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magidI went to one of the morning sessions of this grad student conference (sponsored by Columbia University's Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies). Session IVA was titled "Jews Among Others" (except that when I got the paper program, it was called session IVB, and the order of talks within that was moved around. I'm not sure why.), and had talks that sounded more interesting than the other option, which was "New Forms of Jewish Nationhood, Real or Imagined?" Of course, titles aren't everything, but, being academic talks, the titles were long and descriptive.
First up, Jonathan Gribetz from Columbia University, with "Defining Neighbors: Religion and the 'Arab-Zionist' Encounter in Late Ottoman Palestine." This was a look at how Jews of Palestine in the 1900s to 1910s viewed other groups, as shown through the newspaper HaHerut. The paper was run by Jews who were mostly Sefardi, though there were some Ashkenazi Jews as well. This meant that they were Ottoman citizens, owing regular taxes, rather than the European, foreign-passport-holding Ashkenazis, who had to pay other sorts of fees to live there. They understood Arabic, and, similar to Muslims, saw religion as permeating life, rather than one piece of it. They also remembered how the Ottoman Empire took in the Jews after the expulsion from Spain in 1492.
Interestingly, the language in HaHerut to describe people was mostly based on religion, not ethnicity. Thus, Jew, Muslim (or sometimes Ishmaelite), or Christian were the major descriptors, though there were times that Arab was used, including Muslim Arab and Christian Arab. On the whole, it was religion that was of primary importance. This, though the paper was written by a variety of people, only known by their initials, so it is difficult to tell how much was individual preference/bias, versus general opinions of the time.
There was an issue with anti-Zionist Arabic press demonizing the Jews. Interestingly, the Jews saw this as coming from Christian Arabs, not Muslims (how times change...). Christians were known to hate Jews (see: the expulsion, pogroms, auto da fe, etc), while Muslims accepted Jews as another religion of the book, brothers who accepted the Jews as they were, tolerant of this religious minority. There were a couple of examples brought, about the paper's coverage of a talk about how Jesus didn't exist, which was described in rather biased language (guess which way), and of a series of lectures for Jews to help understand Islam.
Next was Jessica Marglin from Princeton University, with "Moroccan Jews between French Nationalism and AIU Cosmopolitanism, 1893-1913." This started with a description of the Alliance, a French-Jewish group formed in 1860 that started schools in France and around the Mediterranean. And a note, that Jews of the Middle East were mostly not seen as involved in nationalist movements, at least partly because they weren't seen as wholly part of the nations in question.
In 1893, the alumni of the Alliance school in Tangiers formed a group, sending out annual reports of activities as well as articles on various topics. The school had a westernizing agenda, in particular focusing on political emancipation and equality for Jews, plus education, a regeneration of Jews in the Middle East in cultural progress (seen as having been slowed/Jewish content diluted by lengthy exposure to the Muslim majority without formal ways of combating cultural borrowing, especially in the hinterlands of Morocco, which were seen as less enlightened than the Jews in the cities), encouraging an attachment to Judaism. (A note about numbers: not all Jews went to Alliance schools, of which there were 12 in Morocco. Tangiers was one of the larger ones. Of the alumni of the Tangiers school, under 50% joined the alumni association. So the association is not at all representative of the Jewish community as a whole, but can be seen as a test case, the most likely to welcome the French, for instance.)
Modern historical opinion is that these schools also educated Jews to be politically as well as socially affiliated with France, making them ready for French citizenship in 1912 when the French protectorate of Morocco started. Howver, it is this researcher's opinion that this is not so. The Alliance schools were a westernizing force, but not specifically towards accepting French politics. In fact, they were politcally neutral officially, not promoting French nationalism. The bulletins of the alumni association were in both French and Spanish, and other materials were multilingual as well. In fact, a 1913 pamphle by Moshe Toledano in reaction to the recent colonization (when the fate of Tangiers was still up in the air, not yet determined to be an international city) was anxious about the coming of the French, seeing them as treasure seekers, and possibly anti-Semits (this was only 15 years after the Dreyfuss affair). Of course, there were some pro-French individuals among the alumni, but they were not a majority. It was mostly a social and cultural attachment that was fostered, not a political one, looking to the French model for roles for the future, such as including women in the public sphere, and encouraging a attachment to Jews in other countries, espeically Sefardi ones.
Third was Jonathan Sciarcon from UC Santa Barbara, with "A Golden Age? The Political Horizons of Baghdadi Jews in the 1920s." This focused on the integration of the Jews in Baghdad into the greater political discussion of the time. Actually, though, the focus ended up being on backstory; there wasn't enough time at the level of detail he was giving (very quickly; I found it hard to take notes during this talk).
The Jewish population of Iraq in the 1800s was fragmented among four cities, Mosul, Basra, Kirkuk, and Baghdad. Jews in Iraq saw their history as linked with Muslim history. In 1864 the first Alliance school started in Baghdad, and by the early 1900s, there were many schools, so many Jews much about western ideology, as well as having a level of education greater than many of the Muslim neighbors. Both these factors tended to divide them from their neighbors. Additionally, the opening of the Suez canal in 1869 helped merchants, many of them Jewish, to prosper.
In 1908, there was the Young Turk revolution. This meant that officially, Jews and Christians couldn't pay to avoid military service, though some manged to do so. So many Iraqi Jews had to serve in the army, including during World War I. In March, 1917, the British conquered Baghdad (where more than 65% of all the Jews in the country lived), and the Jews saw them as liberators at first, some even petitioning to become British citizens. But the British realized that they couldn't rule directly in Iraq with the growth of nationalism, so they invited Faisal to rule in 1921. With the end of Ottoman rule, World War I, the rise of British power, and so on, young people became Iraqi nationalists, joining the Young Turks.
In the 1920s, many Jews, espeically younger ones, saw themselves as Iraqi nationalists. However, the mainstream call was for not only Iraqi nationalism but also pan-Arabism, which the Jews rejected. Increasingly, Arabs started conflating Judaism and pro-Zionism, which is ironic, because most of the younger Iraqi Jews were, in fact, not Zionist, wanting to live in Iraq and make it a better nation.
(The talk started with a note about how it was going to focus on three men, who were mentioned only briefly; I assume their connection would be made more clear in a longer talk.)
And the last talk was Celine* Piser from UC Berkely, with "The Journey Home: Language and Identity in Clarisse Nicoïdski's Lus Ojus Las Manus La Boca." (See previous post.)
I admit, I'm not enough of a literary analysis person to really enjoy the discussion of poetry, though I'm glad I got to read the poetry itself. The others were interesting snapshots of Jewish life in the early 1900s in different Sefardi communities, and that was very enjoyable (it was obvious that these were all abbreviated forms of dissertations or other long papers to come; there is always more to dig into!).
* This name always makes me think of Cole Brock's book Celine.
First up, Jonathan Gribetz from Columbia University, with "Defining Neighbors: Religion and the 'Arab-Zionist' Encounter in Late Ottoman Palestine." This was a look at how Jews of Palestine in the 1900s to 1910s viewed other groups, as shown through the newspaper HaHerut. The paper was run by Jews who were mostly Sefardi, though there were some Ashkenazi Jews as well. This meant that they were Ottoman citizens, owing regular taxes, rather than the European, foreign-passport-holding Ashkenazis, who had to pay other sorts of fees to live there. They understood Arabic, and, similar to Muslims, saw religion as permeating life, rather than one piece of it. They also remembered how the Ottoman Empire took in the Jews after the expulsion from Spain in 1492.
Interestingly, the language in HaHerut to describe people was mostly based on religion, not ethnicity. Thus, Jew, Muslim (or sometimes Ishmaelite), or Christian were the major descriptors, though there were times that Arab was used, including Muslim Arab and Christian Arab. On the whole, it was religion that was of primary importance. This, though the paper was written by a variety of people, only known by their initials, so it is difficult to tell how much was individual preference/bias, versus general opinions of the time.
There was an issue with anti-Zionist Arabic press demonizing the Jews. Interestingly, the Jews saw this as coming from Christian Arabs, not Muslims (how times change...). Christians were known to hate Jews (see: the expulsion, pogroms, auto da fe, etc), while Muslims accepted Jews as another religion of the book, brothers who accepted the Jews as they were, tolerant of this religious minority. There were a couple of examples brought, about the paper's coverage of a talk about how Jesus didn't exist, which was described in rather biased language (guess which way), and of a series of lectures for Jews to help understand Islam.
Next was Jessica Marglin from Princeton University, with "Moroccan Jews between French Nationalism and AIU Cosmopolitanism, 1893-1913." This started with a description of the Alliance, a French-Jewish group formed in 1860 that started schools in France and around the Mediterranean. And a note, that Jews of the Middle East were mostly not seen as involved in nationalist movements, at least partly because they weren't seen as wholly part of the nations in question.
In 1893, the alumni of the Alliance school in Tangiers formed a group, sending out annual reports of activities as well as articles on various topics. The school had a westernizing agenda, in particular focusing on political emancipation and equality for Jews, plus education, a regeneration of Jews in the Middle East in cultural progress (seen as having been slowed/Jewish content diluted by lengthy exposure to the Muslim majority without formal ways of combating cultural borrowing, especially in the hinterlands of Morocco, which were seen as less enlightened than the Jews in the cities), encouraging an attachment to Judaism. (A note about numbers: not all Jews went to Alliance schools, of which there were 12 in Morocco. Tangiers was one of the larger ones. Of the alumni of the Tangiers school, under 50% joined the alumni association. So the association is not at all representative of the Jewish community as a whole, but can be seen as a test case, the most likely to welcome the French, for instance.)
Modern historical opinion is that these schools also educated Jews to be politically as well as socially affiliated with France, making them ready for French citizenship in 1912 when the French protectorate of Morocco started. Howver, it is this researcher's opinion that this is not so. The Alliance schools were a westernizing force, but not specifically towards accepting French politics. In fact, they were politcally neutral officially, not promoting French nationalism. The bulletins of the alumni association were in both French and Spanish, and other materials were multilingual as well. In fact, a 1913 pamphle by Moshe Toledano in reaction to the recent colonization (when the fate of Tangiers was still up in the air, not yet determined to be an international city) was anxious about the coming of the French, seeing them as treasure seekers, and possibly anti-Semits (this was only 15 years after the Dreyfuss affair). Of course, there were some pro-French individuals among the alumni, but they were not a majority. It was mostly a social and cultural attachment that was fostered, not a political one, looking to the French model for roles for the future, such as including women in the public sphere, and encouraging a attachment to Jews in other countries, espeically Sefardi ones.
Third was Jonathan Sciarcon from UC Santa Barbara, with "A Golden Age? The Political Horizons of Baghdadi Jews in the 1920s." This focused on the integration of the Jews in Baghdad into the greater political discussion of the time. Actually, though, the focus ended up being on backstory; there wasn't enough time at the level of detail he was giving (very quickly; I found it hard to take notes during this talk).
The Jewish population of Iraq in the 1800s was fragmented among four cities, Mosul, Basra, Kirkuk, and Baghdad. Jews in Iraq saw their history as linked with Muslim history. In 1864 the first Alliance school started in Baghdad, and by the early 1900s, there were many schools, so many Jews much about western ideology, as well as having a level of education greater than many of the Muslim neighbors. Both these factors tended to divide them from their neighbors. Additionally, the opening of the Suez canal in 1869 helped merchants, many of them Jewish, to prosper.
In 1908, there was the Young Turk revolution. This meant that officially, Jews and Christians couldn't pay to avoid military service, though some manged to do so. So many Iraqi Jews had to serve in the army, including during World War I. In March, 1917, the British conquered Baghdad (where more than 65% of all the Jews in the country lived), and the Jews saw them as liberators at first, some even petitioning to become British citizens. But the British realized that they couldn't rule directly in Iraq with the growth of nationalism, so they invited Faisal to rule in 1921. With the end of Ottoman rule, World War I, the rise of British power, and so on, young people became Iraqi nationalists, joining the Young Turks.
In the 1920s, many Jews, espeically younger ones, saw themselves as Iraqi nationalists. However, the mainstream call was for not only Iraqi nationalism but also pan-Arabism, which the Jews rejected. Increasingly, Arabs started conflating Judaism and pro-Zionism, which is ironic, because most of the younger Iraqi Jews were, in fact, not Zionist, wanting to live in Iraq and make it a better nation.
(The talk started with a note about how it was going to focus on three men, who were mentioned only briefly; I assume their connection would be made more clear in a longer talk.)
And the last talk was Celine* Piser from UC Berkely, with "The Journey Home: Language and Identity in Clarisse Nicoïdski's Lus Ojus Las Manus La Boca." (See previous post.)
I admit, I'm not enough of a literary analysis person to really enjoy the discussion of poetry, though I'm glad I got to read the poetry itself. The others were interesting snapshots of Jewish life in the early 1900s in different Sefardi communities, and that was very enjoyable (it was obvious that these were all abbreviated forms of dissertations or other long papers to come; there is always more to dig into!).
* This name always makes me think of Cole Brock's book Celine.