Month: February 2022

The rise and fall of the Sassoon dynasty

Baghdad-born David Sassoon built a global business empire in the 19th century centered on India and the Far East, but within three generations, the fortune his family made was dissipated, and his descendants were more focused on enjoying their social lives. Now a distant relative,  academic Joseph Sassoon has deciphered  an archive of Judeo-Arabic correspondence which throws new light on the Sassooon enterprise. The result is his new book, The Global Merchants: the Enterprise and Extravagance of the Sassoon Dynasty. Review in The Guardian: 

The Prince of Wales visiting the Sassoon residence in Bombay, ‘Sans souci’, in 1876

By the end of the 19th century, the Sassoon family were regularly referred to as “the Rothschilds of the East”. This wasn’t just lazy, it was wrong. For one thing the Sassoons’ interests and influence stretched right around the world from Shanghai via Bombay, London and Lancashire, all the way to the Atlantic coastal plain of the United States. Then there was the fact that, unlike the Rothschilds, the Sassoons were not bankers but traders, specialising in opium, cotton and oil. What perhaps the late Victorians really meant when they compared the Sassoons to the Rothschilds was simply this: they were very rich and they were Jewish, a combination that conjured ambivalent feelings not just in “polite” society through which antisemitism flowed like a subterranean river but, over time, in the Sassoons themselves.

Joseph Sassoon, who is a descendant of the dynasty’s founder David, believes that it was his family’s experience as serial immigrants that drove their success and explains their decline. Their original role as treasurers to the pashas of Baghdad meant that they seamlessly acquired the Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew and Persian that equipped them to do business throughout the vast Ottoman empire. When in 1828 they were forced to flee to Bombay as a result of a pogrom, they quickly added Hindustani to their repertoire and settled down to rebuild their lives, using their tried and tested methods of exemplary ethics and ferocious hard work.

In order to avoid a repeat of that first expulsion, though, the family needed to become adept at reading the political landscape and adapting accordingly. Joseph Sassoon points out that the treaty marking the passing of India’s governance from the East India Company to Queen Victoria in 1859 was signed not in the residence of the outgoing governor but in “Sans Souci”, the home owned by the man whom the Illustrated London News described as “Mr David Sassoon, the well-known wealthy Jew Merchant of Bombay and China”. In the face of such antisemitic sneers, these early Sassoons were careful not to draw unwanted attention to themselves. While their fortune was one of the great wonders of the industrialising world, it was offset by a thoughtful philanthropy that built hospitals, libraries and schools for the whole community.

These productive years as “good immigrants” did not last, and it is the Sassoons’ fall from fortune that gives this somewhat dry family history its emotional heart and narrative pace. Within a hundred years of hosting diplomatic milestones, younger members of the family were pawning their jewellery and filing for bankruptcy. It is, Joseph Sassoon thinks, a story of assimilation and gentrification going hand in hand with the dissipation of cultural capital.

Read article in full

FT review (with thanks: Miro)

 

Pre-19th century Sephardi forerunners of Zionism

It is a myth to suggest that Zionism was a movement which originated in Europe at the end of the 19th century and was alien to Jews in Arab countries : in fact there were plenty of Sephardi pioneers who advocated the return of the Jewish nation to its land, well before the first Eastern European aliya of 1882, according to Yosef Charvit of Bar Ilan University  speaking at the Dialogia colloquium: Juifs heureux en terres d’Islam? 1:28 mins into the video.

Haim Amzallag bought land in Petah Tikva and Rishon Lezion

 

Yosef Bey Navon built the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway

‘I am in the West, but my heart is in the East, ‘ lamented the great medieval poet Yehuda Halevi (1100 – 1148). Writing at a time when Jews were caught up in a great power struggle between Islam and Christianity, Halevi dreamt of the resurrection of the Jewish nation. During the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, prominent rabbis Maimonides, Nahmanides and Ishtori Haparhi attempted to return to Eretz Israel. They were followed by Rabbi Yosef Caro, who developed the Shulhan Arukh in Safed, Rabbis Reuveni and Molho in the 16th century and the Rishonim between the 17th and 19th centuries.  In the 18th century the Moroccan rabbi Haim Benattar set up an important yeshiva.

Theodor Herzl’s father was said to have been influenced by the sermons of Yehuda Bibas (1789 – 1852) in the Balkans. Marco Yosef Baruch (1872 – 99) of Istanbul was known as the Sephardi Herzl.

Sephardi figures bought and developed land in Eretz Israel well before modern Zionism. Fugitives from the Spanish Inquisition Doña Gracia and her nephew Yosef Hanasi re-established the Jewish community of Tiberias in the 16th century. Rav Yehuda Halevi Meragusa from Sarajevo (1840 – 79) owned orchards in Jaffa. Sir Moses Montefiore established the first neighbourhood outside the city walls of Jerusalem. Rav David Bensimon built Mahane Israel, the second. Adolphe Crémieux, president of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, set up the agricultural school of Mikve Israel., while the bankers Jacob and Haim Valero helped develop modern cities in the Old Yishuv. The British consul Haim Amzallag bought land in Petah Tikva and Rishon Letzion. Yosef Bey Navon created the Jaffa- Jerusalem railway.

Abraham Moyal,  merchant, Alliance delegate, and supervisor of the Rothschild project,  was an important figure in Hovevei Zion together with Pinsker and Wissotsky.

Eliyahu Yosef Chelouche

Naturally, Jews made aliya for practical reasons when conflict between Algerian Muslims and the French in the 19th century led to repression of the Jewish community. The Chelouche family was not only active in building the new Jaffa suburb of Neve Tsedek, but developed the coastline down to Gaza. The Abbo family founded the first settlements in the Galilee.

The first mass wave of immigration came from Yemen in 1881 – a year before the first Aliya from Russia.

To see the full video (French) click here

 

 

 

MENA Jews urged to tell their stories to the UN

The US-based organisation JIMENA, which advocates for Jews from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), has launched a drive to collect testimonies from individuals and groups in an effort to ensure that the UN does not ignore the experiences and human rights abuses suffered by MENA Jews. The initiative is being supported by HARIF,  the UK Association of Jews from the MENA.

Jews arriving from Yemen in Israel (Photo: Zoltan Kluger)

In May, 2021, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) created a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This ongoing, permanent commission will publish reports every June to the UNHCR in Geneva and every September to the UN General Assembly in New York. Numerous Jewish institutions, the Israeli government, members of congress and the Biden administration have accused the UNHCR of ongoing discrimination against Israel and there is heightened concern that the Commission’s report will refer to Israel as an “apartheid state.”

The Commission invites individuals, groups, and organizations to submit information and documentation relevant to its mandate. JIMENA states: “We, the descendants of the one million Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are committed to ensuring the stories of our parents and grandparents are no longer ignored or erased by the UN. As such, we demand that the UNHCR consider the human rights violations endured by Jewish refugees from Arab Countries and Iran whose descendants now comprise more than half of Israel’s Jewish population. Many of these descendants of Jewish refugees from MENA countries continue to endure antisemitic human right violations tied to Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations that target Israel and the Jewish people.”

Jews from the MENA and their families are urged to join the call to combat the revisionism and erasure of Jewish experiences at the UNHCR simply by filling out this form.

Israel recognises Mizrahi Jewry studies as separate discipline

The study of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewry is to be recognised as a discipline in its own right, Ha’aretz has announced: this largely symbolic move, based on the 2016 Biton Report, which was never implemented, is to be commended. However, it is not enough to study heritage and culture – this topic must also include the tragic recent history of Mizrahi communities, and must not be used to reinforce a myth of peaceful coexistence. (With thanks: Lily)

Education minister Yifat Shasha-Biton

Israel’s Council for Higher Education recognized the study of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewry – or Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin – as an academic discipline that merits study and research, in a move its supporters say “corrects a historical injustice.”

Seventeen of the council’s 22 members voted in favor of the move on Tuesday, according to sources, following a heated debate over the measure, seen as part of a broader inclusivity push in Israeli education and academia.

Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton, who chairs the council, said “the human mosaic that makes up Israeli society must also be expressed in curricula and fields of knowledge and research.”

Rabbi Yitzhak Ben David, of the “Masorti Union” of mostly Mizrahi Jewish communities, said the decision “far exceeds the academic field,” and is “an important milestone in our ability to tell a new story throughout all of Israeli society.”

Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews make up roughly half of Israel’s Jewish population, but the community was long impoverished and faced discrimination by Ashkenazi Jews – those of European heritage – who traditionally dominated government, religious institutions and academia.

Council members, including Prof. Haviva Pedaya of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, were lobbying to recognize the study of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewry as an independent academic discipline.

Four years ago, Prof. Pedaya was appointed to lead an internal panel within the council to examine the possibility of “research and instruction on the heritage and culture of Sephradi and Mizrahi Jewry” at the country’s universities and colleges.

In response to opposition to legitimizing the subject as an academic discipline, several supporters of the initiative spoke about it as correcting a historical injustice.

Read article in full

First Sephardi woman appointed to Israel’s Supreme Court

A woman of Sephardi background has been appointed for the first time to Israel’s Supreme Court.  Judge Gila Kanfei-Steinitz, who is married to Likud MK Yuval Steinitz, is known as a moderate conservative. The appointment comes as MK David  Amsalem accuses Supreme Court President Esther Hayuk of discrimination in a bitter and unprecedented exchange. The Jerusalem Post reports: 

Judge Gila Kanfei-Steinitz, first Sephardi woman appointed to the Supreme Court

In a rare public letter response to a politician, Hayut fired back at Likud MK David Amsalem last Thursday, rejecting his claims of discrimination against Sephardim in top court appointments.

The day before, Amsalem insinuated to the Knesset plenum that Hayut racially discriminates against Mizrahim, descendants of Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa.

Of the four justices appointed, only Kanfei-Steinitz comes from a Sephardi background.

Most of the negotiations over the candidates revolved around right-wing versus left-wing issues, having a private-sector appointment, having an Arab-Israeli appointment and equal opportunity for women.

The new group checks most of those boxes even if it does not make a major change on the Sephardi diversity issue.

That said, the Supreme Court has had ethnically Sephardi justices, as do other court levels.

Amsalem seemed to call on Hayut to be more transparent with her feelings toward him.

“What is Justice Hayut on?” he asked. “Instead of writing nonsense [in her judicial opinions], why don’t you write, ‘Mr. Amsalem, I can’t stand you: not the Amsalems, and not the Machlufs.’”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Hayut wrote in a letter. “I wonder where this intense hatred comes from that brings you to say such harsh things.”

Read article in full

No UN agency was set up for Jewish refugees

In reaction to an article by the historian Benny Morris mentioning Palestinian refugees, CEO of the American Jewish Committee David Harris notes  in the Wall street Journal the double standard operating at the UN with regard to the world’s actual refugees, and Jewish refugees from Arab countries:

David Harris of the AJC

Unrwa’s mission made no reference to refugee resettlement, and its definition of a Palestinian refugee included future generations without any time limit.

Meanwhile, some 20 million non-Palestinian refugees are under the auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), whose mandate is limited to actual refugees, whose aim is to resettle as many as possible in countries where they can find safety and opportunity, and whose workforce is smaller than Unrwa’s. This triggers the question of why Unrwa operates on its own, rather than under the UNHCR structure, and how long its open-ended mandate will continue.

Finally, it should be noted that there were also some 850,000 Jewish refugees as a result of persecution and violence in Arab lands, beginning largely in the 1940s. No special U.N. agency was set up for them. They eventually found new homes in Israel, Europe and North and South America, and their trauma has largely been ignored by history.

Read article in full

More from David Harris

Tombstone of a death foretold in Tunis’s largest cemetery

During a clean-up  operation  in the Jewish cemetery of Le Borgel in Tunis, the tombstone of a 37-year old batchelor, Leon Coscas, was revealed in all its splendour. (Via Jo Krief Facebook page)

The inscription was written in the first person, as if Coscas himself had written it and predicted his demise. It describes how he had died in an accident at sea.

There are magnificently- decorated tombs in the Borgel cemetery, which was established in 1894 and named after Chief Rabbi Elie Borgel. It has over 20,000 graves and is the largest Jewish cemetery in North Africa. The Twensa (original Jewish settlers) are buried separately from the Grana (Sephardim). Dignitaries, important rabbis and famous personalities, such as the singer Habiba Messica,  are buried there. Bodies exhumed after the redevelopment into a park of the Avenue de Londres cemetery, the Jewish community’s oldest, were transferred to the Borgel.  An association ((AICJT) was formed in France to carry out an inventory of the graves and restore the cemetery.

Jews are an ethnoreligious tribe, connected genetically

The TV comedienne Whoopi Goldberg demonstrated recently how far ‘critical race theory” has penetrated US thinking when she declared the Holocaust was ‘white-on-white’ crime. But race has nothing to do with skin colour, and  Jews from East and West share a common ethnic origin in Israel, argues Laureen Lipsky in Israel Hayom: 

Whoopi Goldberg's second 'sorry' over Holocaust remarks - BBC News
Whoopi Goldberg was briefly suspended for her ‘Holocaust’ remarks

A 360-degree loop of lies sustains the most common antisemitic falsehoods, which has reached a crescendo these days – that Jews are White and Judaism is just a religion, and that modern-day Jews have no long-term historical connection to Israel, that the land was ‘stolen’ from Arabs.

Skin color is not race, and the concept of race was actually based on skull shape. This outdated categorization is based on skull composure, divided into Mongoloid, Negroid, and Caucasoid. With the advent of genetic technology, race is now based on haplogroups and genes. Science has confirmed what Jews have known for thousands of years, that we are an ethnoreligious tribe, connected genetically.

Lighter-skinned Ashkenazi Jews have more in common with darker-skinned Mizrahi Jews than they do with any European. No racially White people, historically, both in Europe and in America, ever considered us part of their race, and they are correct.

The issue in America in terms of Jews’ mistaken identity is that many here are Ashkenazi, whose families spent a portion of the Diaspora experience in European countries. In Israel, the majority of Jews are Mizrahi, who lived in, but are not from Arab majority nations. All genetic Jews are from Israel, and even more specifically, Jews today have been traced back to Judea, the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi specifically.

Read article in full

 

Breaking the ‘Ashkenormative’ silence imposed on Mizrahim

Loolwa Khazzoom was one of the earliest people  to draw attention to the existence of Mizrahim and the marginalisation of their stories by the  ‘Ashkenormative’ US diaspora. Now her groundbreaking anthology of 2003, ‘The Flying Camel’ , has been republished. Haaretz reports:

In the early 1990s, long before identity politics permeated the non-academic mainstream, before intersectionality raced to the forefront of every cause and the Middle East became trendy, Loolwa Khazzoom was trying to get people to notice that she – and others like her – existed.

Loolwa Khazzoom. “If you raise your voice and ask a question, then you make yourself visible.”

The daughter of an Iraqi-Jewish father and a Jew-by-choice mother from Illinois who fully embraced her husband’s culture, Khazzoom’s heritage remains “part of the fabric of who I am,” she told Haaretz by phone from her home in Seattle. But growing up in Montreal and California, the basic elements of her identity kept her from finding a true home outside the home.

“I felt like a pinball in a pinball machine,“ Khazzoom says. She was taunted by classmates and staff alike at her Jewish day school in California for her Middle Eastern background and liturgical traditions. At her Orthodox Sephardi synagogue, she was silenced and shunted aside as a woman; her passion for the religion and its traditions and her willingness to sing aloud were met with apathy and annoyance. And in public school, she was the target of antisemitic abuse.

A pivotal moment occurred in 1990, during her senior year at Barnard College, when the school’s Jewish organization held a “kvetching session” on problems in the institution’s Jewish life. Khazzoom didn’t hold back.

Everything from the name of the “kvetching” event to the college’s Shabbat and holiday services “was super Ashkenazi,” she recalls. She suggested doing at least one Shabbat prayer in the tradition of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa – and was silenced once again.

Read article in full

Sephardic US bodies warn against academics politicising Mizrahi experience

Fifteen Sephardic organisations  in the US have signed a letter addressed to the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH). The organisations voice their fears that a NEH-funded academic project to’ re- imagine’ the narratives of MENA Jews will be used  to paint a distorted and ideologically-driven picture.  

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Yemenite Jewish refugees arriving in Israel (Photo: Zoltan Kluger)

Middle Eastern Jews in America, Israel, and around the world must not be rendered tertiary characters in our own stories; a frequent occurrence when minority communities become the academic subjects of mainstream, Western scholarship. Some in our community have expressed concern that the new NEH-funded project, helmed by Professors Lior Sternfeld, Michelle Campos and Orit Bashkin, may replicate these well-known and harmful trends in scholarship about Middle Eastern Jews.

It is, of course, impossible to judge a book that has not yet been written. However, some of the authors have made concerning statements that suggest either unfamiliarity with, or derision towards, already-existing histories and accounts of Middle Eastern Jewish perspectives. It is entirely true, as one co-author put it, that Middle Eastern Jews were not merely “a group of people waiting for redemption by Zionism but” were also people who “live[d] and prosper[ed] and work[ed] and suffer[ed] … in the Middle East as part of Middle Eastern societies.” It is not remotely true to suggest this is a novel observation representing the need for a full-scale “reimagining” of Jewish life in the Middle East, or that existing literature from Mizrahi Jewish writers have presented their accounts in such a flat and superficial manner.

Our intention in writing this letter is to insist that all scholars partaking in the emergent wave of scholarship about Middle Eastern Jews, of which this project is but one, take affirmative steps to guard against painting a false or misleading portrayal of Middle Eastern Jewish history that is more loyal to ideological or political commitments than to complex social histories. This includes avoiding, downplaying, or misrepresenting the state of existing scholarship and history about Middle Eastern Jewish communities, as well as refusing to denigrate or deny the values and choices Middle Eastern Jews have made, past and present, including those about Zionism and Israel. The undersigned groups, deeply rooted in our communities’ daily life and with decades of experience collecting and curating the history of diverse Middle Eastern Jewish communities welcome the opportunity to collaborate and contribute to this new wave of academic interest in our heritage and history.

Finally, we recognize that the flowering of new research on Middle Eastern Jewish experience will inevitably produce articles, chapters, or manuscripts that provoke significant controversy and debate. This is unavoidable and part and parcel of a laudable commitment to academic freedom and free inquiry, however, we the undersigned organizations insist on the lodestone commitment that discussions about these controversies and debates do not sideline Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish voices.

No single author or manuscript can be expected to capture the full richness and diversity of Middle Eastern Jewish experience, nor do any write upon a blank slate. The new wave of emergent scholarship can and should be placed into conversation with the many excellent works that already exist. As we await the fruits of the next generation of research, and the inevitable discussion, debate, and disputation that will arise, we would like to bring attention to this bibliography of academic works on Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, that can help guide learning about our community in a way that is respectful of, and resonant with, our own lived experiences.

Read letter in full

US taxpayers to fund revisionist history of MENA Jews

 

 

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This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, of the Middle East and North Africa, documenting the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution.

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Jewish Refugees from Arab and Muslim Countries

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