Joshua's Israel Blog: The Mizrahim

The Mizrahim are Jews who fled Arabic countries during the diaspora. The word Mizrahi is Hebrew for East, referencing that these Jews were not Jews of Europe or the Americas and rather being from the eastern part of the world. After Israel became a Jewish state, Mizrahim from all over the Middle East and Northern Africa fled their countries of persecution to come to Israel. As stated in Rosenthal’s The Israelis, “From 1948 through the 1960s, 870,000 Mizrahi Jews fled Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Iran, and Afghanistan; more than six hundred thousand refugees came to Israel.” (Rosenthal: 115)

A large number of these Mizrahim came from Yemen and Iraq. The conditions for Jews in Yemen got so bad after it adopted Islam in the seventh century that as soon as the birth of Israel, nearly all sixty thousand Jews spent weeks journeying to the airstrip within the British protectorate, during which thousands died. In Operation Magic Carpet, the over fifty thousand survivors were flown on more than four hundred flights using war surplus planes to Israel. For the Iraqi Jews, it was even more difficult for them to leave than for many others because they felt a close connection to that land that goes so far back. Iraq was the Babylon that is referred to in the Bible and Talmud. It was where the Jews escaped to during their first exile after the destruction of the first Temple.

Prior to the great immigrations of Mizrahi Jews to Israel, Israel was 80% Ashkenazi (European Jews). But, by the 1960’s over 60% of Israelis were Mizrahi. This transition was not easy one for either the Ashkenazi or the Mizrahi Jews. The reason for this is that the Mizrahi customs and overall ways of living are very different than that of the Ashkenazim. Simply put, it was the difference between the western world’s standard of living versus Northern Africa’s and the Middle East’s standard of living. There are differences in the food, the language, the clothing, the gender roles, and the levels of religious observance. Individually, these differences would be easy to overcome, but when all combined it is needless to say there was some culture-shock. A big issue with this is that most of the Ashkenazi Israelis behaved as though they were superior because they could speak the language of the land, Hebrew, and had more experience with farming and improving the land. Additionally, the history being taught in the schools were all about the European Jewish history and didn’t have any history from the Mizrahi perspective. Simply put, prior to these immigrations, most Ashkenazi Jews knew nothing about Mizrahi Jews, and Mizrahi Jews knew nothing about Ashkenazi Jews.

As reported by Arutz Sheva, the Adva Center did research and found that “Ashkenazi Jews—those of European origin—earn an average of 40 percent more than Jews of Middle Eastern descent (Mizrahi Jews).” According to this finding, there is still a high amount of prejudice going on in Israel with regard to Ashkenazim Jews not treating Mizrahi Jews as complete equals. Whether these numbers are actually statistically proven or not, it still appears that there are issues regarding equal rights occurring. It is amazing to find that even with all the issues that the Jews in Israel have with the Muslim Arabs, the Israelis still cannot see each other without seeing color-differences. This goes back to the 1950’s when all the Mizrahi immigrations were occurring and the Ashkenazim Jews looked down upon the Mizrahim as being less knowledgeable and less sophisticated, based on their own ideals of what it means to be sophisticated and educated. Although, this is not the perspective anymore, the fact that there are still issues between Israeli Jews about where their families immigrated from is saddening.