Questions of an Arab-Jewish Diaspora

By Mati Shemoelof

An essay on Arab-Jewish identity, Mizrahi history, migration, language, memory and diaspora, based on Mati Shemoelof’s experience of living and creating in Berlin.

What does the Arab-Jewish diaspora mean?

During my decade-long residence in Berlin, I have frequently encountered questions about the significance of the Arab-Jewish diaspora. What happens to Arab-Jewish and Mizrahi identity when one leaves Israel? Can the history, cultural knowledge and political questions developed by Arab-Jews in Israel be carried into a new country?

As an Arab-Jew, explaining the linguistic void I inhabit in Berlin is challenging. The Iraqi and Persian languages of my grandparents from Iraq and Iran on both sides of my family do not resonate with German culture, and I have had to live with a lack of regional, cultural and liturgical affiliations.

There is no established Arab-Jewish history in Germany that I can simply reference in terms of time or place. Starting afresh becomes necessary: carrying the narrative on the poet's shoulders and weaving it into every discussion, every reading and every cultural encounter.

The challenge intensifies when considering the Jewish-Arab and Mizrahi narrative developed in Israel. How can the wealth of research, cultural consciousness and political thought developed by the second and third generations be translated into a new country? Can knowledge itself migrate?

Mizrahi identity and Arab-Jewish history

The term "Mizrahi", meaning Eastern or Oriental, was not initially a positive concept in the early years of the State of Israel. It placed Jews from very different regions — from Iraq and Yemen to Morocco and the Caucasus — into a single category that was positioned at the bottom of a cultural hierarchy.

Over the years, Arab-Jews and Mizrahi activists appropriated the term and transformed it into a language of political and cultural resistance. The Wadi Salib uprising of 1959 and the Black Panthers movement of the early 1970s became important moments in this history.

The Mizrahi question therefore cannot be understood only as a question of origin. It is also a question of class, culture, language, power and representation.

Hannah Arendt's account of the Eichmann trial offers one revealing example of the ethnic and cultural hierarchy she observed in Israel. Her description of German Jewish judges, European prosecutors, Hebrew-speaking police officers and the "Oriental mob" reflects the divisions that shaped Israeli society and its understanding of European and Middle Eastern Jewish identities.

Arab-Jewish culture in Berlin

In the diaspora, there persists a Eurocentric assumption that the majority of Israeli Jews originated from Europe. The rich history of Arab-Jewish culture often remains largely unrecognized.

Arab-Jewish history cannot be understood only through European categories. Jewish communities lived for centuries in the Islamic world, developing languages, religious traditions, music and cultural practices in dialogue with their surroundings.

This cultural mixture can still be heard in Mizrahi music and Jewish liturgical traditions. When I came to Berlin, I experienced this difference personally in the synagogue. The Arab-Jewish piyutim I knew from Moroccan and Iraqi Jewish traditions in Haifa were not always present in the same form.

In 2021, while co-curating a festival in Berlin around the idea of a future Middle Eastern Union, I proposed a performance of Arab-Jewish piyutim. An Ashkenazi cantor, Assaf Levitin, performed the songs together with a Syrian oud player. For one moment, a cultural space was recreated in Berlin in which Jewish and Arab musical traditions could meet.

For me, this demonstrated that Arab-Jewish culture is not a question of fixed essence. It can also be understood as an open tent: a cultural space that others can enter, learn and transform.

Language, migration and memory

Migration is not only the movement of people. It can also be the movement of languages, memories, books, music and cultural knowledge.

What happens when Hebrew encounters German, Arabic and other languages outside Israel? Can a new diasporic Hebrew emerge? What happens to Arabic among Arab-Jews living outside the Middle East?

These questions are central to my writing and poetry. They are also part of a broader question: how can literary works created in the diaspora carry the historical, cultural, linguistic, social and political contexts from which they emerged?

Without that context, Arab-Jewish literature can easily be interpreted through national narratives that leave out important parts of its history.

Between Jewish, Arab and Palestinian histories

The Arab-Jewish narrative also raises difficult questions about Palestine, Israel and the politics of memory.

Israel has often framed the history of Jews from Arab countries through the idea of the "forgotten million", while Arab and Palestinian narratives have sometimes struggled to incorporate the Jewish-Arab dimension of the history of the Middle East.

For Arab-Jews living in the diaspora, this creates a complicated position. How can Arab-Jews resist the political appropriation of their history while also refusing to erase the history itself?

Berlin can become a space in which these questions are explored differently. It can bring together Jewish, Arab, Israeli and Palestinian histories while allowing new forms of cultural and political dialogue to emerge.

In 2021, Hila Amit, Ala Obeid and I curated a four-day festival in Berlin centred on the idea of a future Middle Eastern Union. The festival brought together Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, and explored the possibility of cultural cooperation across borders.

The diaspora can therefore become more than a place of exile. It can also become a space in which suppressed, excluded or fragmented histories are reconsidered.

The Arab-Jewish diaspora as an open question

What does it mean to be an Arab-Jew outside Israel?

How do Jewish traditions change when they exist outside a Jewish state? What happens to Hebrew when it enters a multilingual environment? What happens to Arabic? How do gender, class, sexuality and migration shape Arab-Jewish identities in the diaspora?

These questions do not have one answer.

For me, the Arab-Jewish diaspora is not simply a continuation of an Israeli identity outside Israel. It is a space in which history, language, memory and political imagination can be reconsidered.

Standing in a cosmopolitan and stratified space, the inability of the broader community to recognize the multifaceted identity of Arab-Jews beyond their Israeli passport remains a profound problem.

Bridging this historical and cultural gap is essential for creating a more inclusive understanding of Jewish, Arab and Middle Eastern histories.