Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Mizrahi Jews, a major Jewish ethnic group from the Middle East and North Africa.
Mizrahi Jews
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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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Israel News When Israel’s Sephardic Black Panthers Used Passover To Decry Jewish ‘Racism’
It was the spring of 1971, and the 1960’s spirit of revolution still throbbed in the streets of America and Europe. On the streets of Jerusalem, knots of young Sephardi Jews could be seen protesting, too — calling for the overthrow of Prime Minister Golda Meir and for their own liberation in Israel as an…
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Opinion The Black Panthers Haggadah
The following is a translation of the Israeli Black Panthers Haggadah With a strong hand, two. And with an outstretched arm, two more. With great terror, two more. With protests, two more. With banners raised, two more. With hunger strikes, two more. These, then, are 10 plagues that the Black Panthers from Musrara brought upon…
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