Most Jewish people in the United States are of Ashkenazi descent. That means their more immediate ancestors are from central or eastern Europe. But the Jewish diaspora also includes Sephardic Jews from Spain and Mizrachi Jews from the Middle East and North Africa.
For Jewish-American Heritage Month, the Jewish Museum of Milwaukee is bringing visibility to those diverse identities, with a lecture Wednesday, May 27 from Sarah Levin. She’s executive director of JIMENA, which stands for “Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Maayan Silver: Can you explain a little bit of the history of Middle Eastern and North African Jews and about how Jews were displaced from those areas? Just a small snippet.
Sarah Levin: So in the early 1940s, with the rise of Arab nationalism and the influence of Nazism into the Middle East and North Africa, antisemitism grew and persecution of Jews was used as a legal pretext to ultimately displace, ethnically cleanse, and dispossess close to a million Jews from countries throughout the region. And these are countries that Jewish communities lived in for thousands of years since the Babylonian exile, so since the destruction of the second temple by the Romans and then the subsequent taking of Jews from Jerusalem. It’s hard for me to answer that question because it's such a big history, but our focus at JIMENA is really making sure that people understand what happened to Jews in the Middle East and North Africa in the 20th century.
The experience in a Syrian Jewish household in Brooklyn is going to be different from a Persian Jewish household in Los Angeles and a Bukharian Jewish household in Queens or a Latino Jewish household in South Florida. What are some important things to know about Jewish diversity and the experiences of Middle Eastern and North African Jews in this country?
I think what you named is really important to remember. Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews are incredibly diverse. They speak all different languages. They come from all different countries, spread over a huge geographic region. They cannot easily be flattened into one lump sum like 'Sephardim,' 'Mizrachim,' even though that's what we do. And that's just, I think, a function of communication, right? Like it's easier to describe one whole group using the term Sephardi or Mizrachi, but all of them have different histories and there were different push and pull factors that led to their leaving the Middle Eastern countries they had lived in. And they were different by city, by country, by region, by year. So yeah, Syrian Jews have a very different story than Persian Jews.
How does understanding them and learning about them and celebrating their contributions and additions to the culture, how does that help public perception of Jews overall in the world?
So, the questions around public perception we're constantly grappling with, right? Like, I feel like perception is just projected on us. Like, the best example of this is during the Holocaust. Jews were persecuted because they weren't white, right, like they weren't considered white, European. And then right now in the far left, we're being called upholders of settler colonialism and white European oppressors. So it's like, these perceptions and projections do not come from us, they come from outside of us.
I don't think any Jewish leader or institution can properly address how to change those perceptions other than just educating and sharing the stories of who we are and telling the Jewish story. Describing the Jewish people without talking about Jews from the Middle East and North Africa is like reading a book with a missing chapter or the first chapter is completely missing. Because Judaism, Jewish civilization, Jewish peoplehood, all of us, regardless of where we were exiled to, we all come from the same place, and we all speak and pray in Hebrew. We all face Jerusalem when we pray, regardless, if we're in Yemen, in Iran, in Ukraine, in Ethiopia, in Morocco, in New York City.
You describe yourself as a proud Turkish-Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jew. The description of the event at the Jewish Museum of Milwaukee notes that you've experienced the complexity and richness of Sephardic and Mizrahi life in America. Are there any personal stories you'd like to share?
I mean, what the research told us, and it's no surprise to anyone who has even an ounce of Sephardi blood inside of them, is that family is central. And it is probably the most important part of Jewish life, is how you experience your identity at home with your family.
So, I mean, one of my first memories was standing underneath a kitchen table in my great-grandmother's home on Rosh Hashanah lunch and peeking my head up and looking at a tray of pumpkin burekas and being so excited to eat them. And it's so trivial. But it is one of first memories. And then just feeling the warmth all around me and being surrounded by people who loved me, who I love, who were comfortable with each other and were experiencing joy together, all of it. So my memories are 100%, except for maybe a few years when I lived in Israel, 100% connected and experienced with my family. And now my husband, I am married to an Iraqi Jew. My mother-in-law is from Baghdad, and I've learned so much about another Mizrahi community and culture and way of being that I love and that I've also integrated into my practices and my rituals and my way of thinking and living that I'm passing down to my children.
