See also: Maghrebi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and Musta'arabi Jews
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Arab Jews (Arabic: اليهود العربal-Yahūd al-ʿArab; Hebrew: יהודים ערביםYehudim `Aravim) is a term for Jews living in or originating from the Arab world. The term is politically contested, often by Zionists or by Jews with roots in the Arab world who prefer to be identified as Mizrahi Jews.[1][2][3][4] Many left or were expelled from Arab countries in the decades following the founding of Israel in 1948, and took up residence in Israel, Western Europe, the United States and Latin America.[citation needed]
Jews living in Arab-majority countries historically mostly used various Judeo-Arabic dialects as their primary community language, with Hebrew used for liturgical and cultural purposes (literature, philosophy, poetry, etc.). Many aspects of their culture (music, clothes, food, architecture of synagogues and houses, etc.) have commonality with local non-Jewish Arab populations. They usually follow Sephardi Jewish liturgy, and are (counting their descendants) by far the largest portion of Mizrahi Jews.
Though Golda Meir, in an interview as late as 1972 with Oriana Fallaci, explicitly referred to Jews from Arab countries as "Arab Jews",[5] the use of the term is controversial, as the vast majority of Jews with origins in Arab-majority countries do not identify as Arabs, and most Jews who lived amongst Arabs did not call themselves "Arab Jews" or view themselves as such.[2][3][6][7] A closely related, but older term denoting Arabic-speaking Jews is Musta'arabi Jews.
In recent decades, some Jews have self-identified as Arab Jews, such as Ella Shohat, who uses the term in contrast to the Zionist establishment's categorization of Jews as either Ashkenazim or Mizrahim; the latter, she believes, have been oppressed as the Arabs have. Other Jews, such as Albert Memmi, say that Jews in Arab countries would have liked to be Arab Jews, but centuries of abuse by Arab Muslims prevented it, and now it's too late. The term is often used by post-Zionists and Arab nationalists.
The term can also sometimes refer to Jewish converts of Arab birth, such as Baruch Mizrahi or Nasrin Kadri, or people of mixed Jewish-Arab parentage, such as Lucy Ayoub.[8]
^Schroeter, Daniel J. ""Islamic Anti-Semitism" in Historical Discourse". The American Historical Review. 123 (4): 1179. Archived from the original on 2021-09-20. Retrieved 2021-09-21. While a small group of anti-Zionist Mizrahi intellectuals and activists who defined themselves as "Arab Jews" reject the portrait of eternal anti-Semitism in the Islamic world, the idea that the flight of Middle Eastern and North African Jews from Islamic countries was primarily a consequence of the longer history of Muslim anti-Semitism has continued to shape discussions in the public sphere, and has influenced representations of Muslim anti-Semitism outside of Israel.
^ abTal, David (2017). "Between Politics and Politics of Identity: The Case of the Arab Jews". Journal of Levantine Studies. 7 (1). Archived from the original on 2021-09-20. Retrieved 2021-09-19. proponents of the Arab Jew seek to separate the ethnic from the national, the Jew from the Zionist, and realign ethnic identities: Arabs, who include Jews and Muslims, vs. Ashkenazim/Zionists. They do so by creating an "imagined community," by rejecting an ascriptive identity based on an ethnic/national juxtaposition, and by suggesting their own kind of identity, a self-ascriptive identity that separates the ethnos from the nation. They have failed in their mission, as the majority of Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin reject the Arab Jew definer as representing their own identity."
^ abShenhav, Yehouda; Hever, Hannan (2012). "Arab Jews' after structuralism: Zionist discourse and the (de) formation of an ethnic identity" (PDF). Social Identities. 18 (1): 101–118. doi:10.1080/13504630.2011.629517. S2CID 144665311. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-09-20. Retrieved 2021-09-20. quote:"it is not surprising that very few Jews of Arab descent, in Israel, would label themselves ‘Arab Jews’. It has turned out to be the marker of a cultural and political avant-garde. Most of those who used it, did so in order to challenge the Zionist order of things (i.e., ‘methodological Zionism’; see Shenhav, 2006) and for political reasons (Levy, 2008)
^Salim Tamari. "Ishaq al-Shami and the Predicament of the Arab Jew in Palestine" (PDF). Jerusalem Quarterly. p. 11. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2007-08-23.
^Yehouda A. Shenhav, The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity, Archived 2023-01-21 at the Wayback Machine Stanford University Press, 2006 ISBN 978-0-804-75296-1 p.9
^Edith Haddad Shaked. "The Jews in Islam – Tunisia". Presentation at the 19th International Congress of Historical Sciences, University of Oslo, Norway. Archived from the original on 4 February 2012. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
^"There Is More to the 'Arab Jews' Controversy Than Just Identity". The Forward. 28 February 2008. Archived from the original on 18 October 2019. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
^"Jewish-Arab Slam Poet a Hit in Person and on YouTube". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 2022-10-18. Retrieved 2022-10-18.
ArabJews (Arabic: اليهود العرب al-Yahūd al-ʿArab; Hebrew: יהודים ערבים Yehudim `Aravim) is a term for Jews living in or originating from the Arab world...
900000 Jews migrated, fled, or were expelled from Muslim-majority countries throughout Africa and Asia. Primarily a consequence of the 1948 Arab–Israeli...
Mizrahi Jews (Hebrew: יהודי המִזְרָח), also known as Mizrahim (מִזְרָחִים) or Mizrachi (מִזְרָחִי) and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or Edot...
Antisemitism (prejudice against and hatred of Jews) has increased greatly in the Arab world since the beginning of the 20th century, for several reasons:...
increasingly detached from the Arabic-speaking Jews over Zionism. Even though many Jews who spoke Arabic, identified as "Arab" and maintained intellectual networks...
The history of the Jews in the United Arab Emirates describes the historical and modern presence of Jews over the millennia in the Middle East and the...
Arab and Jew may refer to: Semitic peoples, the descendants of Shem, who are the Arabs and the JewsArabJews, people who are both Arab and JewArab and...
population of ArabJews and Mizrahi Jews. New York City and its suburbs in New Jersey have sizable Syrian Sephardi populations. Syrian Jews and other Jews from...
separate nation from Arabs, with different history and culture. However, sometimes the term ArabJews is used to describe Jews from Arab countries, though...
government to draw Jews from the Islamic world to Israel. In 2018, the Jewish Agency estimated that around 27,000 Jews live in Arab and Muslim countries...
of Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews, and Mizrahi Jews, as well as many smaller Jewish communities, such as the Beta Israel, the Cochin Jews, the Bene Israel...
See Mizrahi Jews for more information about the Eastern Jews. Maghrebi Jews (מַגּרֶבִּים or מַאגרֶבִּים, Maghrebim) or North African Jews (יהודי צפון...
Mizrahi Jews constitute one of the largest Jewish ethnic divisions among Israeli Jews. Mizrahi Jews are descended from Jews in the Middle East, North...
against Israeli Arabs by Israeli Jews, intra-Jewish racism between the various Jewish ethnic divisions (in particular against Ethiopian Jews), historic and...
From the Arab Expansion until the 1960s, Jews were a significant part of the population of Arab countries. Before 1948, an estimated 900,000 Jews lived in...
Yidden, ArabJews. Some Ashkenazim doubted whether Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews from the Middle East were Jewish at all. In response, some Syrian Jews who were...
The history of the Jews in Iraq (Hebrew: יְהוּדִים בָּבְלִים, Yehudim Bavlim, lit. 'Babylonian Jews'; Arabic: اليهود العراقيون, al-Yahūd al-ʿIrāqiyyūn)...
Sephardic Jews (Hebrew: יְהוּדֵי סְפָרַד, romanized: Yehudei Sfarad, transl. 'Jews of Spain'; Ladino: Djudíos Sefardíes), also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim...
– "native" Jews were often referred to as abnaa al-balad (sons of the country), 'compatriots', or Yahud awlad Arab ("Jews, sons of Arabs"). At the beginning...
commerce as well as increased tolerance to Jews, such as in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. The history of the Jews in Iraq is documented over twenty-six...
Yemenite Jews, also known as Yemeni Jews or Teimanim (from Hebrew: יהודי תימן, romanized: Yehude Teman; Arabic: اليهود اليمنيون), are Jews who live, or...
seeing Jews slaughtered by Muslims, since there were not many Jews. But, the Jews understood his scheme. So did the Arabs. Commander Deriko wanted Arabs and...
Egypt had its own community of Egyptian Jews, after the Jewish expulsion from Spain more Sephardi and Karaite Jews began to migrate to Egypt, and then their...
on Jews accompanied by destruction of Jewish property. During the week of riots, from 23 to 29 August, 133 Jews were killed by Arabs, and 339 Jews were...
relations History of the Jews in the Arabian Peninsula Saudi Arabia textbook controversy ArabJews Babylonian captivity History of the Jews under Muslim rule...