This study will address the problematic relationship between Judeo-Spanish populations of the Ottoman Empire and nationalist culture and expression. Through a comparative analysis of primary literary and visual source materials that include satirical series' in the Judeo-Spanish press, early photographs and memoirs as well as relevant scholarly studies, I will explore how the particular experiences of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews shed new light on conceptions of language, ethnicity, religiosity and national identity in the Middle East. These people straddled many cultures, and were an example of a 'creolized' ethnicity in the Ottoman Empire. Their language, which was central to their ethnic identification, is nearly extinct in the modern world despite the ancestral presence of these communities in the United States, Israel and elsewhere. Considering Sephardic culture's vitality during the advent of Zionism, the Judeo-Spanish language may be considered one of the great casualties of Jewish nationalism - specifically its most potent form, Zionism. This essay will provide a historical sketch of the Ottoman Sephardic community from roughly 1890-1940. I will analyze of the valuable existing work concerning the establishment of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the primary organ of Jewish community association in this period. Selections of the Judeo-Spanish satirical series Tio Ezra i Su Mujer Benuta and Tio Bohor i Su Mujer Djamila will then be analyzed as they address concepts of Zionism, the Holy Land and perceptions of language, ethnicity, religiosity and nationalism. I will then address photographs taken of Mizrahi communities in Israel, to construct the sort of visceral expressions of identity that photography eloquently allows us. In consideration of the broad study of non-Ashkenazic communities that has been done, I will employ comparative methods to establish a better picture of Sephardic and Mizrahi communities in Israel and the United States. This study will further complicate a perceived unity amongst the Zionist community. Currently, the perception of homogeneity amongst the Israeli populace is borne out by some sort of unity amongst the current population. In the process of elaborating on the diversity of the early Zionist formations, the question that most comes to mind is whither the Judeo-Spanish language? The formation of a nation-state and a coherent national culture in Israel did not come without a cultural price tag. Understanding the communities that lost themselves in the process of nationalism is the first step to a better understanding of the cultural, ethnic and linguistic atrophies of the modern nation.

This paper aims to use narrative as a methodological tool for the study of the changing nature of Jewish identity from late Ottoman to early national Iraq. While there are at least nine Iraqi-Jewish memoirs that I am aware of that recall the events of the 1920s, only two are written by individuals who had come of age before the early national period, and thus can shed direct light on both individual and communal changes during this period. The memoirs of these two brothers, Abraham and Yehezkal El-Kabir, form the backbone of this paper's case study, but in certain instances will be supplemented by evidence from other narratives. This paper's central argument is that the two writers in question represent how Iraqi-Jews drew upon and actively re-interpreted communal narratives in order to fashion new identities suitable to life in modern Iraq. These new identities helped facilitate Jewish adaptation to Iraqi national life but also fostered feelings of resentment towards the new state while simultaneously re-affirming the positive aspects of life under Ottoman rule. This, in turn, created new communal narrative tropes of hope, disappointment, and nostalgia. Building on the works of Peter Wien and Ronald Suny this paper makes several original contributions to the field of Iraqi-Jewish studies. First, it sheds light on how formerly Ottomanized Jews adjusted to new political realities in post-Ottoman Iraq. Second, it highlights both the potential and limitations of the use of memoirs in reconstructing the past. Third, it uses narrative as a tool to critically engage the concept of the 'Arab-Jew' and its corollary of harmonious Arab/Jewish relations prior to the outbreak of Zionist-Arab hostilities in the 1940s. Thus this paper fills in both methodological and historiographic gaps in the field of Iraqi-Jewish studies.

The Jewish Community of Damascus under the Emir Faisal: between Arab Nationalism and Zionism Between 1908 and 1920, the Jewish community of Damascus, encountered three nationalist movements, each of which demanded total solidarity from its members. Several times throughout this short period, the Jews had to choose one of three circles of identity: national Ottoman-Jewish identity, national Arab-Jewish identity, and national Hebrew-Zionist identity, which was a new kind of Jewish identity. This presents an unprecedented need for thinking in terms of national definition. In addition, in the background there was always the option of adopting the French cultural identity, because of the education activities of the French-Jewish society Alliance Isra?lite Universelle. Since October 5 1918, an Arab government appointed by the Emir Faisal dominated in Damascus. It was a period that stirred intense political activity. There were many parties, organizations, and various important and marginal ideologies groups. Faisal's people, who formed the new political establishment, had a clear Arab-Syrian national orientation that sought to define the frames of Arab Syria. In order to bridge the gaps and differences between the various populations resulting from religious, ethnic, urban or tribe identities, emphasis was placed on fostering a secular Arab national identity. This is of importance since all residents were promised emancipation and equal rights. A specific slogan expressed more than anything Faisal's activity towards real integration of the non-Muslim minorities in the new Arab state: "Religion is for God, nation is for all (al deen le allah wa al watan le al jamee')". Within this framework, the Jews were recognized as a natural part of the National Arab society, who practiced the law of Moses (Musawi). The equal rights offered under the new regime, made it clear to them that the Arab-Syrian society expects them to show national solidarity with its goals. On the other hand, the Zionist movement expected the Jews who lived close to the border of the Holy Land, to be faithful to the goal of creating a national homeland for the Jews in the same region that was defined by the Arabs as the south part of Great Syria. Based upon thus far un-discovered archival documents, I would like to deal with the difficult situation of the Jews of Damascus between Arab nationalism and Zionism.