UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Struggle for Sephardic-Mizrahi Autonomy: Racial Identities in Palestine-Israel, 1918–1948 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Culture & Performance by Yehuda Sharim 2013 © Copyright by Yehuda Sharim 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Struggle for Sephardic-Mizrahi Autonomy: Racial Identities in Palestine, 1918–1948 by Yehuda Sharim Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Peter Nabokov, Co-Chair Professor David N. Myers, Co-Chair “The Struggle for Sephardic-Mizrahi Autonomy” chronicles the creation of a Sephardic- Mizrahi identity–literally, “Oriental” Jews–uncovering the ways that political and racial factors contributed to the emergence of this identity. My inquiry draws from an extensive body of archives located in Israel, New York, and Los Angeles. I have investigated immigration records of the Jewish community in Palestine from the 1920s, protocols of Sephardic-Mizrahi organizations and letters, and journalistic pieces to chart the crystallization of a unified ii Sephardic-Mizrahi entity by 1918, the organizational forms it took in the 1920s, and the way in which it became the subject of careful scholarly scrutiny in the 1930s and 1940s. In tandem with tracing the political strengthening of the Sephardic-Mizrahi federation, my dissertation throws into sharp relief the multiple studies undertaken by Jewish social scientists and medical professionals in the mid-1930s and into the 1940s. These studies invariably concluded that Sephardim-Mizrahim were intellectually impaired and predisposed to criminality, ascribing their imputed inferiority to biological differences. Ironically, Sephardic- Mizrahi leaders not only accepted such “scientific evidence” of their inferiority, but also leveraged this imposed racialized identity to highlight their invisible histories and marginal status. Previous scholarship has theorized Sephardim-Mizrahim ahistorically within a framework of passivity and victimization. My work, by contrast, identifies narratives of Sephardic-Mizrahi agency. By such agency, however, I am referring to the complicity of Sephardic-Mizrahi leaders in reifying racial hierarchies, which enlarged the trope of “Oriental backwardness” beyond Sephardim-Mizrahim to include Palestinian-Arabs as a national “problem” in the formative years leading up to the creation of the Israeli State. The first chapter delineates the separate chronologies of the Sephardic and Mizrahi ethnic categories, as well as the political context in the Yishuv under which Sephardic leaders were interested in conflating the two terms and their histories. This chapter explores the role of this leadership in attempting to unify the varied Sephardic and Mediterranean communities into an independent political and economic entity in the 1910s. The second chapter focuses on the folkloristic, literary, and scientific work of three self-identified Sephardic-Mizrahi leaders. It charts their contribution to the emergence of Sephardic-Mizrahi institutions in the 1920s that iii gradually turned a porous understanding of Sephardim-Mizrahim into a standardized ethnic identity carefully catalogued in immigration records and demographic surveys in the Yishuv. The third chapter explores the political context and tensions that led Sephardic-Mizrahi community leaders to establish a global federation with its own economic and settler network by 1925, independent from the Zionist Organization. The chapter contends that Sephardic-Mizrahi leaders chose to mobilize and capitalize on their “Oriental” identity by reaching out to Diasporic communities abroad. The fourth chapter considers the consistent exclusion of Sephardic-Mizrahi leaders from the Ashkenazi-dominated Zionist Organization, which drove Sephardic-Mizrahi leaders to strategically leverage the resulting isolation. This sense of alienation had two effects. On the one hand, it further extended their own economic and settler network to resist their subjugation. On the other hand, it promoted the internalization of inferiority. The final chapter traces the work of Israeli social scientists from such disciplines as anthropology and education conducted in the 1940s and 1950s, and the impact of their studies concerning a Sephardic- Mizrahi biological “type,” associated with irreparable intellectual inferiority and criminalization. iv The dissertation of Yehuda Sharim is approved. Susan Foster Janet O’Shea Todd Presner Sarah Abrevaya Stein David N. Myers, Committee Co-Chair Peter Nabokov, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 v To those who have been working under the luminous sun and kept working throughout endless nights vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Sephardim-Mizrahim: A Matter of Life and Death 1 Chapter 1 Unapologetically Ourselves: Sephardic-Mizrahi Subjects in Palestine, 1918–1921 29 Chapter 2 More Mizrahi Than Thou: The Politics of Palestinian Nativity, 1921–1923 79 Chapter 3 Sephardim-Mizrahim in Transnational Perspective: Organizing the World Federation (1925) 127 Chapter 4 “To Be or Not To Be Sephardim-Mizrahim”: The Rise and Fall of an Ethnic Autonomy, from 1926 to 1936 168 Chapter 5 Inferior Jews: Racializing the Sephardic-Mizrahi Category, 1936–1948 223 vii Conclusion Sephardic-Mizrahi Subjects 292 Bibliography 300 viii Acknowledgements I wrote most of this dissertation at University of California Los Angeles while I was a graduate student in the department of World Arts and Cultures. I also had the privilege to work in five extraordinary interdisciplinary programs: History, Jewish Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, German Studies, and Israel Studies. I gratefully acknowledge my colleagues and students in all these rich communities: their experiences, questions, and scholarship continue to inspire me. I feel a profound sense of gratitude toward my mentors and teachers, without whom I would never have developed the intellectual rigor and stamina that such an intricate process of discovery deserved. Foremost among these are Peter Nabokov and David N. Myers, both of whom, through their exemplary scholarship and forging vision, have made the undertaking of this project such a gratifying pleasure and a tremendous challenge. Their incisive reading, insightful critique, and ongoing intellectual commitment to this work are so profound, they cannot be expressed in words or in one paragraph. If only a modicum of acumen and vision of their labor will be part of my work and teaching, I will be honored. I also want to thank the most inspiring Linda Feldman, my second mother here in the city of Angels, for being such embracing me/us into her and Peter’s home. Peter Sellars has extended to me both his inspiring art and creative mind through practically every phase of this dissertation, from my arrival to UCLA to this very moment. He introduced me to so many new dreams and ways of dreaming that still awaken within me. To Sarah Abrevaya Stein I am indebted for guiding me through the intricate maze of the academic world and for offering such an extraordinary model of a new generation of Sephardic-Mizrahi ix scholars that reshapes ideas of writing history and Sephardic-Mizrahi histories in particular. She has also inspired me to think more about Sephardic-Mizrahi agents, guiding me in directions that neither she now I could have predicted. Todd Presner reviewed my project at different stages, always approaching my work with genuine interest, intelligence, and kindness. He also introduced me to readings about Jewish masculinity and proposed a cogent critique about bodily practices in relation to the national project. Additionally, I also had the privilege to be learning for and working with Todd, moments of exchange that marked my teaching and ideas animating this dissertation. Many thanks also to Susan Foster and Janet O’Shea for pointing me in directions that I would not have necessarily followed had it not been for their assiduous comments. This dissertation developed in continuous conversation with many scholars. It simply would not exist with their acumen and heart. I would like to thank Angelia Leung, Al Roberts, Mary (Polly) Roberts, David Gere, Simone Forti, David Shorter, Janet O’Shea, David Rouseve, Carol Bakhos, Aparma Sharma, Arieh Saposnik, and James Gelvin. I would particularly like to thank Anurima Banerji for her insightful comments, advices, and conversations that became invaluable in unknotting the subject of Sephardic-Mizrahi identity. In addition, Arieh Saposnik reviewed the dissertation at different stages: his reading contributed crucially to the framing of chapters 3 and 4. And last but not least, I want to thank Carol Bakhos, who was there first, supporting my work intellectually from my very first year at UCLA. Then there are many colleagues and friends who come from various academic disciplines but whose engagements with the themes and arguments in this dissertation have challenged me to be attentive to a number of issues/concerns that would have otherwise escape my mind. In this regard, I would like to thank Lorena Alvarado, Lorenzo Perillo, Matthew Sandoval, Feriyal x Amal Aslam, Jose Reynoso, the most courageous Giavanni Washington and Lyndon Gregory, Matthew Sandoval, Christina Rosa, Alexandra Shilling, Jenna Monique Delgado, Andrea Wang, Kathleen Williams, Doran George, Harmony Bench, Rosemary Candelario, Carolina San Juan, Andy Martinez, Angeline Shaka, Anat Moorevile, Sarah (Simchi)