Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Mizrahi Jews, a major Jewish ethnic group from the Middle East and North Africa.
Mizrahi Jews
The Latest
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Opinion Mizrahi Artists Are Here To Incite a Culture War
The lineup outside the Tel Aviv nightclub snaked until the end of the block, but Yonit Naaman and I bypassed the crowds and walked to the front door. People eyed us enviously as the bouncer let us through. Inside, we were giddy over the VIP treatment, joking that it was payback for all those times…
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Opinion The Mizrahi-Palestinian Intersectionality Nobody’s Talking About
If you’ve been tuned in to the Israel-Palestine conversation over the past few months, you’ve probably heard the word The idea that different forms of oppression are linked — so that standing up for victims of sexism and homophobia should also mean that we stand up for, say, victims of Israeli state violence — has…
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Music Mizrahi Music Gets Its Rock Star Moment
On the cover of Riff Cohen’s 2012 album, “A Paris,” there is a picture of her grandmother at age 14, wearing braids and a scowl. A teenage bride, her grandmother had taken the passport photo for her move from Djerba, Tunisia, to Israel. The image holds sentimental value for Cohen, but she also chose it…
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Opinion Racist Israeli Hanukkah Video Mocks Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews
Today, November 30, is a special day in Israel. It’s “,” the day that the country commemorates the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries. It’s also supposed to be the day when the Israeli government recognizes its own historic discrimination against Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. How awkward, then, that today is also the day a…
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Opinion Jews From Arab Lands Got Their Refugee Day — But Is It Zionist?
On November 30, the State of Israel will mark for the second time an annual day commemorating the exodus of Jews from Arab countries, otherwise dubbed “Jewish Refugee Day” or “Jewish Nakba Day.” For many Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern descent, this day is a long-sought form of recognition: The Israeli government is finally recognizing…
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Opinion When Israelis Kill Innocents for the Crime of Looking Arab
“If I would have known he is not the terrorist, believe me, I would have looked after him like I look after myself. In moments of fear people do things they are not aware of. I didn’t sleep all night… I feel disgusted with what happened.” These words — , one of the Israeli Jews…
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Opinion Ashkenormativity Is Twice as Common — and Harmful — in LGBTQ Jewish Spaces
After Kiddush on Shabbat, someone comes up to me to critique my recitation. Either the person asks why I pronounced the last word as “hagefen” rather than “hagafen,” or I am less-than-politely informed of the “correct” pronunciation. When I respond that my Sephardic custom is to say “hagefen,” the reply is always the same: “I…
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Opinion I’m a Mizrahi Jew. Do I Count as a Person of Color?
Am I a person of color? You’d think there would be a straightforward answer to a question like that. And for a while, I thought there was. I thought the answer was yes. When I look at my grandparents — four Mizrahim, or Jews from Arab lands — I see people who were born in…
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