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From 3rd Edition--
A major question raised in the current debate over the politics of
cultures concerning minorities and marginal communities is who represents
whom and who acts for whom. In the context of Middle Eastern and North
African Jewish cultures in Israel, the history of Israeli cinema demonstrated
that until recently, in most cases, Middle Eastern and North African
Jews were either invisible or under-represented. In the rare instances
where they are represented we find, in addition to a negative portrayal
of their culture, a hierarchy enacted in the casting process in which
“Ashkenazi Jews have often played Sephardic roles, while Sephardim have
often played Arab roles.” (Ella Shohat, Israeli Cinema 1988: 7).
Since the early 1970s a new Mizrahi consciousness has emerged in Israel
that attempts to create a social alternative to the official “master
narrative.” (The general term “Mizrahi,” denoting Middle Eastern and
North African Jews, is relatively new and refers to a particular population
from Arabic-speaking countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq,
Iran, Morocco, Tunisia, or Algeria. The term “Sephardic” denotes Jews
who were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula and relocated to places
like North Africa, the Balkans, and Turkey where they spoke Ladino,
a dialect of Spanish. It has been generalized to signify any Jew who
is “non-Ashkenazi,” that is, not Northern, Central, or Eastern European.
While a problematic term, I continue to use “Sephardic” to refer to
the pre-1970s Israeli reality, when all non-Ashkenazi Jews were lumped
together.) Briefly, this “master narrative” continues to advocate merging
east and west, eliminating ethnic differences to create one “Israeli
Sabra culture.” As time went on, it became clear that “melting pot”
was a fantasy that concealed conflicts of power and even went so far
as to make entire cultures invisible. This fantasy articulated the self-understanding
of Israel as an enlightened Western state, thereby excluding the Middle
Eastern and North African Jews (Mizrahim); their experience, history,
language and culture. This occurred in spite of the fact that Mizrahi
Jews (until the recent large wave of Russian immigration), although
constituting a demographic majority in Israel, were treated as an ethnic
minority.
 Throughout
the 1970s, after years of silence, assimilation or attempts to assimilate,
Israelis of Middle Eastern and North African origin, began to address
through various art forms, issues of collective and individual memory,
language, and identity; ethnic, national, and religious. The increasing
volume of creative works, in and out of Israel, include literature,
art, theatre, film, and even newly-invented ritual practices related
to religion and beliefs. Currently, in the relatively more open climate
for diversity in Israel, with the increased power that Mizrahim have
gained, ethnicity itself is gaining more legitimacy. However, folklore
and traditionality still remain associated with this non-western “ethnicity,”
while “culture” remains associated with the dominant European culture.
Not surprising, one of the new developments reflected in films by and
about Middle Eastern and North African Jews is the active role that
they themselves play in the different stages of production. In this
review I will discuss four remarkable films made in the past four years
and shown by the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival which are self-reflective
of Mizrahi culture.
One of the major changes these four films highlight is a new representation
of Mizrahim which tends to move away from the limited paradigm of the
past. In this paradigm Sepharadim and Ashkenazim are set up as binary
oppositions. Sephardic culture is the counter image of what is perceived
as Israeli Sabra culture. The simple, anonymous, depersonalized Sephardic
characters we find in previous films such as SALLAH SHABATI (Ephraim
Kishon, 1964), and BEYOND THE WALLS (Uri Barbash, 1984) are now replaced
with complex, personalized, particular personas. The narrative opens
up to include the perspectives of children, old people, the intimate
life of women, the distinctive music, food, body gestures, and forgotten
history and geography in which Jews lived in co-existence with Arabs.
This direction in films is not totally new. Earlier films such as THE
HOUSE ON CHELOUCHE STREET (Moshe Mizrahi, 1975), PILLAR OF SALT (Haim
Shiran, 1980); documentaries such as ROUTES OF EXILE: A MOROCCAN JEWISH
ODYSSEY (Eugene Rosow, 1982); ethnographies such as THE LAST MARRANOS
(Frederic Brenner and Stan Neumann, 1990), I MISS THE SUN (Mary Halawani
1984) or TREES CRY FOR RAIN (Bonnie Burt, 1989) were all important milestones
along the way which did not get enough public attention and, as in the
case of Moshe Mizrahi’s films, were not really understood by film reviewers
of the time.
Most noticeable in recent films by and about Mizrahim is the search
for home, a theme that recurs explicitly or implicitly and in different
levels of abstraction throughout. For all Jews and for all Israelis,
“place” is a problematic and complex concept. Israel as place stands
for a geographical territory over which wars are fought. It is also
a concept synonymous with God itself, “makom” in Hebrew; philosophically,
it is an object of yearning - like the Messiah and the Holy Grail -
a place that will never be reached, a concept that evokes the painful
dialectic of exile and homeland. The question is: How much more problematic
is that “place” for Mizrahim who dreamed of the promised land but in
reality are excluded and thus further exiled? Barbara Johnson, a leading
American cultural critic, suggests that ethnicity itself can be understood
as being Home. To be Home, accordingly, is associated with the comfort
generated by speaking in one’s own language and operating within one’s
own history. This is in opposition to being at another’s home, which
Johnson compares to tourism. If, until the present, Sephardic Israelis
remained “tourists” in their own country - incidental to the narratives
and experience of European Jews - at last there is a shift to a new
space from which to articulate Home.
 The
short film entitled HOME (written, directed, and played by David Ofek,
1994) best exemplifies the search for home. The film is set in a sealed
room during the Gulf War, focusing on an Iraqi Jewish family whose main
concern is the well-being of the older grandmother (Mama). The television
screen, finite and framed as it is in this sealed room, not only shows
actual scud missle attacks on Baghdad but becomes a map of this forgotten,
inaccessible city; and thus transforms into a vehicle for returning
home. Ironically, the Gulf War, with all its terror and anxiety, brings
back a remote homeland. The wandering finger pointing at the blurred
TV screen points out an imagined place of residence. Adding to this
irony, Saddam Hussein’s scud attacks increased the visibility of Iraqi
Jews in the Israeli map of ethnicity, precisely because the Scuds landed
on Ramat-Gan, a town near Tel-Aviv, populated by many Iraqi Jews. Indirectly,
this experience enables the grandson, a second generation Iraqi-Israeli,
to locate himself in the wider Israeli experience. Yet Home has transformed.
At the end of the film the grandchild, an intellectual Sabra, fantasizes
about his future, hoping to unite his conflicting identities: on the
one hand his Iraqi roots and on the other hand his modern western upbringing.
He will marry his girlfriend, live in the hippest neighborhood of Tel-Aviv,
Sheinkin Street, and have children who will sing and dance, like him,
to Arabic music.
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The Search for
Home: Films By and About Middle Eastern and North African Jews
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