A Mizrahi in Berlin

Mati Shemoelof

Mizrahi culture refers to the cultures and histories of Jews whose families came to Israel from across the Middle East and North Africa. Being Mizrahi in Berlin creates a different experience of identity. Most of the Jewish population in Germany has an Ashkenazi-European background, while Mizrahi Jews often arrive with a different family history: their parents and grandparents migrated to Israel, and they are the generation that later emigrated from Israel to Europe.

We live in Europe, but we do not necessarily have a European history.

For Mizrahi Jews, migration to Berlin can therefore create a complicated relationship with Europe. In Israel, Mizrahi identity developed within a society shaped by ethnic, cultural and class hierarchies. In Berlin, these questions do not simply disappear. They become visible in new ways.

Mizrahi identity in Berlin

In Berlin, Israeli immigrants can sometimes appear to belong to the same community. But Israeli society itself contains different histories and different forms of privilege.

European passports, economic resources, family background and racial perceptions can shape the experience of migration. Leaving Israel does not automatically erase the social and cultural structures that shaped a person's life there.

For Mizrahi Jews, this can produce a particular experience of migration. We are Israelis living in Germany, but our family histories are connected to Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Yemen, Syria, North Africa and other parts of the Middle East and North Africa.

German culture often has limited knowledge of the Mizrahi experience in Israel. At the same time, Jewish life in Germany is frequently understood through a European Jewish historical framework.

Being Mizrahi in Berlin therefore means asking how a history that was marginalized in Israel can be represented and understood in Europe.

Poetic Hafla

The Poetic Hafla was founded in Berlin in January 2016 by Mati Shemoelof, Barack Moyal and Adi Keissar, growing out of experiences brought from Israeli Mizrahi poetry and cultural spaces.

The event became a space for multilingual poetry, performance, music and celebration. Jewish and non-Jewish immigrants from different countries participated, reading and performing in their mother tongues.

The word hafla refers to a party or celebration. The Poetic Hafla combined Middle Eastern musical traditions with poetry, spoken word and contemporary performance.

The project was an act of Mizrahi cultural empowerment in Berlin. It attempted to create a Middle Eastern cultural space within the city: a place where different languages, cultures and histories could meet without requiring them to disappear into a single European identity.

Since beginning in a private apartment, the Poetic Hafla moved through different venues and brought together many artists.

Reconstructing Mizrahi culture

Mati Shemoelof's writing in Berlin has often dealt with the reconstruction of Mizrahi culture outside Israel.

This reconstruction is not simple. Both Mati Shemoelof and other members of the Mizrahi diaspora can find themselves separated from the languages spoken by their grandparents. Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages can remain present as family memories even when they are no longer spoken fluently.

This creates a particular form of cultural memory: a connection to a place and culture that is partly remembered, partly reconstructed and partly imagined.

Berlin becomes a place where this reconstruction can take place.

The city also creates encounters with Arab communities. For Mizrahi Jews, these encounters can reopen connections to a geographical and cultural history that was separated by the creation of the Israeli state and by later national narratives.

A post-national life

Migration from Israel to Berlin is sometimes understood as a simple political statement about Israel. For Shemoelof, the experience is more complicated.

Living in Berlin does not necessarily mean abandoning Israel, Israeli society, family or language. Nor does living in Germany mean becoming part of German nationalism.

A post-national life can instead mean carrying several histories at once.

For Mizrahi Jews, this can create an opportunity to rethink identity beyond a simple opposition between Israel and Europe. It can also create space to reconnect with Middle Eastern Jewish histories that were marginalized or forgotten.

Mizrahi culture has always contained multiple influences. Jewish communities from Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Yemen and elsewhere lived within multilingual and multicultural environments. Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, French and other languages were part of different Jewish experiences.

The diaspora can therefore become a place not only of displacement, but also of reconstruction.

Mizrahi culture and Berlin

Being Mizrahi in Berlin means living between histories.

It means carrying a Jewish history that is not only European, an Israeli history that is not only Ashkenazi, and a Middle Eastern history that cannot simply be separated from Jewish history.

Through poetry, essays, cultural events and multilingual projects, Shemoelof explores how these histories can become visible in Berlin.

The question is not how to recreate Israel in Europe, but how to create cultural spaces in which Mizrahi, Arab-Jewish and Middle Eastern Jewish histories can exist as part of the contemporary European cultural landscape.