Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought

Writings on Identity, Politics, and Culture, 1893–1958

Moshe Behar, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Moshe Behar, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite

• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781584658856, 9781584658849
• eBook ISBN: 9781611683868
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Jewish History
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume opens the canon of modern Jewish thought to the all too often overlooked writings of Jews from the Arab East, from the close of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Whether they identified as Sephardim, Mizrahim, anticolonialists, or Zionists, these thinkers engaged the challenges and transformations of Middle Eastern Jewry in this decisive period. Moshe Behar and Zvi Ben-Dor Benite present Jewish culture and politics situated within overlapping Arabic, Islamic, and colonial contexts. The editors invite the reader to reconsider contemporary evocations of Levantine, Mizrahi, and Arab Jewish identities against the backdrop of writings by earlier Middle Eastern Jewish intellectuals who critically assessed or contested the implications of Western presence and Western Jewish presence in the Middle East; religion and secularization; and the rise of nationalism, communism, and Zionism, as well as the State of Israel.

Index

Page numbers in bold refer to biographical sections on featured writers.

Aaronsohn, Aaron, 121n4

Abbas, Avraham, 224

Abd al-Rahman, Sayyid, 16

Aden, 216, 229t, 232t, 238t, 240t, 241t

Alcalay, Ammiel, xxvi, xxxvi nn10–11, 205

Algeria, 175

Alliance Israélite Universelle, xxix

Amir, Aharon, 205

Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 138, 141–42

antisemitism: Arab state antisemitism emergence, 178–79; British imperialism and, 176–78; colonialist/capitalist accommodation of, 154–55; as hindrance to Yishuv accomplishments, 123; international spread of, 139; liberation/ worker movements and, 147; opposition to Eretz-Yisrael settlements and, 168. See also persecution

anti-Zionism: Arab publications in Palestine and, 124; Christian origin of, 98; Jewish League to Combat Zionism (Egypt), 164–66, 172–73; League for the Struggle against Zionism, 141–42; leftist/secular anti-Zionism, 141–45, 164–65, 188, 188n8, 191

Arabic language: Arabic literary culture, 117, 199; Arab-Jewish cultural revival, xxxiii–xxxiv; early Mizrahi writings in, xxxi, 10–11; European cultural dominance and, 89; Israeli Arabic-language media, 68, 220–21, 221; Marxist writings in, 174; as proposed Eretz Yisrael co-official language, 116; role in Zionist Palestine, 62–63, 129; as social language, 91–92; in Yishuv/Israeli schools, 64–69, 102, 104, 222–23

Arab identity, xxx, 37, 91, 95–97, 134, 185, 187–88, 215–16

Arab-Israeli relations: Arab-Israeli War of 1948, 177–78, 180–81, 222n9; Arab ruling class exploitation of, 181–88; imperialist exploitation of, 180–88, 191–92; Israeli foreign relations and, 215–19; Jewish scholarship on Arab nations, 222; politics of armament and, 181; Suez War of 1956, 216, 220–21

Arab-Jewish relations: Arab opposition to settlements, 114, 115, 120, 168–170; Balfour Declaration and, 102, 117, 132; common Semitic roots and, 125; Eretz Yisrael collaborative relationship, 116, 118; European influence on, 97; Jewish support for Arab rights, 67–68; Middle Eastern Arab-Jewish ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyrights
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Editors’ Note
• Introduction: Mizrahi and Modern Middle Eastern Thought, Present and Past Moshe Behar and Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
• Avraham Elmaleh
• Ya‘qub Sannu‘
• Esther Azhari Moyal
• Murad Farag
• Nissim Ya‘acov Malul
• Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel
• Joseph Aslan Cattaui Pacha
• Hayyim Ben-Kiki
• Menahem Salih Daniel
• David Avisar
• Elie (Eliyahu) Eliachar
• Ibrahim al-Kabir
• Yusuf Harun Zilkha and Sasson Shalom Dallal
• Marsil Shirizi
• Henri Curiel
• Sami Michael
• Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff
• David Sitton
• Avraham Abbas
• Publication Credits
• Index