Mizrahis and the Holocaust

Batya Shimony recently published an article called "Being a Mizrahi Jew, an Israeli and touching the Holocaust" at 972 (May 10, 2014). A lot of fascinating stuff here. Just a couple excerpts:

Living in Israel as a Mizrahi means growing up in a society that sanctifies the memory of the Holocaust and turns it into symbolic capital that is passed on from father to son. At the same time, it means belonging to an excluded group that is devoid of status, whose history and chronicles are of no interest except to the extent that they pertain to a colorful folklore or affirm the Zionist rescue narrative...

And this, which really made me want to read Yossi Sucary:

Lea Aini in Rose of Lebanon (2009) and Yossi Sucary in Benghazi-Bergen-Belsen (2013) claim their own family and community’s part in the established historical memory of the Holocaust. In both cases the survivors’ experience of the Holocaust had not been acknowledged by the establishment, and despite having undergone such terrible suffering they received no recognition whatsoever from the Israeli public and memorial institutions.

Aini describes her father, an Auschwitz survivor: “[h]e sits there on the eve of the Holocaust Memorial Day, scrunched under his robe, already perched across from the TV that repeatedly broadcasts the appropriate programs and films, which offer no mention of the Jews of Greece – thus, Father continued sacrificing himself, and us, on the altar of Survival, as if none of it had ever ended” (228). The terrible rage that built up inside him was violently directed at his family members.

Rage is where Sucary’s novel begins, telling the story of a group of Libyan Jews that were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The many reviews written about the novel highlighted the historical importance of the issue that had finally been brought into public awareness. However, Sucary was not only seeking to present the common fate shared by Libyan and European Jews. His main aim was to show the hatred of Jews directed at their own brethren, and how the European Jews themselves abused the Libyan Jews. The last part of the novel describes the horrors of the concentration camp through the eyes of Silvana, the central protagonist.

From her first encounter with the Ashkenazi prisoners in the camp, she is marked out as a “darkie,” as someone who is “not one of our own.” Her “inferior” status, owing to her ethnicity, enables one of the prisoners to harass her, verbally abuse her and sexually assault her. Finally, he sets up a trap for her, seducing her to a remote spot where she is degraded and raped by three Dutch kapos.

The descriptions of the brutality shown towards Silvana by the European Jews seem far more extreme than those of the Germans. When dealing with the Germans, Silvana is resourceful and manages to find solutions, while in her encounters with the Ashkenazi Jews she is humiliated in the most extreme and vulgar way. As she’s being raped, a thought crosses her mind: “who could save her? Her own white Jewish brethren, who treated her as though she were a human animal that weaseled her way into their group?” (299).

These descriptions illustrate the novel’s underlying agenda, which is not merely to depict the experience of the Libyan Jews in the Holocaust, but also, and perhaps mainly, to protest against the condescending and hurtful attitude the Ashkenazi Jews had towards them. This was the same attitude the Libyan Jews were shown later on, upon their arrival in Israel.

Sucary's Benghazi-Bergen-Belsen was published in Hebrew. The only translation of his work available is, apparently, Emilia et le sel de la terre -- but in French. It sounds like a great read.

literature East and West

Pakistani novelist Nadeem Aslam, who now lives in North England:

'After 9/11 happened...many writers in Britain and Aerica said that they felt their work was meaningless because it was so disconnected from the event. I felt that I had been writing about 9/11 all my life.'

From an article about Pakistani writers in the NYRB. Behind a paywall. Subscribe, already.

Options for reading and listening

I was delighted this morning to hear Deborah Amos, on NPR's Morning Edition, talking to my colleague Mohja Kahf about her new novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, and also to hear Mohja read an excerpt. Mohja is a rare talent, and she fully deserves the attention. Listen to the segment, then buy the book.


And then, for serious listening, there is Rachid Taha's new album, Diwan 2. The first Diwan (1998) was a tribute to classic songs in the North African repertoire, and produced the global smash hit, "Ya Rayah." On Diwan 2 Rachid also reprises some classics. It's excellent, fully as great a tribute to the voluminous Arab pop repertoire as was the first Diwan. I particularly enjoy Rachid's cover of Abdel Halim Hafez's "Gana al-Hawa" (Garden of Love), from Halim's film, Abi fawq al-Shagara (Father's Up a Tree, 1969). Rachid's cover of Umm Kalthoum's classic song, "Ghanili Shawaya Shawaya," is quite wonderful as well. (This is also the song that Bushra sings in the documentary, Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt.)


I also highly recommend Jonathan Shannon's new book, Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria. Based on fieldwork Shannon conducted in Aleppo, it is not only a brilliant ethnographic study of contemporary Syrian music, but it does a fine job of showing how discourses of musical authenticity are at work in constructing essential notions of Syrian modernity and identity. It's one of those rare books that manages to use the cultural artifact, in this case music, to tell you a great deal about the wider culture itself. I'm supposed to review the book for Rootsworld, so I will hopefully have more to say about it later.


Then there's Charles Hirschkind's new book, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons And Islamic Counterpublics. I've not yet read it, although I've read a number of Hirschkind's articles, which I believe are incorporated into the book. The subject matter is cassette sermons in Egypt, which circulate very widely in Egypt. I quote from the book description provided by Columbia University Press: "Hirschkind shows how sermon tapes have provided one of the means by which Islamic ethical traditions have been recalibrated to a modern political and technological order-to its noise and forms of pleasure and boredom, but also to its political incitements and call for citizen participation. Contrary to the belief that Islamic cassette sermons are a tool of militant indoctrination, Hirschkind argues that sermon tapes serve as an instrument of ethical self-improvement and as a vehicle for honing the sensibilities and affects of pious living."


Finally, there is Jessica Winegar's Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art And Culture in Contemporary Egypt. This is a really fabulous book; I reviewed the manuscript for Stanford University Press. I'll quote from my blurb for it: "In a very compelling and lively style, Jessica Winegar examines the world of fine art in Egypt to provide us keen insights into the turmoils and opportunities afforded by today's fast-moving neoliberal openings. Reading this book was a great delight." (And I really meant it.)

If you are into buying Xmas gifts, these would all be great choices. (The tradition we've developed in my family, however, is to donate to worthy causes.)

Arab Fiction

I was excited to read a review of The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction in today's New York Times. Excited because I was pleased to learn about the book, and excited because the review was very favorable. I'm always glad when Arab culture gets its props in high-profile media venues in the US. Although I've not seen the volume, I think the reviewer, Robert W. Worth (who covers Iraq for the Times) gets things right, based on what I know about the writers he covers. He praises Egyptian short story writer Yusuf Idris, Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim, and Egyptian Nubian writer Haggag Hassan Oddoul's story, "Nights of Musk," from the short story collection of the same name (AUC Press, 2005). I'm particularly pleased to see Oddoul (pictured) getting some credit, both because he's an excellent writer and because it's good for Nubian visibility. Worth also gives high marks to Sudanese novelis Tayeb Salih, and he makes the very accute observation that the stories of Egyptian writer Nawal El Saadawi's "angry rants against Muslim treatment of women...are among the few stories in the book where an author appears to be playing to a Western audience."

Here's what bugs me about the review. Worth states that "One of the best pieces here is an excerpt from 'Men in the Sun'" by Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani. I can't quibble, for I think that this novella is Kanafani's best work. Worth goes on to describe Kanafani as a "Palestinian advocate killed by a car bomb in Beirut in 1972." It has of course been very well known for a long time that the car bomb that killed Kanafani (and his niece Lamis) was planted by Israeli intelligence. In fact, Eitan Haber, former spokesperson and speechwriter for the late Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin admitted Mossad's responsibility, in an article published in Yediot Aharanot last October. (See my blog entry on the subject here.) But even when Israeli terrorism is officially acknowledged and confirmed, the New York Times will not publish the fact. Too "controversial" to say that Israel engaged in targeted assassinations, I guess, even--or maybe especially?--in a review of literature.