on the initial texts in Hebrew.
Haggay Ram and Hanna Herzog, two dear friends, with whom I have
spent the past two years in New York City, took the time to read the manu­
script from cover to cover and to provide endless comments and suggestions.
I benefited greatly from their wisdom, sensitivity, and broad scope. Alexandra
Kalev, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and
Joshua Guetzkow, now at Harvard, are terrific friends. They both gave me
immense support during the process of writing this book, helped me organ­
ize some of the archival material, and generously provided wise theoretical
and stylistic suggestions in the writing stage. Adi Ophir and Aziza Khazzoom
provided insightful comments on the writing and editing, which 1 have
gladly adopted.
Many other friends and colleagues have helped in conversations, discus­
sions, and criticism, among them Shimon Balias, Zvi Ben-Dor, Simon Bitton,
Haggay Boas, Yinon Cohen, David De-Vries, Tamar El'or, Cynthia Fuchs-
XII
Acknowledgments
Epstein, Bracha Eshel, Gil Eyal, Michal Frenkel, Haim Hanegbi, Haim
Hazan, Gideon Kunda, Nissim Leon, Varda Levanon, Ronit Matalon, Adi
Ophir, Motti Regev, Tilde Rosmer, Nadim Rouhana, Areej Sabar, Gershon
Shafir, Ronen Shamir, Natan Sznaider, Sy Spilerman, Catherin Silver, Ilan
Talmud, Yfaat Weiss, Yuval Yonay, and Aviva Zeltzer. Gershon Shafir, in par­
ticular, believed, endorsed and supported this manuscript all along.
There is no doubt that my activity in the Rainbow Mizrahi Coalition
(known as Keshet) had a remarkable impact on my research agenda and ori­
entation. 1 was fortunate to be able to enjoy the company of wonderful, in­
tellectually inspiring friends who are committed to social and political justice
in ways that are rare to find. I especially would like to mention Yossi Dahan,
Shoshana Gabay, David Mahlev, Nissim Mizrahi, Itzhak Saporta, and Yossi
Yonah — knights of social and political justice in todays cynical world.
In 2003, an earlier version of this book appeared in Hebrew under the im­
print of the Am-Oved Publishing House. I am indebted to Eli Shaltiel, the
editor of the Hebrew version of the book, for his excellent suggestions; to the
Association for Israeli Studies, which awarded me with the Yonatan Shapiro
Award for the best book in 2004 (for the Hebrew version); to Ralph Mendel,
who translated the empirical documents and other segments of text from
Hebrew; and to my daughter Noa Shenhav, who did a wonderful and metic­
ulous job in preparing the manuscript for publication. Thanks also to Noa
Lavie, Ora Slonim, and Seffi Shtiglitz, who helped me during the process.
Several of the chapters are based on segments previously published as
journal articles. Parts of Chapter 2 were published in Social Identities
(Shenhav 2002b); parts of Chapter 3, in Nations and Nationalism (Shenhav
2003); parts of Chapter 4, in the International Journal of Middle East Studies
(Shenhav 1999a); and parts of Chapter 5, in the British Journal of Middle
Eastern Studies (2002a). Permission has been granted by the editors of
Nations and Nationalism, the Journal of the Association for the Study of
Ethnicity and Nationalism (London School of Economics); by Cambridge
University Press (for IJMES); and by Taylor and Francis (for BJMES). I thank
the editors of these journals for making it possible for me to publish these
texts in their revised and elaborated new forms.
Parts of this book were presented at the Howard Gillman Conference at
New York University, December 2000; at two conferences in Elmau,
Germany, “Jews as Cosmopolitans" in July 2001, and “Challenge to
Citizenship and Ethnonationalism” in July 2002; at the Conference on
Immigration at American University, Washington, D.C., in May 2002; at the
City University of New York, co-sponsored by the Sociology Program and
Xlll
Acknowledgments
Middle Eastern Center, in May 2003; at the Columbia University' Seminar
on Boundaries in April 2003; at the Princeton University' Seminar for
Economic Sociology* in April 2003; a* the Association for Israeli Studies,
Keynote Address, San Diego, May 2003; and at the Association for Israeli
Studies, Best Book Award, Jerusalem, August 2004. I am grateful for com­
ments made by participants in all of these forums.
Finally, I would like to extend my thanks also to Elazar Barkan for his
comments and encouragement on an early draft, and to Peter Dreyer for his
fantastic copyediting. Norris Pope, Angie Michaelis, Mariana Raykov, and
the editorial staff at Stanford University Press did wonderful professional
work throughout the project. Stanford University is my alma mater, and I am
proud to have the Stanford University Press publish my work.
My special love goes to Inbar and Noa, who are not only my wonderfiil
daughters but also my best friends; and to Jennifer Vorbach, whose support
helped me complete this project.
The Arab Jews
History Begins at Home
This book is about the complex, conflict-ridden, and ambivalent encounter
of Jews from Arab countries with Zionist nationalism and the Jewish state.1
These conflicts had a tremendous bearing on my own upbringing, as the fol­
lowing personal story will show.
Some time ago, as I sat down to work in a Tel Aviv cafe in the area where
I live, an elderly man suddenly approached me. “You are the son of Eliahu
Shaharabani, of blessed memory ” he said, half stating a fact, half asking. I
looked at the man standing in front of me. I had never seen him before. He
was handsome, about seventy years old, and spoke with a heavy Iraqi accent.
This is what my father would look like if he were alive, I thought to myself.
“My name is Avner Yaron,” the man explained. “I recruited your father
into the intelligence community in the 1950s.” The tables in the cafe were
close together, and I had the feeling that every one in the place was listening
to our conversation. “1 have proof,” he said, as though revealing a secret. “If
you like, I'll show you.” I felt a sense of relief when he left. I watched him as
he walked under the big awning of the cafe, crossed the street, and receded
into the distance.
My discomfort had nothing to do with the suddenness of the mans ap­
pearance or his reference to my father’s work. What he had told me came as
no great surprise. 1 knew a little about my father’s history, and somehow I had
expected an episode like this sooner or later. I wasn’t sure 1 would ever hear
from Yaron again. Nor did I really want to.
Two weeks later, a fax arrived in my office from the secret agent, saying:
"There is an envelope for you in the cafe.” I was a bit put out: unmarked
brown envelopes have unpleasant connotations these day's. Nevertheless, I
couldn’t resist. The envelope contained two group photographs, in black and
white, and a note: ‘These are photos with your late father from 1950.” One
photograph showed four young men and a young woman, all in their early
twenties, some wearing khaki shirts, the others white shirts. All were Arab
Jews. The other photograph showed four young men and two young women