“The Ethno-Religious Juncture: An Emerging Trend in Young Mizrahi Cinema” This paper explores the intersectionality between ethnic identity and religious traditions as they pertain to the cinematic formulation of Mizrahi (Arab-Jewish or Sephardi) Jewish identity in contemporary Israeli films. In line with the regnant European Zionist discourses of the Israeli melting pot and the negation of exile, Mizrahi ethnicity was deemed a remnant of a past that must be erased. From the late 1980s, a growing number of scholarly, artistic, and film works have attempted to retrieve Mizrahi identity in what amounts to a concerted attack on Zionism’s mainstay ideology that has marginalized the Mizrahi collective. Problematically, whereas Zionism had to accept the religious identity of the Mizrahi (in accordance with the “one people” dictum),(1) those advocating the Mizrahi cause, most of whom are liberal and secular Jews leery about the increasing presence and influence of religion in Israel, often slight the place of Mizrahi religious traditions in their works on the Mizrahi struggle (e.g., the elaborate scholarly and artistic exploration of the secular Mizrahi Black Panthers movement of the early 1970s). This paper argues that the emerging trend where young Mizrahi filmmakers explore their ethnic identity in light of religious or mystical Mizrahi traditions (for example, in the feature films Seven Days and To Take a Wife and in the documentaries Come Mother and Edges) is meant not only as a subversive act designed to challenge the Ashkenazi Zionist displacement of the Mizrahi, but, to an extent, also as a plea to broaden our understanding of Mizrahi ethno-religious identity in contemporary Israel. 1. Yehouda Shenhav, The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity, 2006. In a facetious manner, Iris Mizrahi (2001) states that “When they [the authorities] shut all doors closed for the Mizrahim, they forgot to close one door—the door to the synagogue. . .”

This paper will look at one instance of internet music videos as spaces for both the (re)formation of ethnic, national, and diasporic identities, and the expression of xenophobia, ethnic and national conflict, and racism. Videos featuring Yemeni Jewish singers, performing “traditional” songs appear frequently on Youtube. The songs are mostly recorded in Israel, where the majority of Yemeni Jews have lived since their mass emigration from Yemen in 1949-50. Since these singers do not generally film “official” music videos, the visual content of the YouTube clips is most often user-made montages of pictures of the singers, Yemen, and random Yemenis. Below the video clips are user comments from around the world. The majority of the commentators appear to be Yemenis, Jews and Muslims, along with Jews and Arabs from other places. The discussions – about the songs themselves, historic Jewish-Muslim coexistence in Yemen, the politics of the state of Israel, Zionism, and Arab nationalism – are carried out in a mix of Arabic, English, and Hebrew. Yemeni Jews in Israel have maintained many of the customs they brought with them from Yemen, including the performance of “traditional” music. Because of the Arab-Israeli conflict, however, they have not been able to maintain many concrete ties with Yemen itself, or with Yemeni Muslims there or in the Diaspora. In fact, there appear to be two distinct Yemeni diasporas – one Jewish, made up of permanent emigrants, centered in Israel and focused on an increasingly “imagined” Yemen, and one Muslim, composed of emigrants and temporary migrant workers throughout the world, focused on contemporary Yemen. Music videos on YouTube produce spaces in which these two Yemeni groups interact with each other and the larger Arab and Jewish worlds. They are also sites for the construction of, and dispute over, identity. For Yemeni Jews these songs are declarations of Yemeni-ness. Some Arab commentators, however, question the possibility of being both Jewish and Yemeni. From both sides, comments range from racist to conciliatory to nostalgic. This paper will analyze users’ comments and interactions, along with the musical arrangements and lyrical content of the songs, to the highlight the role of music in the construction of identity and tradition, and the way that internet technology is impacting that role. It will conclude with a discussion of music as a possible site of reconciliation, coexistence, and/or conflict.

This paper interrogates the political implications of depictions of Sephardi and Mizrahi identity in national and local arenas in Israel, particularly in Jerusalem. I analyze a selection of oral and visual narratives of these minorities in light of a ‘revival’ of Jewish heritage in Israel, and a concurrent acceleration of policies promoting the Judaization of Jerusalem (Fenster 2003; Yiftachel and Yacobi 2003). These narratives range from the personal to the institutional, including TV shows, storytelling performances, jokes, and plaques commemorating the communities who shaped Jerusalem’s historic Jewish neighborhoods. These portrayals of Sephardim and Mizrahim alternatively uphold or critique social and cultural hierarchies in Israeli society and by extension, Israeli claims to Jerusalem. The paper considers the implications of these representations for Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews’ self-identification vis-à-vis other Jews, Zionism, and the Palestinians. This subject is especially relevant at a time when the boundaries of Israeli identity are hardening, while at the same time Jewish ethnic diversity is increasingly acknowledged (Yassif 2002). Jerusalem presents an important locus for investigating these trends as it merges two historical developments: The first concerns the aging of a generation of Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews that has lived through the early days of the state and concomitantly, has experienced the consolidation of a Zionist identity driven by notions of modernity and labor, and Hebraized cultural hegemony. The second relates to the local embeddedness of this generation in Jerusalem during a time when the city is being reimagined by right-wing ethno-national policies and neoliberal forces following a decades-long process of Judaization (Yiftachel and Yacobi 2003; Benvenisti 1996). The retirement of a generation now revisiting family heritage long suppressed or left out of the Zionist narrative coincides with public commemoration of Jerusalem’s past. Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews who have experienced exclusion and discrimination since even before 1948 (Eliachar 1983; Smooha 1987; Swirski 1989) are bringing their grievances to bear in a city where they once constituted a majority and where today they demand recognition for their contributions to Jerusalem, the cornerstone of Israel’s political agenda. The narratives I analyze reveal that while affirmations of ethnic identity challenge mainstream depictions of Mizrahim and Sephardim in Israel, they uphold the Zionist paradigm as they assert their importance to Jerusalem.

In 2011, Rita, Israel’s top pop music diva, released an album of mostly Persian folk songs in her native Farsi. Although she had immigrated to Israel from Iran at age eight, and had fleetingly referenced this Persian heritage in earlier music, this was the first album in her thirty-year career in which she strayed completely from her Western-sounding Israeli pop fare. The album went “gold” within three weeks in Israel and garnered tremendous press in Israel at a period of utmost tension between Iran and Israel. Rita’s decision to return to the music of her childhood is understandable in the context of a decade in which Mizrahi pride is at an all-time high in Israel. Mizrahim experienced cultural discrimination from the Eurocentric Israeli establishment for the first few decades of Israel’s existence, but by the early 2000s a cultural shift had begun, and many second-generation Mizrahim began excavating their cultural roots for artistic inspiration. Rita, who recently turned 50, was undoubtedly influenced by these recent Israeli trends to return to her own Persian heritage. While the success of Rita’s album made sense in the Israeli context, its subsequent popularity as an underground favorite in Iran was more surprising. Though her album was banned in Iran (as all Western/Israeli albums are) thousands of fans in Iran have illegally downloaded her album and many of them have posted words of adoration on her Facebook page, on YouTube, and elsewhere on the Internet. Not all Iranians have responded favorably to Rita’s album, however. Members of the Iranian regime have posted comments stating that Rita’s music choices represent an Israeli conspiracy to win over Iranians. This cultural exchange, in particular, received significant attention in the global media, where Rita—who denies any political agenda behind her music—has been referred to as a “cultural ambassador;” in March 2013 she will perform at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. This paper seeks to apply an ethnographic approach to this transnational media—from Israel, Iran, and beyond—reflecting upon the meaning of such cyber musical encounters.