“It’s Easier to Serve Bagels than Baba Ganoush:” Iraqi Jewish Women Articulate an Arab Jewish Subjectivity Master’s Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Jonathan Decter, Advisor In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Master’s Degree by Chelsie May May 2013 Copyright by Chelsie May © 2013 Acknowledgments It is impossible to overstate how genuinely appreciative I am to the women whose articulations constitute this thesis. Their lives as Iraqi Arab Jewish immigrants to America are daunting and inspiring in their breadth and I am thankful that they were willing to detail some of their trajectory with me. I hope this document helps them to never doubt the importance of their history and voices. If not for Professor Jonathan Decter’s exact articulation of the term Arab Jew, this thesis would not have had an impetus. If not for his insistence on the merits of my nascent research, I might have been too disillusioned to continue. I thank him very much. If not for Professor ChaeRan Freeze’s enthusiasm for gender conscious research, this thesis’ methodology would not be as thoughtful and reflexive as I am happy to say it is. She has also proven supportive, positive, and sensitive beyond what I deserve. I thank her as well. Because of their tangential influence, I must also mention Professors Carole Basri and Ella Shohat, respectively. I thank Carole Basri for her own inspiring work with Iraqi Arab Jews. I thank Ella Shohat for informing me of the term Arab Jew many years ago and by extension, providing me with an endlessly intriguing existence I cannot cease grappling with. iii ABSTRACT “It’s Easier to Serve Bagels than Baba Ganoush”: Iraqi Jewish Women Articulate an Arab Jewish Subjectivity A Thesis Presented to the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts By Chelsie May The term Arab Jew is not singularly defined in America’s discourse on Arab Jewish and Mizrahi studies. As a cursory summary, the Arab Jew is sometimes politically, culturally, or legally constituted depending on the predilections of academics who concern themselves with it. This inherent multiplicity in academic discussions of the term Arab Jew is not necessarily an impetus for critique. Rather, it can be an impetus for further inquiry. Those intrigued enough with the term to ask, “What is a possible Arab Jewish subjectivity?” must bear in mind the term’s multiplicity as well as its position within academia. Given these preliminaries and as a way to complicate the term further, the answer to the previously posed question might begin by locating primary source material outside of the academy. This thesis does just that, by delineating efforts to discuss the term Arab Jew with Middle Eastern or Southeast Asian born, Iraqi Jewish immigrants to America. For purposes of feasibility and precision the interviews that form the crux of this thesis take place at America’s largest Iraqi synagogue: The Sephardic Synagogue Kahal Joseph. Because a great deal of the primary source literature from Iraqi Jews is authored by those who perform male, these interviews seek to amplify the voices iv of those who perform as female. When the female performing subjects of these interviews answer the question, “Do you call yourself an Arab Jew?” a possible Arab Jewish subjectivity is discernible. Such a subjectivity is informed by Israel’s discourse of scholarship on Mizrahim, constituted through three facets of culture--education, material, and an ephemeral sense of history--and characterized by various types of cognitive dissonance. Once the Arab Jewish subjectivity discerned at Kahal Joseph is dialogued with conceptions of the term already proliferating in international academia, consciousness raising can occur and the term can be proven worthy of further study. v Table of Contents Introduction-1 Cognitive Dissonance Theory-3 A Poststructural Subjectivity-9 Scholarship in Jewish Studies on non-Ashkenazim-12 Methodology and Interview Procedures-14 Chapter 1: Background: Iraqi Jews as British Empire and Mandatory Subjects-23 Iraqi Jewish Identity From Iraq to Southeast Asia-23 Jews in the Early Twentieth Century British Empire-27 The Historical Component of Iraqi Jewish-British Reciprocity-29 The British Ethos Component of Iraqi Jewish-British Reciprocity-33 Chapter 2: Interview Findings-42 The Plausibility and Beneficence of Considering Arab Jewish Subjectivity-42 The Difference of Education: Education Signifying Culture Part I-47 The Primacy of Education: Education Signifying Culture Part II-56 The Cognitive Dissonance of Education: Education Signifying Culture Part III-61 Defining Material Culture: The Impact of Material Culture Part I-68 The Decorative and Aesthetic of Material Culture: The Impact of Material Culture Part II-71 Clothing and Furnishings as Material Culture: The Impact of Material Culture Part III-77 Food as Material Culture: The Impact of Material Culture Part IV-81 The Difficulty of Food and Material Culture: The Impact of Material Culture Part V-83 Noticing Ephemeralness: Having an Ephemeral History and a Subjectivity Part I-88 Justifying Ephemeralness: Ephemeral History and a Subjectivity Part II-90 Facets of Ephemeralness: Having an Ephemeral History and a Subjectivity Part III-92 Chapter 3: Dialoguing and Consciousness Raising-100 Conclusion-111 Appendix-113 vi Introduction Commencing the essay “Reflections by an Arab Jew,” Ella Shohat affirmatively declares, “I am an Arab Jew.”1 However, such a declaration wanders into immediate suspension as captivating auxiliaries continue the essay. Shohat buttresses her initial statement with clarifications, “Specifically, I am an Iraqi Israeli woman,” contextualizations, “Most members of my family were born and raised in Baghdad, and now live in Iraq, Israel, the U.S., England, and Holland,” historical truisms, “For Middle Easterners, the operating distinction had always been “Muslim,” “Jew,” and “Christian,” not Arab versus Jew,” and present frustrations, “I recall a well-established colleague who despite my elaborate lessons on the history of Arab Jews, still had trouble understanding that I was not a tragic anomaly.” I pedantically highlight these auxiliaries not to confuse or enervate, but to illustrate that the very content, methodology, thesis and frustrations of this succinct article essentially constitute a microcosm of Arab Jewish studies. Furthermore, pointing out that Shohat’s facade of essentialized identity, present in the article’s first sentence, is only weakened by subsequent qualifications is not a caustic critique, rather, it is a demonstration of just how precarious subjectivities can be. Mindful of these caveats, this thesis seeks to engage with an Arab Jewish subjectivity informed by interviews that I conducted with Iraqi Jewish women from the 1 Shohat, Ella. Reflections by an Arab Jew.The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage. Seal Press. 2003. 1 Sephardic synagogue Kahal Joseph, in which discussions and recognition of European affinity, specifically a British affinity, figured prominently. I endeavored in the name of asking, “What is a possible Arab Jewish subjectivity?” The subjectivity I located among the cohort I interviewed is an iteration in the vain of the scholarship on Mizrahim discourse in Arab Jewish studies insofar as it is arrived at through in particular, three facets of culture: education, material, and an ephemeral sense of history, and characterized by several types of cognitive dissonance specifically those engendered from research on human effectiveness and emotion, self-discrepancy theory, neuroscience and affect, and mood congruency. The idea is that the diverse backgrounds of the Iraqi Jewish women who comprise my interview sample, along with how these women came to be characterized by European, and specifically British influence, reveal that the more that Europeanness reverberates in their everyday lives, the more their inherited and accumulated Arabness is a cognition that facilitates dissonance. My hope is that such a critically examined subjectivity will be of benefit to Arab Jewish and Mizrahi studies as it will highlight the multiplicity of subjectivities possible for the Arab Jew and demonstrate that these subjectivities are viable enough to elicit further study. The particular assumptions of cognitive dissonance under which I operate will be delineated in greater detail later in this introduction, but in the interest of some clarification, “The theory of cognitive dissonance is based on the idea that inconsistency between elements of knowledge (cognitions) leads to a negative affective state that can motivate changes in elements of knowledge.”2 Because a description of Arab Jewish subjectivity is the crux of 2 Harmon-Jones, Eddie. The Role of Affect in Cognitive Dissonance Processes. Handbook of Affect and Social Cognition. 2001. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. 238. 2 my present endeavor I will explain my understanding of subjectivity rather didactically after justifying my use of cognitive dissonance theory through an example of the theory’s application and its explanation. This introduction will also include a discussion of Scholarship in Jewish Studies on non-Ashkenazim and a detailing of my Methodology and Interview Procedures. Introduction: Cognitive Dissonance Theory Theories of cognitive dissonance, when applied contextually, allowed me to productively process some of my interviewees’ more candid but abstruse statements. For example, consider a sentiment expressed in Victoria’s interview, a woman who was born in Iraq and left in 1970 V: “Iraqi Jews I am Iraqi Jew” C: “Okay you think so” V: “That’s for sure yeah” C: “Um why” V: “Because born in Iraq grew up in Iraq but um I don’t have the Arab mentality that’s what I mean although Iraq is part of the Arab world I should belong to the Arab if not directly indirectly through Iraq but I mean I don’t I don’t have such a feeling”3 Victoria’s last statement suggests the presence of a certain amount of cognitive dissonance insofar as she, ‘knows [she] should belong to the Arab if not directly indirectly through Iraq’, but does not. Certain studies of cognitive dissonance, concerned with human effectiveness vis-a-vis the presence of cognitive dissonance, say this about emotion, “This view of dissonance fits with views of emotion that posit that emotional states serve adaptive functions. Following Darwin (1872), emotion scientists (e.g., Frijda, 1986; Izard 1977) suggest that emotions serve the function of increasing chances of 3 After familiarizing myself with a fair amount of oral history literature and studies that explicitly employed interview dialogues as evidence, I came to feel most comfortable with transcribing the women’s responses in keeping with their natural cadence. Fillers, pauses, and non-linear thought processes are left as un-retouched as possible and little punctuation is used because I feel that it imparts the most agency possible for interviewees who are already sacrificing so much self-control by allowing me access to their articulations. 3 individual survival by organizing, motivating, and sustaining behavior in response to significant events.”4 Emotional states appear to be one of the sites where knowledge (cognitions) congregates and operates in order to generate survivable or less survivable effects. In the above quote, Victoria’s ‘mentality’, and ‘feeling’, are essentially knowledge and emotion respectively. Per the terms of cognitive dissonance theory, her inability to identify as Arab is legitimate, despite her admitted awareness that such an identification is not out of the question. This legitimacy is predicated on the fact that this exact response increases Victoria’s chances of individual survival. The articulation of cognitive dissonance that has been initially offered for clarification, coming from a book titled The Handbook of Social Cognition, and operating as part of psychological research, appeals to desires for logic and consistency. I might reject positivist notions that privilege scientific studies as inherently 4 Harmon-Jones, Eddie. The Role of Affect in Cognitive Dissonance Processes. Handbook of Affect and Social Cognition. 2001. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Ibid. 241. I am aware that the mere presence of any Darwinian substantiation can be of some cause for concern for scholars of Jewish history. Expressing this concern in one of her short stories, Egyptian born, Levantine Jew Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff has written, “Yes, Darwin worried me. If Darwin were right, then the Nazis were right. There was a master race, and when it had destroyed all of mankind it could only destroy itself.” Because I am sensitive to such concerns I must clarify my use of the quote this footnote is responsible for. I am most interested in exactly two words from the quote: individual survival. Discerning how subjectivities influence a person’s ability to live is my goal with this particular example. Thus, I employ the above quote because it discusses individual survival, which is the best substantive and cognitive dissonance related approximation of the the iteration of individual survival I am most intrigued by, this being survivability. I read the above quote as a possible way to explain how individuals increase their survivability and not some sort of immutable, Darwinian, condemning individual survival per se. When I say survivability I mean something along the lines of the amalgamated and created toolbox of techniques individuals and communities harness in the name of perpetuating themselves in historical memory rather than in physical space as bodies which is what I take survival to be. A survival tactic might be that certain bodies acclimate to warmer climates over time, while a survivability technique might be, as Victoria demonstrates, the defense mechanism of emotional stability she employs in the name of perpetuating herself as an Iraqi Jew rather than an Arab Jew. I understand both my distinction between survival and survivability and use of the Darwinian influenced quote as sound because they are facets to bolster larger claims and not the crux of claims. The researchers cited in the above study were not necessarily Darwinian enthusiasts in an unequivocal way; his work was likely a catalyst at best. Similarly, “individual survival” and what the quote suggests about emotions were catalysts for me. Kahanoff, Shohet Jacqueline. “Europe From Afar.” Mongrels or Marvels: The Levantine Writings of Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff. Stanford University Press. Stanford. 2011. 102. 4