Mizrahi Jews
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Mizrahi Jews, Mizrahim are Jews descended from local Jewish communities of the Middle East from biblical times into the modern era. They include descendants of Babylonian Jews and Mountain Jews from modern Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Uzbekistan, the Caucasus, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. Yemenite Jews are sometimes also included, but their history is separate from Babylonian Jewry.
The use of the term Mizrahi can be somewhat controversial. The term Mizrahim is sometimes applied to descendants of Maghrebi and Sephardi Jews, who had lived in North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco), the Sephardi-proper communities of Turkey and the mixed Levantine communities of Lebanon, Israel and Syria. Before the establishment of the state of Israel, Mizrahi Jews did not identify themselves as a separate Jewish subgroup. Instead, Mizrahi Jews generally characterized themselves as Sephardi, as they follow the traditions of Sephardi Judaism (but with some differences among the minhag "customs" of particular communities). That has resulted in a conflation of terms, particularly in Israel and in religious usage, with "Sephardi" being used in a broad sense and including Mizrahi Jews and North African Jews as well as Sephardim proper. From the point of view of the official Israeli rabbinate, any rabbis of Mizrahi origin in Israel are under the jurisdiction of the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel.
As of 2005, over 61% of Israeli Jews are of at least partial Mizrahi ancestry.
See also
- List of notable Mizrahi Jews and Sephardi Jews in Israel
- Mizrahi Hebrew
- Mizrachi (political party)
- Sephardi Jews
- Ashkenazi Jews
- Jewish ethnic divisions
- Ladino