Secularization in Mizrahi Jewish Life

By MICHEL ABITBOL

The following piece is adapted from New Jewish Time: Jewish Culture in a Secular Age.

Secularization for the Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) and Sephardic Jews of Arab lands differs greatly from the homegrown secularization movement of Ashkenazi European Jews. The processes of secularization among Mizrahi Jews were imposed on the peoples of Arab-Islamic lands by European nations beginning at the end of the 18th century. The secularization process reached its peak after the colonial takeover of most of the Muslim countries by France, England, Spain, and Italy. Consequently, most of the Jews of the Islamic countries were exposed to modernization and secular life during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when they became subjects of the colonial powers. Secularization caused inhabitants to abandon tradition and adapt to a distinctly modern lifestyle.

European colonial influence on Jewish society was evident everywhere in the Arab-Islamic world, although not always with the same degree of intensity.  Secularization brought many political, economic, social, and cultural transformations, such as a change in the legal status of Jews, and massive immigration from villages to new urban centers. It also initiated the education of girls, and new patterns of social mobility with the move away from traditional occupations. The hallmarks of modernization, such as the adoption of secular patterns of daily life and a gradual decline in the link to religion, pervaded the Middle East.

Hastening the spread of modernism and secularization in Islamic countries were merchants and businessmen who perceived the openness and adoption of western culture as an extraordinary opportunity for the economic, political, and social progress for members of their communities. One of the other key forces of secularization and modernity was teachers—especially those sent by the Jewish organizations: the Anglo-Jewish Association and the French Alliance Israélite Universelle. Their unthreatening and non-revolutionary image enabled them to gain the trust of the religious establishment—which never banned the European education given to Jewish students. In Morocco and in many other communities, rabbis even served as models of modernism and change, since they were the first in their communities to send their children to the Alliance secular schools. They rightly assumed that modernization, in the form in which it was imported into Muslim countries, was intended to improve the social and economic situation of the Jews.

Unlike Ashkenazi rabbis, most of the Sephardic and Mizrahi rabbis adopted a very modern, realistic, and pragmatic approach to the questions that arose as a result of the exposure to secularism. Since Sephardic rabbis did not believe that the Torah forbade innovation, they tended—more than their Ashkenazi counterparts—to seek pragmatic solutions to issues relating to medical, social, and technological innovations that challenged traditional religious observance.  A couple of examples: Rabbi Aharon Ben-Shimon, who served as chief rabbi of Cairo from 1891–1921, changed the mourning customs and abolished the obligation to sit on the floor, explaining that the western dress adopted by the members of his community interfered with this mode of sitting. And Rabbi Eliyahu Hazan had reconciled himself to the fact that married women who had adopted new European fashions would appear in public bareheaded and, that men would shave their beards. All he asked was that the cantor be unshaven on the High Holidays. These rabbis based their rulings on the assumption accepted by most of the Mizrahi Talmudic scholars—that the sages had “spoken in the present,” namely, enacted regulations in keeping with the spirit of their own time, and the “techniques” that existed then. Most importantly, they believed that just because something was done in the past did not make it sacred.

The Jews of the Islamic countries were ushered into the modern era and given support by an influential branch of the Jewish people that had undergone a similar historical experience several generations earlier—West European Jewry, particularly French Jewry. French Jewry had developed its own concept of Jewish modernity—a remarkable blend of French patriotism, and the aspiration to integrate into the society at large together with a strict preservation of what its enlightened leaders called the universal values of Judaism. This served as a model for Mizrahi Jews.

The European teachers sent to Jewish communities introduced a secular agenda into the communities in which they worked. Avoiding excessive preaching, they introduced an agenda that respected the Sabbath and the holidays but removed the children from the authority of the religious heads of the yeshivas. This new secular education blended European modernism and secularism with local customs, and helped Jewish students acquire modern and “productive” trades. This catalyzed further change as young adults were no longer dependent on their families and the community.

The processes of secularization and modernization in Mizrahi Jewish society strengthened Jewish consciousness. This resulted from the fact that colonialism created a stratified hierarchical society divided by ethnicity: European, Muslim, and Jewish. This division precluded any mixing between these communities since each had its own customs, quarters, communal institutions, sports leagues, and charitable and cultural organizations. These partitions prevented Jews from fully assimilating into their immediate environment. 

Moreover, with the expansion of the inter-communal ties throughout the Jewish world, various Jewish European emissaries brought the cultural innovations, and the European ideological denominations that existed among Ashkenazi Jewry, to the Mizrahi world. From this, the Mizrahi “Maskilim” (Enlightened ones) learned about Herzl’s Zionist idea and other contemporary topics of European Jewish thought. Mizrahim soon mobilized their own branches of the Zionist movement in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. Thus, in the 1950s, during the advent of decolonization, Middle Eastern nationalist movements and the founding of the State of Israel, Mizrahi Jews began to emigrate from their countries of residence to Israel and Europe. These political, cultural, and social changes, coupled with the challenges of emigration to new societies, caused a crisis in Mizrahi and Sephardic identity sparking unprecedented changes in the cultures and traditions of the Jews of Arab lands.

“Secularization in Mizrahi Jewish Life” was adapted from an entry by Michel Abitbol in New Jewish Time: Jewish Culture in a Secular Age—An Encyclopedic View; in 5 volumes; Editor in Chief: Yirmiyahu Yovel; Initiator, director, and, editor: Yair Tzaban; General Editor: David Shaham. Keter Publishing House, Israel—2007. Prepared by Lamda—Association for Modern Jewish Culture with the participation of the Jerusalem Spinoza Institute; Financed primarily by The Posen Foundation and supported also by The Keshet Foundation, The Ministry for Science Culture & Sport, The Rabinovitch Foundation Tel Aviv, The National Lottery. The English-language version of New Jewish Time is underway; a Russian version is planned.