Mizrah Uma`arav (East and West): a Sephardi cultural and political project in post-Ottoman Jerusalem^*

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at a workshop entitled “The Missing Corpus: Jewish Thought in Arab Societies 1880–1960” sponsored by the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy at Ben-Gurion University in May 2014. My deep thanks go to the workshop organizers, Moshe Behar, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, and Yoram Meital, and to the astute observations and stimulating discussion of my fellow participants and attendees, in particular Liat Kozma, Avigail Jacobson, and Deborah Starr. In November 2015 I was privileged to attend a conference on Avraham Elmaleh held at Tel Aviv University, at which some of my thoughts on the man and his oeuvre were further developed; my deepest thanks go to Yaron Tsur and Aviad Moreno, as well as to the conference participants.

ABSTRACT

This article traces the emergence of the Hebrew periodical Mizrah Uma`arav (East and West), published in Jerusalem intermittently from 1919 until 1930. The Sephardi Jewish editor, Avraham Elmaleh (1876–1967), had a vision of a journal that would fulfil a variety of functions, some of which, I argue, would prove to be contradictory: communal–historical, educational, scholarly, and political. First, and perhaps most pressingly, Elmaleh sought to record Sephardi intellectual, religious, and cultural history in the aftermath of the break-up and looming transformation of the Sephardi Ottoman world. At the same time, he struggled to place Sephardi Jewish civilization on a par with the Ashkenazi Jewish experience that was being normalized and privileged on a scholarly level in Jewish Studies. The Ashkenazi dominance of the new political reality in Palestine also led Elmaleh to take on the Hebraization and nationalization project of Sephardi Jews with missionary zeal. Finally, Elmaleh also contributed to the efforts of the Zionist movement to lay claim to Holy Land antiquity studies and, thereby, to the Land of Israel itself. Throughout, Elmaleh’s project expressed an ambivalence towards Palestinian Arabs and towards the relationship of Sephardi Jews to their surrounding Middle Eastern society. Overall this article situates Mizrah Uma`arav as intellectual history, as communal identity producer, and as political contestant in a changing landscape.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Michelle U. Campos is an Associate Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Florida. Her book Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early-Twentieth Century Palestine (2011) was the winner of the National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Culture and the Yonatan Shapiro Award for Best Book in Israel Studies, awarded by the Association for Israel Studies. A Turkish-language translation entitled Osmanlı Kardeşler was published in May 2015. Dr Campos is currently working on a new monograph, Unmixing the Holy City, a social history of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Jerusalem. Drawing on extensive archival material and approaches at the intersection of urban history, geography, law, religious studies, and urban sociology, this book project illuminates the ways in which Jerusalem’s residents mediated countervailing communal, economic, theological, and political pressures in a shared urban space.

Notes

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at a workshop entitled “The Missing Corpus: Jewish Thought in Arab Societies 1880–1960” sponsored by the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy at Ben-Gurion University in May 2014. My deep thanks go to the workshop organizers, Moshe Behar, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, and Yoram Meital, and to the astute observations and stimulating discussion of my fellow participants and attendees, in particular Liat Kozma, Avigail Jacobson, and Deborah Starr. In November 2015 I was privileged to attend a conference on Avraham Elmaleh held at Tel Aviv University, at which some of my thoughts on the man and his oeuvre were further developed; my deepest thanks go to Yaron Tsur and Aviad Moreno, as well as to the conference participants.

1. Translation mine. A valuable full translation of this introductory essay has been provided recently in Behar and Benite (2013, 2–9). For a more expansive and theoretical discussion of the journal and Elmaleh from the perspective of folklore studies, see Noy (2014).

2. At the Alliance, Elmaleh learned French and continued his modern Hebrew and Arabic, but also took classes in the history of ‘am yisrael, geography and government of the Ottoman Empire, math, and science; occasionally students went on field trips in neighbouring villages and historic sites. For description of the curriculum, see the letters from David Yellin, a teacher at the AIU in the late 1880s to 1890s, to the director Nissim Behar. CZA A153/110/2-3. One AIU teacher wrote that there were 416 boys in the Jerusalem school in 1901, half of whom were local Jerusalemites, with the others boarders from Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Anatolia and the Balkans, Yemen, North Africa, and even Iran. Rodrigue (1993, 166–170).

3. For more on Sephardi Zionism in Palestine in the Ottoman period see the contrasting interpretations of Betzalel (2007), Benbassa (1997), and Campos (2005).

4. Circulation and subscription data are only partial, but Elmaleh claimed that Haherut regularly sold out of its 2000 copies per issue. Avraham Elmaleh Interview, Oral History Program, Institute for Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

5. Elmaleh and the Ben Yehudas also made up, and Elmaleh began writing as the Istanbul correspondent for Ha’or in December 1910.

6. A Cairo native from a prominent family and a Zionist activist, Mosseiri discovered an additional trove of geniza documents about 15 years after Solomon Schechter’s 1897 trip. For more information on his contributions, see http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/jmgc/.

7. Born in Sarajevo in 1889, MD Gaon studied at the Hebrew Teachers College run by David Yellin in Jerusalem. At the same time he served as a local correspondent for several Judeo-Spanish newspapers and wrote in Haherut. Gaon also was active in Sephardi organizations at this time, Halutzei hamizrah and the World Sephardi Organization (Tidhar 1947, vol. 1: 500–501).

8. Ironically this claim to re-engage the intellectual efforts of the forefathers of Andalusia was used by Nissim Malul for different purposes – to justify Arabic language education and production by Jews in Eretz Israel.

9. Many thanks to Moshe Behar for pointing out the second page of the review which identified the author as Burla.

10. Recent and ongoing work on Mizrahi–Arab relations during the Mandate period will undoubtedly contribute more to our understanding.