This balanced and well-documented essay written by Matti Friedman a couple of years ago, Mizrahi Nation, adds a very welcomed perspective on the sometimes very fierce and subjective debate between the Jews of Middle Eastern versus European descent.
Although there are many facts and personal stories that sometimes support a narrative favoring a discrimination-based narrative, in the last decade the gap is rather tends to narrow. There are many more mixed families - although having a darker skin might burden you with additional identity controls - and although there is still no prime-minister of Middle Eastern descent, at least there are more people in the Israeli government with such a background - I am not talking about Aryeh Deri (whose family was not religious and in fact got his religious training in very Askenazi learning institutions). Nothing is set to stay like this and sooner or later things will rather improve if not the rift will be completely overdone by other new realities.
The Orientalism-based perspective does not offer too many chances (if any) of a change, but the reality on the ground is a bit faster and fairer that the academic minds would like it. In reality, the ethnic realities are permanently changing and you might need new theories to grasp and codify them according to the facts and not to a reality that suits a certain ideological mindset.
More explorations and book reviews on such topics in coming posts (including the much recommended book by Friedman: Spies of No Country. Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel, featuring the stories of those Jews of Middle Eastern origin that served the new Jewish state serving as spies in their countries of origin.
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