Mizrahi Jews

Mizrahi Jews

יהודים מזרחים‎
Languages
Traditional: Hebrew, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Bukharian, Judaeo-Arabic, Judeo-Berber, Judaeo-Aramaic, Judaeo-Malayalam, Judaeo-Marathi, Judaeo-Georgian, Judaeo-Tat, Judaeo-Iranian (Judaeo-Persian), Judeo-Urdu, Syriac Modern: Israeli Hebrew, Mizrahi Hebrew (liturgical), French, English, Russian, Arabic, Georgian, Turkish and Azerbaijani
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Sephardic Jews, Ashkenazi Jews, other Jewish ethnic divisions and Samaritans; various Middle Eastern ethnic groups

Mizrahi Jews (Hebrew: יהודי המִזְרָח), also known as Mizrahim (מִזְרָחִים) in plural and Mizrahi (מִזְרָחִי) in singular, and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or Edot HaMizrach (עֲדוֹת־הַמִּזְרָח, lit. 'Communities of the East'),^[1] are terms used in Israeli discourse to refer to a grouping of Jewish communities that lived in the Muslim world. Mizrahi is a political sociological term that was coined with the creation of the State of Israel. It translates as "Easterner" in Hebrew.^[2][3]

The term Mizrahi is almost exclusively applied to descendants of Jewish communities from North Africa and Asia; including Yemenite Jews, Kurdish Jews, Turkish Jews, Egyptian Jews, Syrian Jews, Lebanese Jews, Iraqi Jews, Jordanian Jews, Saudi Arabian Jews, Emirati Jews, Kuwaiti Jews, Bahraini Jews, Qatari Jews, Omani Jews, Algerian Jews, Libyan Jews, Moroccan Jews, Tunisian Jews, Iranian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Afghan Jews, and Mountain Jews.^[4][5][6][7] Georgian Jews also fall under the category of Mizrahi.^[8] Indian Jews are sometimes labeled as Mizrahi, though members of the community have identified themselves as a separate category.^[9] Mizrahi Jews of the Mashriq, consisting roughly of Egypt, Sudan, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Arab regions of the Levant, may be referred to as Mashriqi Jews.

These various Jewish communities were first officially grouped into a singular identifiable division during World War II, when they were distinctly outlined in the One Million Plan of the Jewish Agency for Israel, which detailed the methods by which Jews of the diaspora were to be returned to the Land of Israel (then under the British Mandate for Palestine) after the Holocaust.^[10]

An earlier cultural community of southern and eastern Jews were the Sephardi Jews. Before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the various current communities of Mizrahi Jews did not identify themselves as a distinctive Jewish subgroup,^[5][11] and many considered themselves Sephardis, as they largely followed the Sephardic customs and traditions of Judaism with local variations in minhagim. The original Sephardi Jewish community was formed in Spain and Portugal, and after their expulsion in 1492, many Sephardim settled in areas where Mizrahi communities already existed.^[5] This complicated ethnography has resulted in a conflation of terms, particularly in official Israeli ethnic and religious terminology, with Sephardi being used in a broad sense to include Middle Eastern and North African Jews, as well as Sephardim proper from Southern Europe around the Mediterranean Basin.^[11][12][5] The Chief Rabbinate of Israel has placed rabbis of Mizrahi origin in Israel under the jurisdiction of the Sephardi chief rabbis.^[12]

Following the First Arab–Israeli War, over 850,000 Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews were expelled or evacuated from Arab and Muslim-majority countries between 1948 and the early 1980s.^[13][14] A 2018 statistic found that 45% of Jewish Israelis identified as either Mizrahi or Sephardic.^[15]