Category: Focus

Focus

Spaces of Exclusion, Sounds of Resistance and Radicalization: Emotional Cartographies in the Ballads of Cheikh Mwijo

ABSTRACT Cheikh Mwijo was a central figure in the “Moroccan troubadour scene,” a grassroots cultural phenomenon that emerged within Moroccan immigrant communities in Israel’s periphery during the 1950s. Like other troubadours, he traveled across the newly established state, singing in the immigrants’ language, preserving the cultural heritage of Moroccan Jewry, and documenting their encounters with Israeli society. This article analyzes three “political ballads” he composed and performed, focusing on how they reflect the “mental maps” Moroccan immigrants used to interpret the divisions within Israeli space. By uncovering themes of mental mapping in Cheikh Mwijo’s ballads, the article explores how emotional experiences contributed to gradual shifts in consciousness—such as polarization and radicalization—among Moroccan immigrants as a result of social, cultural, and political marginalization in Israel. I argue that these shifts unfolded within the context of two major historical developments: the emergence of radical Mizrahi discourse and the rise of Mizrahi politics in the 1980s and 1990s. The article concludes with insights into the common duality in Moroccan Jews’ attitudes toward Israeli society—marked, on one hand, by sharp and even subversive criticism, and on the other, by moderation and forgiveness aimed at overcoming emotional burdens and integrating into society.

issue 27 / n.1 (2025) by Haim Bitton

Emotionally Dividing Baghdad: Spatial Memories of the Farhud throughout the Iraqi Jewish Diaspora

ABSTRACT On 1–2 June 1941, an anti-Jewish pogrom known as the Farhud took place in Baghdad, claiming a toll of 179 Jews murdered, thousands wounded, multiple women raped, and much property looted. This article tracks the accounts of two memoirists—Jews born in Baghdad who reconstructed their experiences of the Farhud from their subjective perspective in their biographical present in London. Through these agents of memory who documented their individual and collective memories, I show that the story of the Farhud and the Jews’ emigration from Iraq can be told in many different contexts. This contrasts with the many historiographic studies that deal with political aspects of the Farhud and, in this context, stirs debate among historians about the circumstances of the mass exodus of Jews from Iraq and addresses the manner in which the consciousness of the Farhud and its place in the collective memory in Israel are shaped.

issue 27 / n.1 (2025) by Tsionit Fattal-Kuperwasser

Teaching at a Lebanese AIU School in the 1930s: Rebecca Goldman’s Path from Kalisz to Beirut*

ABSTRACT This paper explores the microhistory of Rebecca Goldman, a Polish Jewish woman born in Kalisz who, after studying at the École Normale Israélite Orientale in Versailles, relocated to Beirut in 1935 as a teacher for the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Drawing extensively on her correspondence and educational reports preserved in the AIU archives, the article investigates Goldman’s interactions with and perceptions of the local Jewish community in Beirut. Rebecca Goldman’s narrative encapsulates the tensions of cultural identity experienced by Eastern European Jews navigating new socio-political environments. The paper also emphasizes how her Polish background and French educational formation created a significant cultural disconnect that affected her integration into the Lebanese Jewish community, leading to conflicts and misunderstandings. By examining Rebecca Goldman’s personal journey, this research contributes to broader discussions on the emotional landscapes of Jewish migration, identity formation, and the intricate interplay between personal narratives and collective histories.

issue 27 / n.1 (2025) by Magdalena Kozłowska

Mapping Moral Paths: The Spiritual Geography of Moroccan Rabbi Gabriel Elgrabli

ABSTRACT This essay offers a new reading of narratives of Jewish migration from the MENA region drawing on the preface to Tumat Yesharim (Jerusalem, 1989), a biblical exegesis by Rabbi Gabriel Elgrabli (spelled Eli-Qrabli). A Moroccan-born adherent of the (Anti-Zionist) Lithuanian Haredi Musar movement, Elgrabli engaged deeply with a tradition that emphasized ethical self-discipline. Composed in Israel of the 1980s, his autobiographical narrative charts a spiritual journey from Meknes to Jerusalem—through Europe and the Americas—in contrast to the singular path to the Holy Land that is often affirmed. As I argue, Elgrabli’s writing resists both Zionist cartographies that privilege Israel as an endpoint and the inward-facing, self-isolating path to perfection that the Musar model promotes. Instead, his journey exemplifies a diasporic spirituality rooted in displacement, divine providence, and ethical calling—a cartography animated not by destination but by personal transformation and ability to become a moral compass for the Sephardi grassroots. By weaving together Sephardi memory, Musar discipline, and geographic multiplicity, Elgrabli offers a unique model of mental maps. His account challenges dominant narratives of origin and return, presenting instead a layered map of spiritual becoming—rather than homecoming.

issue 27 / n.1 (2025) by Aviad Moreno

“From Egypt and Back”: Alternative Collective Memories among Egyptian Jews in Israel

ABSTRACT An analysis of the content and membership profile of the Facebook group “From Egypt and Back,” one of the biggest and most active groups of Egyptian Jews, in or out of social media, reveals the alternative that it has created to the dominant narrative in Egyptian Jewish collective memory, particularly in Israel. Whereas the dominant narrative has glorified the bourgeois, Frenchified, urban life of Egyptian Jews, “From Egypt and Back” has given voice to lower-middle-class and lower-class Jews and their experiences of Cairo, in particular. Its members have created a different mental map of Cairo that features its non-bourgeois neighborhoods, immersed in Egyptian-Arabic culture. This has generated high feelings of nostalgia, whose role as an emotion that affirms identity and cultural heritage, one that connects group members to their parents and family, and creates a community, will also be explored.

issue 27 / n.1 (2025) by Alon Tam

Between the Tower of Babel and the Eiffel Tower: Fantasy and Trauma in Naïm Kattan’s Farewell, Babylon

ABSTRACT Naim Kattan wrote Farewell, Babylon in 1976 in French, and it was published and translated first into English in 2005. This Novel is a memoir by Naim Kattan that recounts his experiences as a Jewish teenager in 1940s Baghdad, just before his departure to France. The book explores Iraq’s multicultural society and the political and social tensions that led to the decline of the Jewish community’s status. Kattan wrote his memories of Baghdad about twenty-five years after he left it, after establishing himself in his new home in Montreal, Canada, where he became a respected French-Canadian author. To a large extent, his identity as a French-Canadian infiltrates the Jewish-Iraqi-Arab story and reshapes Baghdad. this article traces the mental map at the core of Kattan’s work: how Kattan shapes his memories of Baghdad 30 years later. The article argues that the depiction of Jewish existence in Baghdad and Kattan’s experience of adolescence emerges between the lines of the Tower of Babylon as represented by the Eiffel Tower—as fantasy, desire, and potential redemption. The Baghdad space, in a certain sense, exists as a mirror image to the space of Paris in the tension between fantasy and trauma.

issue 27 / n.1 (2025) by Hadas Shabat Nadir

Tunis and Paris Face Off: Images of the Jewish Home and Environment among Tunisian Jewish Francisés Émigrés in France

ABSTRACT During the 1950s and 1960s of the twentieth century, many of the Tunisian Jews emigrated from Tunis to Paris. A significant number of them, especially those educated and raised in francisés environments, experienced difficulties resulting from feelings of loss, displacement, and disappointment, as expressed in the mental maps of their life stories. The study examines memoirs of four men and three women, who were educated and raised in a francisé environment and emigrated from Tunis to Paris during the studied period. It seeks to answer the question: “How do the francisés immigrants in Paris shape the memory of the Jewish home in Tunis, while referring to the space in Paris?” Based on memory and home space theories, the article tries to answer the research question by breaking down home space into Jewish and non-Jewish, and by comparing the home in Tunis with the one in Paris. A main conclusion: the pillar of support changed from the Jewish religious space in Tunis to non-Jewish education in Paris, which decreased the weight of communalism in the immigrant’s life.

issue 27 / n.1 (2025) by Gilat Brav

Dege Feder, Dancing Mobile Geographies: Ethiopian Jewish Contemporary Dance Migrations in Israel

ABSTRACT Ethiopian Israeli multimedia artist Dege Feder embodies Jewish and African diasporas in her dances. She uses the structures of Ethiopian eskesta dancing as a basis for contemporary experimentation. Feder migrated from Ethiopia to Israel during Operation Moses (1984-1985). ABSTRACT Her work determines Israeli contemporary art from an Afrocentric foundation through its East African Jewish migrations. By manifesting the corporeal evidence of her migration and assimilation, her work re-establishes perceptions of Israeli physicalities, culture, and nationalism. This article argues that the migratory aesthetics in Feder’s cultural production determine a post-melting-pot conception of Israeli nationhood for mobilizing collective memory and mapping emotional and corporeal cartographies of Jewish diaspora. Her dances and videos Amaweren’ya (2018), Rewind/Repeat (2020), and Mesnko (2023) embed Ethiopian memory within the corporeal territory of contemporary Israeli arts. Feder’s work establishes an Ethiopian Jewish contemporaneity by refusing binaries between traditional and contemporary aesthetics that have historically sidelined artists of color.

issue 27 / n.1 (2025) by Hannah Kosstrin

Creative Cartography: Transmitting Literature and Knowledge Teaching Eastern European Jewish History

ABSTRACT The contribution explores an interdisciplinary and creative approach to the transmission of Central and Eastern European Jewish history and culture. In a course at Sciences Po Paris, students were invited to reflect on the circulation of ideas, historical narratives, and cultural dynamics through Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob. Creative cartography was introduced as an innovative method that combines academic rigor with artistic expression. This approach encourages students to create maps that represent spaces and narratives through emotions, subjective experiences, and diverse materials. This collaborative and imaginative process aims to deepen the understanding of historical and social phenomena while transforming teaching and learning practices. The dossier includes six articles that engage with all seven “books” of The Books of Jacob. It highlights how combining scholarly analysis with artistic practices can deepen understanding and offer new perspectives on the transmission of historical knowledge.

issue 27 / n.1 (2025) by Ewa Tartakowsky

The Great Depression and its Effect on Hungarian Jews

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the Great Depression on Jews in Hungary, with a specific focus on university students and lawyers—two fields in which the presence of Jews was highly contested. Instead of focusing on the Jewish economic elite, we discuss two groups that were targets of the most vehement attacks of the antisemitic middle class. Our aim is to present the direct and indirect consequences of the Great Depression on Jews, as well as its impact on the rise of political antisemitism. We also explore how far it can be understood as a catalyst of radicalization, as the Hungarian economy’s deterioration led to the swift rise of the radical right-wing into power.

issue 26 / n. 2 (2024) by Péter Buchmüller and Ágnes Kelemen