Lexicon

(English Index)

(Original Index)

 

 



Mizrahim



Mizrahim (from Mizrach "East" in Hebrew; singular Mizrahi) are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Middle East. Included in the Mizrahim category are Jews from the Arab world, as well as other communities from other Muslim countries, including the Georgian Jews, Persian Jews, Bukharan Jews, Syrian Jews, Yemeni Jews, Indian Jews, Berber Jews and Kurdish Jews. Despite their heterogeneous origins, Jews from these areas generally practise traditional Sephardic Judaism.

In modern Israeli usage, it refers to all Jews from Arabic and Asian countries. The term came to be widely used by Mizrahi activists in the early 1990s, and since then has become a widely accepted designation.

Many Mizrahim today reject this (or any) umbrella description and prefer to identify themselves by their particular country of origin, or that of their immediate ancestors (e.g. "Iraqi Jew", "Tunisian Jew", "Persian Jew", etc.). Some Jews like to define themselves Oriental Jews, this term being still quite common in the western hemisphere.