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For Arabs, it was apparent that Eastern and Western Jews were so dissimilar as to throw doubt on the whole notion of their being one people. And yet, from my own observation growing up amongst European Jews in London, it was clear they genuinely believed themselves to be just that. And they were right in the sense that many of them could say they belonged to a loose affiliation of Ashkenazi East European Jews with similar histories, culture and a Yiddish language that the older generation all spoke. The people, who gave birth to political Zionism, first established it in Palestine and dominated the Jewish state from its inception, were all members of this group.38 They mostly came from countries of Eastern Europe where most of them, especially those from Lithuania/Poland, Russia and Ukraine, had developed a strong sense of ethnic identity. This was based on 'Yiddishism', a socio-political movement to develop Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe that aimed for cultural autonomy within the states where the Ashkenazim lived. In time this community produced an impressive Yiddish literature and a thriving popular culture, as well as an important research institute at Vilna (Vilnius). There was moreover some genetic basis to their ethnic claim in the frequent association of certain inherited disorders, for example, Tay-Sachs disease, with Ashkenazi Jews. Even so, and although there was enough of a shared cultural and historical experience between them as to persuade many of them that they were a national group, it would be wrong to see them as a homogeneous or single community.
It was this Ashkenazi culture that was described to me as 'Jewish', when growing up in Britain in the 1950s. One could recognise it in its 'Jewish jokes', a black humour which recalled life in the shtetl (Yiddish for townlets in Eastern Europe to which Jews were confined), its strange linguistic constructions of English mixed with Yiddish, its cuisine (chopped liver, gefilte fish, bagels) and its tradition of orthodox Jewish attire for men; the sight of black-coated orthodox Jews in silk breeches and round fur hats, as if they had just stepped out of eighteenth-century Poland, walking to synagogue on Saturdays was typical and familiar to me living in Golders Green, at the time London's most Jewish suburb. Little did I understand when I met the Jewish girls at my school there with their German surnames and Yiddish vocabulary that their forebears or relatives bore a responsibility for my expulsion from Palestine. Unwittingly putting my finger on the essence of the problem, I saw not the faintest connection between them and my homeland and therefore no reason for any hostility between us. A popular film made in America in 1971, Fiddler on the Roof, after [Sholem] Aleichem's Yiddish novel, [Tevye] and His Daughter, portrayed Jewish life in a Russian shtetl and epitomised this culture for non-Jews. Ashkenazim became familiar in the West after the great waves of Jewish immigration from Russia and Eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, and their culture dominates many aspects of life in the US today. Had it remained like that, they might have gone down in history as a remarkable and interesting community with a rich culture to add to the wealth of human experience, but no more.
As it was, political Zionism intervened with a definition of Jewish nationhood that was in reality nothing other than the ethnic Ashkenazi identity grafted on the rest. In other words, the East European Ashkenazim reinterpreted themselves as the pan-Jewish nation, an imagined community with a fabricated unifying narrative. (Israel's national anthem, it may be noted, was nothing other than a medley of nostalgic Russian tunes.) It was for that reason that generations of non-Ashkenazi Jews who were brought to populate the new Jewish state after 1948 were subjected to what one might call 'Ashkenazification', an acculturation process to make them more like 'real' or European Jews. It was also the reason for the widespread racism still directed at them by Ashkenazi Israelis. During a visit to Haifa in 1991 I was told that such Israelis would rather their children married an Arab than a Sephardi Jew (although these attitudes have mellowed over time and especially amongst the younger generation of Israelis). I also noted the pathetic attempts of many such Jews to emulate their Ashkenazi superiors, deliberately distorting their Hebrew pronunciation to ape that of the (less authentic) European version. But the most egregious aspect of this false Ashkenazi representation of 'the Jewish people' was the claim it then made for a primordial connection with Palestine. That this became, as we shall see below, the received wisdom amongst Jew (and others) after Zionism had taken hold, makes it no less absurd and, for Palestinians, no less pernicious.
Note from p. 276
38. Personal communication with Joachim Martillo, a specialist in the subject, to whom I am indebted for the remarks in this section; see also Deutscher, Non-Jewish Jew, p. 96; and 'Racism within the ranks', Al-Ahram Weekly, 2-8 September 2004.
| Married to Another Man: Examining Options for Israeli-Palestinian Peace | EMAIL TO FRIEND |
 | Dr. Ghada Karmi is a Palestinian doctor of medicine who grew up in Jerusalem and was forced to flee her home during the "Nakba." She wrote her memoir, "In Search of Fatima" and "Married to Another Man." In 1972, she founded the first British-Palestinian medical charity. |
| Date and Time: | Monday, April 7, 2008 | 4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. | |
| Location: | | Carney 204 |
| Event URL: | http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2169208,00.html | |
| Of Interest to Particular Audience: | Faculty, Graduate Students, Public, Undergraduate Students | |
| Categorized as: | Lectures & Readings, Reason-Culture-Faith | |
| Sponsored by: | ASA, MSA, Sociology Dept, Fine Arts Dept, MEISSA, GJP, MEIS Minor | |
| Contact: | Alexandra Saieh | |
| Contact's Phone: | ||
| Contact's Email: | saieh@bc.edu | |
| Admission fee: | Free | |
| Parking & Directions : | www.bc.edu/about/maps |
