5:04:00 PM
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Yahadut Mizrah - THE JEWS OF THE EAST
Mizrahi Jews also referred to as Edot HaMizrach (Communities of the East) are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus. With the exception of Yemenite Jews, who are sometimes included but more often considered to comprise a group in their own right, the Mizrahi category includes Jews from the Arab world and adjacent countries, primarily Muslim-majority, including Iraqi Jews, Syrian Jews, Lebanese Jews, Persian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Maghrebi Jews, Berber Jews and Kurdish Jews, as well as communities such as Mountain Jews and Georgian Jews, and among the Jews of India and Pakistan the Baghdadi Jews (descendants of relatively recent Iraqi Jews settled in the last few centuries, in contrast to Jewish communities of the Indian subcontinent established millennia earlier).
Despite their heterogeneous origins, Mizrahi Jews generally practise traditional Sephardic Judaism, although with some differences among the minhagim of the particular communities. The prevalence of the Sephardic rite among Mizrahim is largely as a result of Sephardic expelees joining their communities so that ultimately, over the last few centuries, the previously distinctive rites of the Mizrahi communities were influenced, superimposed or altogether replaced by the more prestigiously perceived Sephardic rite. This fact has resulted in a conflation of terms, with the term Sephardi Jews often used with the implicit encompassing of Mizrahi Jews, especially in the prevalent Israeli usage.
Many people, especially in Israel, identify all non-Ashkenazi Jews as Sephardim. The reason for this classification is that most Mizrahi communities use much the same religious rituals as Sephardim proper. In the same way, "Ashkenazim" is used for "Jews of the German rite", whether or not they originate from Germany. This broader definition of "Sephardim" as applying to all Mizrahi Jews is also common in Jewish religious circles, especially those associated with the Shas political party.
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and subsequent establishment of the state of Israel, most Mizrahi Jews (900 000) were either expelled by their Arab rulers or chose to leave and emigrated to the new state where they could become citizens.
Anti-Jewish actions by Arab governments in the 1950s and 1960s, including the expulsion of 25,000 Mizrahi Jews from Egypt after the 1956 Suez Crisis, led to the overwhelming majority of Mizrahim leaving Arab countries. They became refugees. Most went to Israel. Many Moroccan and Algerian Jews went to France. Thousands of Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian Jews emigrated to the United States.
Today, as many as 40,000 Mizrahim still remain in communities scattered throughout the non-Arab Muslim world, primarily in Iran, but also Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. There are few remaining in the Arab world. About 5,000 remain in Morocco and fewer than 2,000 in Tunisia. Other countries with remnants of ancient Jewish communities with official recognition, such as Lebanon, have 1,000 or fewer Jews. A trickle of emigration continues, mainly to Israel and the United States. A number have been arrested, mostly for alleged connections with Israel and the United States. Some have been executed, with religious intolerance often cited as the main contributing factor.
Politicians - Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, current Israeli minister of Infrastructure, former minister of Defense and Israel Labor Party chairman, (Iraqi Jew), commonly called by his Arabic name "Fuad"
- Aryeh Deri, former leader of Shas Party and minister of Internal Affairs, (Moroccan Jew)
- Yisrael Yeshayahu Sharabi, Minister of Post and Speaker of Knesset 1970s and 80s, ethnicity/country of origin: Yemen
-Dalia Itzik, current Knesset speaker
- Avigdor Kahalani, former minister of Internal Security and decorated IDF tank commander
- Moshe Katsav, former President of the State of Israel and minister of Transportation, ethnicity/country of origin: Iran
- David Levy, former minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister (Moroccan Jew)
- Shaul Mofaz, former Israeli Minister of Defense and chief of the IDF General Staff, Iranian Jew
- Yitzhak Mordechai, retired IDF general, former minister of Defense and minister of Transportation, ethnicity/country of origin: Iraq
- Dorrit Moussaieff, First Lady of Iceland (Bukharian Jew)
- Yitzhak Navon, fifth president of Israel and former minister of Education
- Amir Peretz, current Knesset member and former Israeli Minister of Defense, Labor Party chairman, and chairman of the Histadrut, ethnicity/country of origin: Morocco
- Silvan Shalom, former Israeli minister of Foreign Affairs, minister of Treasury and Deputy Prime Minister, Tunisian Jew
- Meir Sheetrit, current Israeli minister of Internal Affairs and former Deputy Prime Minister, minister of Treasury and of Education
Entertainers- Sarit Hadad, Israeli singer from Dagestan, Russian Federation (Mountain Jew)
- Gali Atari, Israeli singer and actress, won the Eurovision Song Contest (Yemenite family)
- Yizhar Cohen, Israeli singer, won the Eurovision Song Contest (Yemenite family)
- Shoshana Damari, Israeli singer (Yemen born)
- Malika Kalantarova, Famous Tajik-Bukharian dancer (People's Artist of USSR)
- Fatima Kuinova, Soviet-Bukharian singer (Merited Artist of USSR)
- Subliminal, Israeli rapper of Persian/Tunisian descent
Business people- Charles Saatchi, advertising executive and art collector (born in Iraq)
- Maurice Saatchi, Baron Saatchi, advertising executive and chairman of the British Conservative Party
- Michael Kadoorie, prominent businessman from Hong-Kong
- Shlomo Moussaieff, Jewellery Designer/ Judaic Collector and Expert (Bukharian)
- Lev Leviev, Israeli businessman of Bukharian descent
- David and Simon Reuben, British businessmen born in India, from a family of Baghdadi Jews
- Edmond Safra, banker from Lebanon
Total population: 3.0 to 3.5 million (estimate)
