https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0153-2100
Abstract
This article discusses the emergence of a circle of Sephardi intellectuals in Haifa in the final years of the Ottoman era and examines their characteristics as Arabic-speaking Jews, who engaged in both educational and political activities. Among other aspects, the article will consider the background to the emergence of this circle among families of Arabic-speaking migrants from the Maghreb. The members of the Sephardi intelligentsia also grew up in a shared Jewish–Arab space and were educated at the school of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, which in itself served as a shared framework for Jews and Arabs. The members of the Sephardi intelligentsia in Haifa continued their training at the Alliance’s Teachers’ Seminary in Paris and engaged in educational work alongside public and political activities as representatives of the Sephardi public. The connection between their Jewish–Arab cultural identity and their educational and political activities was particularly apparent during the transition to the British Mandate. The spotlight on the Sephardi intelligentsia of Haifa thus offers a new perspective on the place of Arabic-speaking Jews in the history of Haifa and on the development of intercommunal relations in this city.
In 1959, on the death of the writer and journalist Nissim Malul, the scholar and educator Israel Ben-Ze’ev described the emergence in the early twentieth century of two distinct streams of Jews in Palestine who had a command of Arabic. The first group, he explained, came from intellectual circles in Jerusalem and centered around such figures as David Yellin, Yosef Meyuhas, Yitzhak Yehezkel, and Avraham Shalom Yahuda. According to Ben-Ze’ev’s analysis, the main goal of this Jerusalemite stream was educational and academic, focusing on the dissemination of the Arabic language in Hebrew schools and the use of Arabic in the study of the Bible, Hebrew grammar, and the history of the Jews under Islam. The second school, he continued, was based in Jaffa and centered around journalists, writers, and public figures who had a command of Arabic. The members of this circle, such as Shimon Moyal, Nissim Malul, Yosef Eliahu Chelouche, and Avraham Elmalih, engaged in contacts with Arabs in Palestine and the neighboring countries, both for practical economic and commercial reasons and for the purpose of political and social discourse.1 Historians who have discussed the thought of Sephardi intellectuals in Palestine in the late Ottoman period, their Arab–Jewish cultural identity, or their activities in the field of Jewish–Arab relations, have also focused on Jerusalem and Jaffa.2 However, very little attention has been paid to the circles of Sephardi intellectuals in other mixed Jewish–Arab cities in general, and in Haifa in particular. Moreover, within the study of the history of Haifa in the late Ottoman period, virtually no attention has been paid to the perspectives of Middle Eastern and North African Jews (Sephardi and Oriental Jews).3
This article, discusses the characteristics of the Sephardi intellectual circle that emerged in Haifa during the late Ottoman period. This circle consisted of Arabic-speaking Jews who combined educational activities with political and public engagement, stemming from a similar biographical background. Almost all the Sephardi intellectuals discussed in this article were of Moroccan origin (Maghrebi Jews). In public discourse, the Ladino-speaking and Arabic-speaking Jews of late Ottoman Haifa were usually referred to as “Sephardim,” although other terms, including Arab Jews, were used to describe their cultural identity. The common social and cultural background of this Sephardi intellectual circle included not only their origins in Arabic-speaking migrant families, but also their residence in neighborhoods shared by Jews and Arabs, and their studies at the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) school in Haifa and at the organization’s Teachers’ Seminary in Paris. This shared background, which will be examined in the first three parts of this article, expressed, among other aspects, the culturally hybrid Jewish–Arab identity of the members of the Sephardi intellectual circle in Haifa.
In her discussion of the existence of a hybrid Jewish–Arab cultural identity in the Mashriq, Lital Levy distinguished between a cultural identity represented by intellectual circles, who also defined their Arab–Jewish identity, and the expression of this identity at the level of everyday life.4 In their public and educational activities as Arabic-speaking Jews, the Sephardi intellectuals in Haifa represented the existence of a hybrid Arab–Jewish identity. Moreover, their personal backgrounds illustrated the existence of this identity at the level of daily life among the Sephardi population living in mixed neighborhoods in Haifa. Menachem Klein, who examined the existence of a local Arab–Jewish identity in Palestine at the end of the Ottoman period, describes how this identity was closely tied to shared Jewish–Arab residential areas and to the fact that patterns of life, language, and culture created a shared identity centered on a sense of local belonging.5 The focus on Sephardi intellectuals thus allows for the examination of the existence of a similar local identity in Haifa.
The circle of Sephardi intellectuals in Haifa, who reached maturity during the period of rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, formed part of a Sephardi local Jewish educational and cultural elite that was active in the public and political spheres. They sought not only to represent the Sephardi community in Haifa but also to lead the Jewish community in the city. This self-perception as a serving elite was formed in part against the background of their education in the AIU School network. Almost all the members of the Sephardi circle worked as teachers and principals in the AIU’s educational network. They were educated in the spirit of the organization’s “civilizing mission” and the values of modernization, reform, and regeneration. No less importantly, they were inculcated with a belief in the importance of public activity to represent and advance their community.6 Accordingly, the Sephardi intelligentsia in Haifa formed part of a cadre of Sephardi “public intellectuals” active at the time not only in Palestine but across the Ottoman Empire.7 They were also members of a network of graduates, educators, and teachers (in particular, teachers of Arabic) who engaged in educational and public activities.8 These activities, which reflected their Arab–Jewish cultural background and identity, were in some cases a product of their local education in the spirit of the Arab cultural revival (Nahda) and were rooted in the ideas of the Hebrew national and cultural revival movement.9
Another characteristic of this circle was its integration into the urban middle class in Haifa.10 Various studies have examined the growth of a Jewish economic elite in the Ottoman Empire during this period, while also exploring their integration into the imperial and local administration.11 Despite the importance of economic issues, which reflect the socioeconomic modernization processes in Haifa during the Hamidian period within regional, imperial, and trans-regional contexts, this article focuses on the cultural and social background of the Sephardi intellectuals. It examines how this background was expressed in and influenced their public and political activities as local leaders.12 The integration of Sephardi intellectuals in the urban middle class in Haifa, including their employment in the liberal professions and in international commercial companies, such as foreign banks, occurred mostly during the Mandate period and accordingly will not be examined in depth in this article.
The concept of an “intelligentsia” (Maskilim), which is chosen in this article, has various meanings, referring inter alia to groups within an elite comprising individuals with high school or academic education who develop a sense of mission or commitment to undertake public social, political, and cultural activity.13 In Jewish historiography, this term has been used mainly in the study of Jews in Eastern Europe. For example, it has been used to describe the Jewish intelligentsia as a leadership group that played a central role in processes of modernization and nationalism.14 The cultural activities of the Sephardi intelligentsia in Haifa were less extensive than those of their counterparts in Jerusalem and Jaffa, but they maintained a self-perception as an elite characterized by their knowledge of Arab culture and as community leaders who were devoted to public activity.15
The circle of Sephardi intellectuals in Haifa, with their shared social and cultural background, was also shaped as a political one. The combination of local educational–cultural leadership and public–political activity was manifested in their involvement during the Mandate period in various Sephardi organizations, primarily in the Association of Sephardim (Histadrut Hasfaradim) and in the Council of the Sephardi Community (Va’ad Ha’edah Hasfaradit). As will be discussed in the final part of the article, the social and cultural background of these Arabic-speaking Jews, along with their self-perception as an elite, was manifested in their reaction to their marginalization and exclusion from the leadership of the Jewish community in Palestine (Yishuv) and the Zionist movement during the transition from Ottoman rule to the British Mandate.
Maghrebi and Arabic-Speaking Jews
In 1910, the newspaper Hapoel Hatzair (The Young Worker) described the Jewish community of Haifa as comprising three groups of migrants: Jews from North Africa in general, and in particular Jews from Morocco who spoke Moroccan Arabic; Jews from Istanbul and Izmir who spoke Ladino (Judeo-Spanish); and Musta’arabun—Jews who spoke Arabic. However, the writer was aware that when they began to arrive in Haifa in the first half of the nineteenth century, “the Moroccans from the coastal cities spoke Ladino and inwardly detested their Arabic-speaking compatriots.”16 The writer and journalist Avraham Elmalih also discussed the relations between Ladino and Arabic-speaking Moroccan Jews. He distinguished between the Maghrebi community in Jerusalem, which established a separate communal structure independent of the Committee of the Sephardi Community, and the Maghrebi communities in Safed, Jaffa, Tiberia, and Haifa. In all these cities, the Maghrebi newcomers outnumbered the established Sephardi communities, and accordingly they merged with the leaderships of these communities and played an active role in their activities. Elmalih also noted that in Safed, Tiberias, and Haifa, “the Maghrebi element from North Africa brought with it the Arabic language and imposed it on life in place of Ladino.”17 As a result, in Haifa and Tiberias, “all the Ladino-speaking Sephardim who came from Turkey have completely forgotten Ladino and speak Arabic.”18
The division between speakers of Ladino, Moroccan Arabic, and local Arabic reflects the development of the Jewish community in Haifa in the nineteenth century. The first Jewish migrants from the Maghreb arrived in the city following the French occupation of Algeria and during the rule of Ibrahim Pasha. They settled in the eastern Muslim Quarter in the city and founded Harat al-Yahud, which developed as a Jewish neighborhood and as a shared Jewish–Arab space.19 During the nineteenth century, and in the early twentieth century, Harat al-Yahud was the center of Jewish communal life in Haifa, and the neighborhood was home to the Sephardi community institutions. Maghrebi Jews continued to arrive in Haifa in the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly from Tetouan and the cities on the northern coast of Morocco. They were joined by Arabic-speaking Jews from Syria and Lebanon and Ladino-speaking migrants from Istanbul and Izmir.20 The other group of Arabic-speaking Jews that settled in Haifa during the nineteenth century were musta’arabin from the surrounding villages, including Kafr Yasif, Peki’in, and Shefaram.21
The dominance of Maghrebi Arabic-speaking Jews in Haifa was also evident at the level of local leadership. The leadership of the Jewish community in Haifa emerged from among the Maghrebi Jewish merchants and was headed by the textile merchant Yehuda Halevy. Halevy, who arrived in Haifa from Tetouan as a child in 1862, was educated in Tiberias. After returning to Haifa, he established the Council of the Sephardi Community and headed the body until the First World War.22 By virtue of his role as deputy to the chief rabbi and head of the Council of the Sephardi Community, Halevy served as the religious and political representative of the Jews of Haifa before the Ottoman authorities until the establishment in 1906 of a joint community committee representing the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews of the city.23
As in Jaffa, Jewish merchants of Maghrebi origin integrated in the urban middle class alongside their Christian and Muslim peers.24 As Michelle Campos noted in her study of Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche, the integration of Sephardi leaders in the local circle of notables was based in part on relations of trust and mutual respect.25 As will be elaborated later, this leadership tradition and model was also evident among the Sephardi intellectuals who formed a local leadership at the beginning of the Mandate period. Like Chelouche in Jaffa, Yehuda Halevy embodied this relationship in Haifa and was known among the Arab merchants of the city, who used to deposit their cash and jewelry with him, as “Abu Kalima” (the Man of His Word).26 On Halevy’s death in 1925, he was described by Haim Ben-Kiki, one of the leaders of the intellectual circle in Haifa, as “the historic personality of the Sephardi Jews of Haifa.”27 For Ben-Kiki, it was important to emphasize Halevy’s prominent public activity not only among the Jewish community, but also among the Arabs of Haifa. “The Arab natives of the Land (bnei ha’aretz) also admired and respected him very much,” Ben-Kiki wrote. He noted that the mufti of Haifa mentioned Halevy in one of his Friday sermons as a model of loyalty and good virtues.28
The Maghrebi community and Arabic-speaking Jews who lived in Harat al-Yahud, a shared space within the Muslim Quarter, were described in the newspaper Hapoel Hatzair as Arab Jews: “They refer to themselves as walad al-’arab … in many respects they may be closer to the local Arab inhabitants than to us.”29 The Arabic-speaking Jews in Haifa were compared not only to the Ashkenazim, but also to the hundreds of German, Greek, and Italian inhabitants of Haifa. Unlike the Europeans, “our Oriental brothers are still in a very poor condition and on the lowest step of development.” Hapoel Hatzair suggested that the reason for this was that the Maghrebi Jews “had lived among the semi-savage Arabs, and the cultural belongings they brought here were worthless.”30
The stance of Hapoel Hatzair in its orientalist description of Arabic-speaking Jews in Haifa, who were referred to in contemporary discourse as “natives of the land” and by their Muslim neighbors as “Arab Jews,” can be understood within the context of Labor Zionism’s criticism of cultural assimilation perceived as contrary to the Zionist cultural and national revival movement. The newspaper’s criticism distinguished between a Jewish–Arab cultural identity among Sephardi intellectuals who advocated for Arabic language study in the Yishuv and the existence of such an identity in everyday life. This distinction was also expressed in the description of the Jews of Tiberias as Arab Jews: “This assimilation of Jews among Arabs is not, in fact, cultural assimilation nor principled assimilation. It does not stem from a conscious recognition in the heart, but rather comes from a habit of many years.” The Sephardi Jews, the newspaper noted, came from the East and brought with them the Arabic language, “and slowly adopted all the customs and manners of the Arabs.”31
These orientalist descriptions reflected the character of Haifa in the early twentieth century as a mixed city in which Jews and Arabs lived in shared spaces such as Harat al-Yahud, but also in Ard al-Yahud (Jews’ Land). This latter neighborhood, which was also a space shared by Jews and Arabs, was founded in the early 1890s by Sephardi Jews from Harat al-Yahud as the first Jewish neighborhood outside the walled city.32 Beyond the Jewish–Arab cultural mix that shaped their everyday lived experience, members of the Sephardi intelligentsia also displayed a further level of hybrid Arab–Jewish identity, shaped in part by the AIU School in Haifa.
Jews and Arabs at the AIU School
In 1915, Narcisse Leven, the president of the AIU, described Haifa as a city blessed with excellent intercommunal relations between Jews, Muslims, and Christians, since “everyone speaks one language and they have similar customs and share similar beliefs.”33 This idyllic description was raised as part of the AIU explanation for the gap between the Christians, who found employment in Ottoman government position, and Jews, who did not know Ottoman–Turkish and accordingly were excluded from imperial workplaces.34 The importance attached to the acquisition of foreign languages, which was shared by Sephardi intellectuals in Jaffa and Jerusalem, such as David Yellin, was also evident in a request submitted to Moses Montefiore in 1875 by the representatives of the Jews of Haifa to help establish a modern school in the city where the students would learn French and Arabic.35 However, the AIU School in Haifa was actually established on the initiative of Avraham Leon, a native of Izmir, who came to the city as the Dutch vice-consul and who opened a school for boys in 1880. In 1881, after Leon requested support from the AIU Central Committee, Joseph Alphandary, a native of Istanbul, was appointed as the first principal of the school under the auspices of the Alliance.36
The school, which was part of an educational network of schools for boys and girls established by AIU in Palestine, began as two classes in a building in Harat al-Yahud.37 Under Alphandary, who remained principal of the school until 1886, the institution managed to secure the support of Chief Rabbi Raphael Avraham Kalfon.38 The support for the school from rabbis and community leaders, and the exemption from tuition fees provided for some students from poor families, were due in part to the desire to prevent Jewish families from sending their children to missionary schools.39 The support for the school also reflected the fact that it was the only Jewish school in Haifa, until the establishment of the Avtalya School in 1907 and the Reali School in 1913.40 The opening of Hebrew schools in Haifa and the demographic changes in the city were reflected in the development of the AIU School.41 In 1884, the AIU School was attended by 69 students. By the eve of the First World War, the school already had 200 students in six classes, and by the mid-1920s 320 students attended in eight classes. In 1936, when the school moved into new, spacious premises on Herzl Street in the Hadar HaCarmel neighborhood, it had 650 students, only a minority of whom were Sephardim.42
The curriculum of the AIU School included the study of languages such as Turkish, Arabic, and Hebrew alongside French, in addition to mathematics, science, geography, and history. The curriculum enhanced the school’s status, and Christian and Muslim students also registered for studies. Until 1914, around 20% of the school’s students were Christians and Muslims.43 Its staff also included Arab teachers who taught Arabic alongside Sephardi Jewish teachers.44 The relatively large number of non-Jewish students was due to the fact that most of the private missionary schools were situated in the west of Haifa, and only a handful of Muslim families sent their children to these institutions.45
The status of the AIU School in the educational system in Haifa strengthened following the establishment of a school for girls in the early nineties.46 Due in part to pressure from within the community, already in 1884, Alphandary’s wife, Fanny Goldzweig, opened a class in the boys’ school attended by 18 girls who studied French, Arabic, mathematics, and sewing.47 A common feature of the missionary schools and the AIU School was that the education of girls was linked to notions of domesticity, with an emphasis on crafts such as sewing and embroidery, as well as education to morals and hygiene.48 The girls’ school also sent a group of educated women to be trained as teachers and principals at the AIU’s seminary in Paris. One of these women was Virginie Nahon, the daughter of Yitzhak Nahon, one of the principals of the AIU School in Haifa. Virginie Nahon, who was married to Shlomo Bouzaglo, whose activities will be discussed later, served as principal of the girls’ school in Haifa. The biography of Virginie Nahon offers an example of an “Alliance family” committed to the AIU’s principles and ideology that moved from one part of the Ottoman Empire to another in the service of the organization. Another example of a woman who graduated from the AIU School in Haifa is Joya Simhon.49 After her marriage to Maurice Sidi, the couple both served as principals of the AIU Schools in Mosul, Iraq. The AIU Women’s School in Haifa also offers insight into national and ethnic aspects, particularly since the girls’ school was also attended by Arab students.50
A graduate of the AIU School in Haifa who illustrates its character as an arena for encounter between Jews and Arabs and a base for the emergence of Muslim and Christian intellectuals, as well as their Jewish peers, is the Christian–Arab Elia Zaka, the owner and editor of the Arabic newspaper Al-Nafir, which was launched in 1913 and published in Haifa. Mustafa Kabha notes that the newspaper adopted a sympathetic position toward Britain and the Zionist movement and that Zaka, who died in 1926, was born and raised in Haifa and educated at the Russian Seminary in Nazareth.51 However, Zaka also attended the AIU School in Haifa. As is apparent from an article Zaka published in the newspaper HaHerut in January 1913, in which he mentioned that his own newspaper had 160 subscribers who were Jewish natives of Palestine, he attached great importance to his studies at the school, which influenced his “love for the Hebrew people.”52 Determined to refute claims that his newspaper had adopted anti-Jewish or anti-Zionist positions, Zaka reminded the readers of HaHerut that “my first education was among Jews. I studied with Hebrew boys, played with them in my father’s home, and I always saw Jews.”53 Among his schoolmates, Zaka mentioned Yitzhak Nahon and Shlomo Bouzaglo.
The AIU School in Haifa not only offered an alternative to the missionary schools, but also presented an alternative and rival model to the Hebrew and national schools of the Yishuv. The tension between the perception of regeneration, modernization, and emancipation advocated by AIU and the national and cultural solution presented by Zionism was also apparent in Haifa. The conflict between the Hebrew and Zionist education system and the Ezra Association during the “Language War” that erupted in Haifa in 1913 also attracted attention to the AIU School as a further target for “language conquest.” Zionist circles sharply criticized the AIU education system, claiming that it was thwarting the Zionist revival among the Oriental Jews. Hapoel Hatzair, as noted before, described the graduates of the school as assimilated into French and Arab culture and as Arab Jews: “Like their brethren, they are completely Arab in their speech, customs, commerce, and everything.”54
The graduates of the AIU School reflected not only an alternative educational and cultural model to that of the Hebrew and national schools, but also a competing model for a cultural and public elite.55 Although this circle of Sephardi intellectuals was educated in an institution that promoted the ideology of French culture, they can nevertheless be described as modernists who maintained their interest in their local and original Arab culture. According to Rachel Elboim Dror, at the turn of the twentieth century, young people from the Jewish colonies (moshavot), students of the Hebrew schools in the cities, and figures from the Second Aliyah led the younger generation in the Yishuv and served as role models.56 However, the Sephardi intellectuals of Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa may also be considered a leadership group and focus of identification for young Sephardim in the Yishuv. The Sephardi intelligentsia in Jerusalem, such as David Avisar and Yehuda Burla, were graduates of the Teachers’ Seminary of the Ezra Society. As Yitzhak Bezalel has noted, this institution was one of the training grounds for the Sephardi intelligentsia, alongside the youth associations and the press.57 The Sephardi intelligentsia in Haifa were graduates of the AIU School and Teachers’ Seminary.
A Collective Biography of a Sephardi Intelligentsia
In January 1920, Nissim Malul described Haifa as the center of an anti-Zionist stream in which Orthodox Christians played a central role. Malul claimed that the newspaper Al-Karmil, published in Haifa and edited by Najib Nassar, was engaged in a struggle against Zionism and “spread its filth, the filth of hatred, among the residents of Haifa.”58 As part of the efforts to stem the anti-Zionist trend in Haifa, Malul met with the Lebanese-born Arab writer and poet Wadi’ Faris al-Bustani, in an attempt to establish a club in Haifa to promote rapprochement between Jews and Arabs. However, Malul’s most significant initiative concerning the city was his suggestion that “young Sephardim, and all those who can speak Arabic, can play an important role in creating mutual relations between Jews and Arabs.” Malul sought to follow the same course of action in Haifa that he had attempted in Jaffa, including the promotion of Arabic studies publication of an Arabic-language newspaper. “It is very easy to organize the educated youth in Haifa for this work,” he wrote, explaining that Arabic-speaking Jews “can engage in contact with citizens, even with longstanding anti-Zionists, and explain to them that we have their interests at heart and that their wellbeing is our wellbeing, too.”59
The young Arabic-speaking Sephardim in Haifa to whom Malul alluded were among the founders of several Sephardi organizations.60 These efforts began as early as 1914, with the founding of the Hagoel (Redemption) association by young Sephardim who sought “to raise the material condition of the Sephardim and to disseminate among them Hebrew speech.”61 In October 1918, after the British forces occupied Haifa, young Sephardim founded the Techiya (revival) association, which also sought to disseminate the idea of cultural and national revival among the Sephardim in Haifa.62 The Association of Sephardim was another group with a similar goal, established in Haifa in November 1919, as the local branch of a national organization founded in Jerusalem.63 The establishment of these organizations marked the entry into organized political and public activity of the circle of intellectuals that had emerged in Haifa in the twilight years of the Ottoman era. This cadre of intellectual leaders included several figures who shared a similar personal background that was manifested in their efforts to enhance the social, cultural, and political status of the community they sought to represent.
Yitzhak Nahon was born in 1873 in Tangiers, Morocco, and was one of the first students at the AIU School in Haifa. Unlike other principals, he was appointed to head the school in 1904, despite the fact that he had not undergone training at the AIU’s Teachers’ Seminary in Paris. In 1912, Nahon, who after his death was described as a “man of Haifa,” was appointed principal of the AIU School in Damascus.64 During Nahon’s stay in Damascus, and against the background of the criticism of the AIU’s attitude toward Zionism, Avraham Elmalih described Nahon as a native of the Land who believed that the study of Hebrew had a national importance. Elmalih also claimed that under Nahon’s leadership, the AIU School in Haifa had become the best institution in the Alliance’s educational network in the Ottoman Empire.65 During the First World War, Nahon served as principal of the AIU School in Tanta, Egypt. After returning to Haifa, he resumed his position at the AIU School in the city, where he remained until his retirement in 1936.66 During his time as principal of the school, Nahon represented the Sephardi community in various institutions and organizations and in contacts with the Ottoman authorities. The self-perception of the AIU principals and educators as public servants who represented the community in governmental institutions and worked in coordination with the leaders of the other local religious communities is also evident in the biography of Shlomo Bouzaglo.
Shlomo Bouzaglo was born in Haifa in 1885 to a family of Moroccan origin. After graduating from the AIU School, he attended the Alliance’s Teachers’ Seminary in Paris and worked as a teacher at the AIU Schools in Damascus and Aleppo. As part of his educational activities, he also taught Arabic and French before the First World War at the AIU School in Haifa and at Herzliya Gymnasium in Tel Aviv. During the First World War, Bouzaglo, who held British citizenship, served as principal of the Hebrew school in Cairo.67 On June 14, 1911, a confrontation between Bouzaglo and Najib Nassar, editor of the Al-Karmil newspaper, was widely reported in the Arabic and Hebrew press and became a formative event for the Sephardi intelligentsia circle in Haifa. Against the background of the conflict between the Greeks and Ottomans for control of the island of Crete, a demonstration was held in Haifa in support of the Ottoman Empire.68 During the event, Nassar made a speech in which he questioned the loyalty of the Jews toward the Ottoman Empire.69 Bouzaglo, who was known in Haifa for his speeches in Arabic on the importance of Zionism in promoting Arab–Jewish relations in the city, interrupted Nassar’s speech and urged him to come down “from this Ottoman platform! Come down, you who sow discord between the nations! We here in Turkey need unity!”70
The Bouzaglo–Nassar incident demonstrated Najib Nassar’s senior status in the Arab national public sphere in Haifa. The newspaper Al-Karmil, edited by Nassar, an Orthodox Christian born in Lebanon, extensively covered Zionist activities and expressed sharp criticism against Arab landowners, including those from the Muslim elite, who sold lands to the Zionist movement. The importance Nassar attributed to covering Zionist activities and ideology was expressed not only in his critical articles in Al-Karmil, but also in a book on the subject of Zionism he published in 1911. According to Mahmoud Yazbak, the incident that occurred in Haifa in June 1911 reflected not only this activity, but also the failure of Nassar’s efforts to provoke Arab public protests in Haifa against Zionism.71 Nassar’s public activity and anti-Zionist writings were described by Sephardi intellectuals, such as Nissim Malul, as encouraging antisemitic sentiments in Haifa. Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, whom will be discussed later, also described the June 1911 incident as one that “further highlighted antisemitism in our city in its full meaning.”72 The Bouzaglo–Nassar incident also highlighted Bouzaglo’s growing status among the Sephardi intelligentsia in Haifa. Bouzaglo’s reaction expressed his status as a local leader faithful to the perception of Ottoman imperial citizenship shared by Jews, Muslims, and Christians.73 This position was also manifested in his extensive public activities in the Sephardi and Jewish national institutions.
Bouzaglo, who spoke Hebrew, Arabic, French, and English, also illustrates the integration of many of the graduates of the AIU in processes of modernization and economic developments that shaped Haifa in the late Ottoman period.74 The graduates, teachers, and principals of the AIU School in the city joined a professional and community network connecting intellectuals and communities across the Ottoman Empire. Shlomo Bouzaglo’s brother Shimon, for example, was born in 1893, and like many graduates of the AIU School worked as a clerk at the Anglo-Palestine Company in Haifa, for the Nobel petroleum company in Beirut, and at branches of the Ottoman Bank in Cairo, Alexandria, Jaffa, and Haifa.75 Shlomo Bouzaglo also worked during the Mandate period as a clerk at the Ottoman Bank and the Dutch Bank in Haifa, as well as for the merchant Shmuel Yosef Pevzner. The integration of middle-class Sephardim in Haifa into the bourgeoisie (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) is beyond the scope of this article, but it is important to emphasize that Sephardi families such as Bouzaglo, Nahon, Ben-Shabbat, and Kalfon maintained a network of personal and financial contacts that reflected the emergence of a Sephardi middle class in the city.76 Shlomo Bouzaglo also served during the Mandate period as vice president of the Hebrew Chamber of Commerce in Haifa and was among the founders of the Prophet Elijah lodge of the Freemasons in Haifa, serving as its president.77 As Michelle Campos has explained, the Freemasons represented a circle that emerged among the middle-class and intellectual population that acquired a modern, progressive education at similar schools and worked in the liberal professions.78
One of the members of the Sephardi intelligentsia, who embodied the combination of teaching, journalism, and public activity, is Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, who was born in Safi, Morocco and raised in Ard al-Yahud. After graduating from the AIU School in Haifa, Ben-Shabbat studied at Saint Joseph University in Beirut. He went on to teach Hebrew and Arabic in Kfar Tavor and at the AIU and Ezra Schools in Haifa. During the Mandate period, he established and headed the Netzach Yisrael girls’ school in Haifa.79 Ben-Shabbat was one of the most prominent Sephardi activists in Haifa and was a member of the Techiya Club, the Association of Sephardim, and the Council of the Sephardi Community. As a journalist, Ben-Shabbat reported for HaHerut on events in Haifa and reviewed articles from the Arabic press.80
In his journalistic and public activities, Ben-Shabbat provides the strongest example among the intellectual circle in Haifa on this self-perception of being best placed to serve the Zionist movement. This is due to the ability to serve as mediators between Jews and Arabs, given their knowledge of Arabic and Arab culture. In the early 1920s, Ben-Shabbat wrote extensively about Jewish–Arab relations and presented a plan for rapprochement based on social and cultural themes.81 Another Sephardi intellectual who embodied this self-perception, which deserves more detailed attention in its own right, is Moshe Yittach, who was born in 1893 in Haifa to a family of Moroccan origin. After graduating from the AIU School in the city and from the Alliance Teachers’ Seminary in Paris, Yittach taught at the AIU Schools in Tunis and Iraq. He headed the Jewish Community Committee in Baghdad and in 1948 was appointed head of the Haifa office of the Ministry for Minorities.82
Shmuel Ben-Shabbat was one of the Arabic-speaking Jews referred to by Nissim Malul in his article in 1920 as one of the suitable candidates to defend Zionism in the Arabic press. In 1911, Ben-Shabbat supported the proposal by Malul and Shimon Moyal to publish a newspaper in Arabic.83 However, a year later, he changed his opinion and favored the publication of articles sympathetic to Zionism in the existing Arabic press.84 Ben-Shabbat regarded the aforementioned Arabic newspaper Al-Nafir as suited for this purpose, and for a short period, he and Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael edited the Hebrew edition of the newspaper.85 Following the eruption of the debate concerning the teaching of Arabic in Hebrew schools, and in response to claims that the founding of an organization of Arabic teachers was a step that encouraged assimilation into Arab culture, Ben-Shabbat supported those who emphasized the cultural and educational importance of Arabic studies—and particularly of lessons in spoken Arabic led by native-born teachers.86 Thus, Ben-Shabbat expressed a position that emphasized the importance of Arabic both for practical purposes relating to the shared life of Jews and Arabs and for the purpose of research, given that “these two languages, Hebrew and Arabic, are inseparable sisters.”87 Ben-Shabbat, who translated fables and proverbs from Arabic to Hebrew, including the fables of Ali ibn Abi Talib, can be associated with a line of Sephardi intellectuals.88 Their work of translating fables from Arabic to Hebrew was characterized by Amos Noy as an intellectual effort of cultural mediation.89
Other Arabic teachers who were active in public and political life include Eliahu Habuba and Eliahu Lulu (Carmeli). Habuba was born in Damascus in 1882 and taught Arabic at the Reali School in Haifa from 1917. He contributed to the emergence of the Reali School as one of the main centers of Arabic studies in the Yishuv and like the other figures mentioned, he was also one of the heads of various Sephardi organizations in Haifa.90 Eliahu Lulu was born in Haifa in 1891 to a family of Moroccan origin and followed the familiar path of studies at the AIU School in Haifa and at the Alliance’s Teachers’ Seminary. He taught Arabic in Menachemiya and served as secretary of the Association of Hebrew Teachers in the Lower Galilee before moving to Jerusalem, where he embarked on a political career in the Histadrut labor federation.91 As Shmuel Ben-Shabbat mentioned in his memoirs, Lulu alongside Eliahu Hatchwell was one of the most promising students of David Kalfon, the Hebrew teacher at the AIU School in Haifa.92
Eliahu Hatchwell was born in Haifa in 1890 to a family from Tetouan. After completing his training at the AIU’s Teachers’ Seminary, he worked as a teacher of Hebrew, Arabic, and French. He was later admitted to the bar and served as the prosecutor general in Jerusalem under the authority of the British Mandate attorney general.93 David De-Vries and Omri Perlman included Hatchwell in a cadre of professionals active during the Mandate period in the lower ranks of the elite of the Yishuv, but who did not reach leadership positions.94 Yitzhak Bezalel also mentioned that most of the members of the Sephardi intelligentsia did not serve in influential public or intellectual leadership positions.95 However, the Arabic-speaking Sephardi intelligentsia, who acted along the seamline between Arabic and Hebrew culture, exerted an influence on the local level. Their reaction to the relegation of Arabic-speaking Sephardi intelligentsia to the margins of the Yishuv, in contrast to their self-perception as a leadership elite trained to serve as cultural and public emissaries, was reflected in the struggle waged by the Association of Sephardim, under the leadership of Shlomo Bouzaglo against the Jewish Community Committee (Va’ad Hakehilah) in Haifa.
Teachers as Political Leaders
On December 13, 1922, the Association of Sephardim in Haifa announced that its representatives were withdrawing from the Jewish Community Committee in Haifa. The Association stated that the decision was due to the Committee’s discrimination against the rights of Sephardim, including appointments to positions and the allocation of budgets in the fields of education, culture, and religion. The wording of the announcement reflected a sense among some Committee members that the Sephardim were 'anti-Zionist' elements encouraging ethnic separatism. The announcement declared that, contrary to these claims, the Sephardi community in Haifa “has always been cooperative, reasonable, and moderate.” Moreover, the announcement sought to highlight the indigenous identity of the Sephardim as natives of the Land and their status during the closing years of the Ottoman era, when “the Sephardim were the vast majority in this city” and yet “never showed any tendency to separatism.”96
The announcement by the Association of Sephardim in Haifa, which was headed by Shlomo Bouzaglo, reflected the response among Sephardi intelligentsia to the changing status of the Sephardi leadership in the Yishuv. The Council of the Sephardi Community in Jerusalem was careful to preserve its power bases, but in Haifa the authorities and sources of power of the Sephardi community were transferred to the Jewish Community Committee.97 The dependence of the Sephardim on the Committee on matters relating to the allocation of education and culture budgets, including the funds needed for the operation of the Sephardi community’s religious schools and synagogues, exposed the loss of the power bases held by the community leadership during the latter years of Ottoman rule.98 The demands of the Association of Sephardim, which highlighted the Arabic-speaking character of the neighborhoods in which the Sephardi community of Haifa lived, included not only the appointment of more Sephardi representatives in the Jewish Community Committee, but also the appointment of an Arabic-speaking Sephardi chief rabbi in Haifa and the allocations of a monthly budget for Sephardi cultural activities.99
The Arab–Jewish environment in which the Sephardi intellectuals were active is also reflected in the decision of the Association of Sephardim to introduce separate meat slaughtering and to sell kosher meat through a Muslim butcher.100 This step shows that the Sephardim of Haifa were integrated in an Arab–Jewish environment in social terms, and not only culturally and linguistically. Bouzaglo portrayed the move as part of a class-based and social struggle to bring down meat prices.101 Bouzaglo’s class consciousness and his self-perception as a representative of the Arabic-speaking Jewish working class in Haifa were further expressed in his translation of the Internationale into Arabic.102 The level of support for the Association of Sephardim among the Jewish residents of Harat al-Yahud and Ard al-Yahud can be gauged from voting figures from the elections held in November 1923 to the executive committee of the Association of Sephardim, when 540 men and women chose their nine representatives on the committee.103 At the time the Jewish population of Haifa was 6,230, while the number of Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the city was estimated at 2,000.104
Bouzaglo perceived the struggle against the Jewish Community Committee in Haifa as one that had national ramifications. At the beginning of the Mandate period and throughout the 1920s, a struggle was led by the Sephardi leadership in Jaffa and Jerusalem regarding the electoral system for the Assembly of Representatives of the Yishuv and the issue of the Sephardi representation in the National Council of the Yishuv.105 In March 1923, Bouzaglo resigned from his position on the National Council and demanded that the Zionist Executive act to assist the absorption of Jewish migrants from Arab countries. Bouzaglo also exemplified the perception that the Sephardim were uniquely suited to promote rapprochement between Jews and Arabs, demanding that the Zionist Executive appoint Sephardi delegates to the Legislative Council the British sought to establish. In a lecture in the Manashiya neighborhood of Jaffa, Bouzaglo explained that the Sephardim were “thoroughly familiar with the conditions in the Land and close in their spirit to moderate nationalist aspirations”; they were the best placed “to forge unity among all the inhabitants of the Land of Israel.”106
In raising this demand, as emerged from his speech to a conference of the Association of Sephardim held at the Istambuliya Synagogue in Harat al-Yahud in June 1923, Bouzaglo was adopting the positions of Yaacov Franko as presented in an article he had published in Doar Hayom in May of the same year.107 In his article, Franko discussed the reasons for the emergence of the “Sephardi question,” referring to the exclusion of the Sephardim from positions in the National Institutions of the Yishuv and the Zionist movement. Franko, a native of Hebron and the son of the chief rabbi of the city, studied in Beirut and served there as a correspondent for the HaHerut newspaper. In the early 1920s, he moved to Jerusalem and worked as a clerk in the Ottoman postal service, before returning to Beirut.108 Franco argued that the Sephardim must change their response to the policies of the National Institutions: “No longer should tolerance dominate our Sephardi camp, and henceforth our actions should no longer be accompanied by moderation!” This position was adopted by Bouzaglo and by Haim Ben-Kiki, the secretary of the Association of Sephardim in Haifa.109
Ben-Kiki, who as noted before was born in Tiberias in 1887, shared Ben-Shabbat’s conviction that Sephardi and Oriental Jews should play the lead role in mediation efforts between Jews and Arabs and should guide the efforts of the Zionist movement to resolve the “Arab question.” Hillel Cohen and Yuval Evri discussed Ben-Kiki’s reservations concerning the Balfour Declaration, emphasizing that he favored a form of nationalism based on a local, indigenous identity and an ethos of a shared homeland for Jews and Arabs.110 The affinity Ben-Kiki drew between a political and ideological position and cultural identity was reflected in his activities as secretary of the Association of Sephardim in Haifa. He advocated the withdrawal of the Sephardim from the Jewish Community Committee and claimed that a contrast could be seen between Sephardi activism, as manifested in the independent ethnic frameworks, and the passivity shown by Sephardim in joint Sephardi–Ashkenazi settings. “We are the members of a single people,” Ben-Kiki emphasized, but “we are two communities, two ethnic groups, with distinct ways of life and spiritual tendencies, as is inevitable after centuries of exile.”111
The cultural essence of the Arabic-speaking Sephardi intelligentsia and of the Arabic-speaking Jewish cultural environment was also reflected in the fact that the gatherings of the Association of Sephardim were conducted in Arabic. A review of Bouzaglo’s speech from June 1923 in Haaretz drew an affinity between Jewish–Arab cultural identity and ethnic separatism from the institutions of the Zionist movement. The review described Bouzaglo as making remarks that were “wild in the extreme and harsh expressions against the Ashkenazim who pressurize and oppress the Sephardim.”112 Moreover, “all the speakers at the gathering in question, without exception, spoke in the language of the Sephardi masses—Arabic. Thus the harsh comments made at the gathering were presented in a fine Arabic.”113
The social and ethnic struggle led by the Association of Sephardim, headed by Bouzaglo and Ben-Kiki, highlighted the perception among the Sephardi intellectuals concerning the importance of Arabic as a cultural and social vehicle. This position reawakened the claims that had been raised in the latter years of the Ottoman era that the alleged lack of identification with the Zionist movement among Sephardi Jews, their assimilation in Arab culture, and their separate organization in ethnic frameworks were damaging the national unity of the Yishuv. Bouzaglo rejected this claim: “We regard criticism and suspicion of our nationalism, leveled constantly against us – even in instances that vividly testify to the contrary—as incorrect and untrue. Our purpose was and is to enhance the dignity of the Sephardi communities in the Land through full internal autonomy for each community.”114
In September 1921, in response to the claim by the Palestinian–Arab delegation in London that Sephardi Jews opposed the Zionist movement, the Association of Sephardim in Haifa issued a declaration signed by Bouzaglo stating: “We, the Sephardi Jews from Haifa and the Galilee, refute with disgust the false slander against us claiming that we support the demands of the Arab delegation and do not agree with the Zionist aspirations.”115 Against the background of doubts concerning the level of identification of the Sephardim with the Zionist movement, Bouzaglo manifested another common position among Sephardi intellectuals: the perceived existence of a Sephardi Zionism among the natives of the country that predated the Zionist movement. According to this view, the Sephardim were rooted in the country and the region even before the emergence of the Zionist movement. Without the Sephardim, Bouzaglo explained, “we would not be privileged to see our pioneers walking today on the streets in security and calm.”116 This perspective also included a position that advocated for practical Zionism over political Zionism and for an inclusive Zionism that aimed to promote cooperation and understanding between Jews and Arabs. In part, as noted earlier, it also advocated the idea of a shared Jewish–Arab homeland.
The Sephardi intelligentsia who dominated the Association of Sephardim in Haifa were unanimous in the call to change the condition and status of the Sephardi public they sought to represent. However, as the struggle by the Association intensified and Bouzaglo asked the British district governor to declare that the Association was the representative of the Sephardi community in Haifa, an internal debate developed within the circle of the Sephardi intelligentsia in Haifa.117 The “Extremists,” as the group headed by Bouzaglo came to be known in the discourse of the time, were opposed by a group of “Moderates” headed by Shmuel Ben-Shabbat and Avraham Kalfon, who during the Mandate was the president of the Council of the Sephardi Community and secretary of Haifa Municipality. This group withdrew from the Association of Sephardim and joined the Haifa branch of the Association of Pioneers of the East (Histadrut Halutzei Hamizrah).118 This group was supported by intellectuals from Jerusalem and Jaffa, particularly David Avisar, a leader of the Jerusalem branch of the Association of Pioneers of the East. It was also supported by the Sephardi leadership in Haifa under Yitzhak Nahon and Yehuda Halevy.119
The Moderates argued that the struggle for Sephardi rights should be waged from inside the Jewish Community Committee and not from the outside. The activities of the Sephardi intelligentsia during this period were also influenced by additional disagreements that cannot be discussed here in detail concerning the organization of the Sephardim in separate ethnic frameworks or within the existing political bodies.120 In November 1923, following protracted public pressure, a compromise was adopted that was acceptable to the Association of Sephardim and to the Association of Pioneers of the East in Haifa. The proposal, presented by the National Council, ensured that eight Sephardi representatives would be appointed to the Jewish Community Committee and that a Sephardi chief rabbi would serve in Haifa with equal rights to those of his Ashkenazi counterpart. In recognition of the combination of cultural and educational work with public activities that was typical of the Sephardi intelligentsia, the compromise also required that one-third of the culture budget of the Jewish Community Committee would be devoted to the cultural needs of the Sephardim. In the elections to the Jewish Community Committee in Haifa, held on November 25, 1923, the Association of Pioneers of the East and the Association of Sephardim thus competed in a joint list.121
Conclusion
The struggle by the Association of Sephardim against the Jewish Community Committee in Haifa highlighted the character of the circle of Sephardi intelligentsia that emerged in the city in the latter years of the Ottoman era and the manner in which this circle experienced the transition from Ottoman imperial rule to the British Mandate government. The members of this circle were raised among Arabic-speaking Jews, almost all of whom (with the exception of Eliahu Habuba) had migrated to Haifa from Morocco and settled in the shared Jewish–Arab domain in the east of the city. The members of this circle attended the AIU School in Haifa, which also served as an arena for cultural and social encounters between Jews and Arabs. They were sent as outstanding students for training at the Alliance’s Teachers’ Seminary and served in its network as teachers and principals. The emergence and consolidation of this group along the hybrid cultural Arab–Jewish identities were manifested in their work as educators, journalists, and Arabic teachers who believed in the importance of the study of Arabic language and culture—not only in educational and cultural terms, but in practical and social contexts. A further characteristic of this circle, whose members maintained mutual contact as they integrated in the urban middle class in Haifa, was the public activity of its members as representatives and emissaries of the community in various Sephardi organizations.
On March 21, 1941, the funeral procession of Shlomo Bouzaglo set out from his house in Talpiot Market. Those who came to honor Bouzaglo included members of the Prophet Elijah lodge of the Freemasons, representatives of the Council of the Sephardi Community of Haifa, and members of the board of the AIU School.122 These mourners represented the spheres of identity in which the Sephardi intelligentsia circle in the city was raised—a circle that found itself relegated to the margins of the Yishuv on the national level, not before waging a struggle to defend its status on the local level. The reverberations of this struggle by an elite that was educated and served as representatives of its community could be felt in Haifa in the late 1920s and 1930s. Indeed, even the protest that erupted in the city in the summer of 1959, despite the different historical context, seems to convey an echo of a historical memory that extended from the struggle by the Arabic-speaking Sephardi intelligentsia of Moroccan origin in Harat al-Yahud and the protest of Moroccan migrants in Wadi Salib.
Notes
I would like to thank my research assistants Barbara Elbaz, Stephanie Colley and Nadav Ganon for their valuable contribution for this research. This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation [Grant number 808/22].
Israel Ben-Zeev, “In Memory of the Absent: The Journalist and Public Figure Dr. Nissim Malul,” Les Cahiers de l’AIU 7–12 (1959): 146 (Hebrew). For further details about Israel Ben-Zeev, see: Aviv Derri, “The Construction of ‘Native’ Jews in Late Mandate Palestine: An Ongoing Nahda as a Political Project,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 53, no. 2 (2021): 253–71.
See for example: Michelle Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); Hillel Cohen, Enemies, A Love Story: Mizrahi Jews, Palestinian Arabs and Ashkenazi Jews from the Rise of Zionism to Present, Ivrit, 2022 (Hebrew); Abigail Jacobson, From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem between Ottoman and British Rule (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2011); Jonathan Marc Gribetz, Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014); Louis Fishman, Jews and Palestinians in the Late Ottoman Era, 1908–1914: Claiming the Homeland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019).
See, for example: Alex Carmel, The History of Haifa under Turkish Rule (Haifa: Pardes Publishing, 2002); Mahmoud Yazbak, Haifa in the Late Ottoman Period, 1864–1914: A Muslim Town in Transition (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1998); On this issue, see: Moshe Naor, “The Sephardi and Oriental Jews of Haifa and Arab-Jewish Relations in Mandate Palestine,” Middle Eastern Studies 55, no. 6 (2019): 1020–36.
Lital Levy, “Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the Mashriq,” Jewish Quarterly Review 98, no. 4 (2008): 458.
Menachem Klein, Lives in Common: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron (London: Oxford University Press, 2014), 19–20.
Aron Rodrigue, Images of Sephardic and Eastern Jewries in Transition: The Teachers of the Alliance Israelite Universelle 1860–1939 (Seattle: Washington University Press, 1993), 1–5.
Julia Philips Cohen and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Sephardi Lives: A Documentary History, 1700–1950 (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 9, 12.
On teachers and political-public activities, see for example: Yaeir Seltenreich, People from Here: Education and Educators in Galilee Moshavot during the Yishuv Period, 1882–1939 (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2014) (Hebrew); Hilary Falb Kalisman. Teachers as State-Builders: Education and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022); Yoni Furas, Educating Palestine: Teaching and Learning History under the Mandate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020); Yonatan Mendel, Latin of the Middle East: Arabic Teaching in the Jewish Community from Fin de Siècle to 1948 (Tel Aviv: Van Leer Institute Press, 2022) (Hebrew).
Derri, “The Construction of ‘Native’ Jews,” 5. For more on this issue, see: Moshe Behar and Zvi Ben-Dor Benite (eds.), Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writing on Identity, Politics and Culture, 1893–1958 (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2013); Lital Levy, “The Nahḍ a and the Haskala: A Comparative Reading of ‘Revival’ and ‘Reform,’” Middle Eastern Literatures 16, no. 3 (2013): 300–16.
See: Deborah Bernstein and Talia Pfefferman, “From Haifa to Berlin: The Jewish Bourgeoisie in Palestine in the Early 20th Century from a Gender Perspective,” Iyunim 33 (2020): 150–84 (Hebrew).
See for example: Aviv Derri, “Bankers into Bureaucrats: Ottoman Non-Muslim Elites in Syria/Palestine after the Imperial Bankruptcy,” Jama’a 25 (2020): 91–110 (Hebrew); Johann Bussow, Hamidian Palestine Politics and Society in the District of Jerusalem 1872–1908 (Boston: Brill, Leiden, 2011), 7–9.
On this issue, see: Cyrus Schayegh, The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018), 1. See also: Heather Sharkey, A History of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
See also the use of this term by Amos Noy in his book on the Jewish intelligentsia in Jerusalem. Amos Noy, Experts or Witnesses: Jewish Intelligentsia from Jerusalem and the Levant in the Beginning of the 20th Century (Tel-Aviv: Resling, 2017) (Hebrew).
For a discussion of the concept of “intelligentsia” in the East European Jewish context, see: Alex Waldman, Problems of Discipline: Secondary Education, Activism and the Origins of the Jewish Intelligentsia in the Russian Empire (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 2023), 7–8 (Hebrew).
Some of the intellectuals discussed in this article, particularly Shamuel Ben-Shabbat and Shlomo Bouzaglo, also published in Arabic. However, their Arabic publications were not preserved or collected, with the exception of a few texts found by the author in the Gnazim archive in Tel Aviv.
Ezrach, “Letters from Haifa,” Haaretz, June 7, 1910. On the Moroccan Jewish languages: Judeo-Berber, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Spanish (hakita), see: Joseph Chetrit, “Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Spanish in Morocco and their Sociolinguistic Interaction,” in Readings in the Sociology of Jewish Languages, ed. Joshua Fishman (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), 261–79.
Avraham Elmalih, “The Jews of North Africa and the Land of Israel,” Hed Hamizrah, December 21, 1942.
Elmalih, “The Jews of North Africa and the Land of Israel.”
Rina Eyal (ed.), Shmuel Ben-Shabbat: Turn Your Face (Debbi: Ofakim Publishing, 2014), 148 (Hebrew).
Moshe David Gaon, Oriental Jews in Eretz-Israel (Jerusalem: Self-Publishing, 1928–1938), 224 (Hebrew).
Eyal, Ben-Shabbat, 346.
Gaon, Oriental Jews in Eretz-Israel, 224.
Anat Kidron, Between Nationality and Locality: The Jewish Community in Haifa during the British Mandate (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2012), 24–25 (Hebrew).
Yuval Ben-Bassat, “Reconsidering the Role of a Maghrebi Family in the Yishuv in late Ottoman Palestine: The Case of the Moyal Family,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 19, no. 4 (2020): 490–508.
Michelle Campos, “Remembering Jewish-Arab Contact and Conflict,” in Reapproaching Borders: New Perspectives on the Study of Israel-Palestine, ed. Sandy Sufian and Mark LeVine (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 41–65.
Haim Emanuel Kalfon, Review of the Sephardi Jewish Community in Haifa, 16 December 1987, Archive of the Council of the Sephardi Community of Haifa, preserved in Haifa Municipal Archive (hereinafter: HMA, CSC Files).
Haim Ben-Kiki, Doar Hayom, December 11, 1925.
“Musa Levy is No More,” Al Hamishmar, April 2, 1965.
Ezrach, “Letters from Haifa,” Hapoel Hatzair, September 4, 1910.
“Haifa,” Hapoel Hatzair, December 20, 1907.
Letter from Tiberias, Hapoel Hatzair, March 13, 1913.
For more on these two neighborhoods, see: Abigail Jacobson and Moshe Naor, Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine (Waltham, Massachusetts: Brandeis University Press, 2016).
Narcisse Leven, Fifty Years of History, Vol. II, translated from French: Avraham Elmaliach (Jerusalem, 1922), p. 124 (Hebrew).
Leven, Fifty Years of History; Hatzvi, October 9, 1891.
See: Mostafa Hussein, “Intertwined Landscape: The Integration of Arabo-Islamic Culture in Pre-state Palestine,” Israel Studies Review 33, no. 2 (2018): 51–65; Zeev Vilnai, Haifa in the Past and Present (Tel Aviv, 1936), 71.
Leven, Fifty Years, 125; Gaon, Oriental Jews, 225; Yaakov Adler, “Haifa,” Havatzelet, November 21, 1884.
Information about the AIU School, October 15, 1961, Haifa Municipal Archive (hereafter HMA 8/42; Kalfon, “My City,” 59; Eyal, Ben-Shabbat, 148.
From Alphandary to the AIU Central Committee, 24 April 1882, September 3, 1883, AIU Archives: FR.AIU.AH.ISR.B-221.
From Meir Angel, the AIU principle in Haifa to the AIU Central Committee, April 6, 1886, AIU Archives: FR.AIU.AH.ISR.A-223. On Jewish students in missionary schools, see: Liora Halperin, “The Battle over Jewish Students in the Christian Missionary Schools of Mandate Palestine,” Middle Eastern Studies 50, no. 5 (2014): 737–54.
Following the struggle over Hebrew language instruction at the Technion, dozens of students and teachers left Ezra, which had incorporated the Avtalya school, and established the Reali School.
From Alphandary to the AIU Central Committee, June 2,1882, AIU Archives: FR.AIU.AH.ISR.B-221.
Information about the AIU School, October 15, 1961, HMA 8/42.
Leven, Fifty Years, 125; Kalfon, “My City,” 59; Shlomo Goldman, “On the Condition of the City of Haifa,” Havatzelet, May 7, 1885.
Leven, Fifty Years, 125; Kalfon, “My City,” 59.
Carmel, History of Haifa, 174; Johnny Mansour, “The Arabs in Haifa,” in Tea on the Casino’s Balcony: Coexistence in Haifa during the British Mandate, ed. Daphna Sharfman and Eli Nachmias (Haifa: Mishpaton Publishing, 2006), 251–9 (Hebrew).
According to Leven, the school was opened in 1891. Fifty Years, 125. Rodrigue indicates that it was in 1895: Rodrigue, Images, 17.
From Alphandary to the AIU Central Committee, March 5, 1884, AIU Archives: FR.AIU.AH.ISR.B-221.
Jonathan Sciarcon, Educational Oases in the Desert: The Alliance Israélite Universelle’s Girls’ Schools in Ottoman Iraq, 1895–1915 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2017), xxii.
Sylvie Fogiel-Bijaoui, “A Path to Emancipation: The Alliance Israélite Universelle and Jewish Women in Palestine (1872–1939),” Archives Juives 46, no. 1 (2013): 107–19.
Moshe Rabi, “On the Character of Yitzhak Nahon,” Hed Hamizrah, February 16, 1951; “The Institutions of Hebrew Haifa,” Doar Hayom, November 3, 1919.
Mustafa Kabha, Journalism in the Eye of the Storm: The Palestinian Press Shapes Public Opinion 1929–1939 (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2004), 24–25 (Hebrew).
Elia Zaka, “A Letter to the Hebrew Readers,” HaHerut, January 5, 1913.
Zaka, “A Letter to the Hebrew Readers.”
Ezrach, “Letters from Haifa,” Hapoel Hatzair, September 4, 1910.
Yaron Tsur, “Modern Identities of Jews in Muslim Lands: The Arab-Jewish Option,” Pe’amim 125–7 (Autumn 2010—Spring 2011): 49 (Hebrew).
Rachel Elboim Dror, Hebrew Education in Eretz Israel (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1990), pp. 311–15 (Hebrew).
Bezalel, You Were Born, 163–5.
Nissim Malul, “The Jews and the Arabs,” Ha’ivri, January 16, 1920.
Malul, “The Jews and the Arabs.”
Avraham Elmalih, “Our Role in the Revival Movement,” Doar Hayom, August 15, 1919.
Haifa, HaHerut, February 8, 1914.
From the Revival association to the city council, November 11, 1918, HMA: 207/5.
Report on the Activities of the Association of Sephardim, November 1922 to May 1923, HMA: 209/15.
Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, “The Man of Haifa,” Hamizrah, September 29, 1942; Moshe Rabi, “On the Character of Yitzhak Nahon,” Hed Hamizrah, February 16, 1951.
Avraham Elmalih, “Letters from Damascus,” HaHerut, December 3, 1912.
Eyal, Ben-Shabbat, “The Man;” Rabi, “Character.”
Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, “In Memory of Shlomo Bouzaglo,” Haaretz, April 20, 1941.
Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, “The Bouzaglo and Nassar Incident,” HaHerut, June 30, 1911.
Ben-Shabbat, “The Bouzaglo and Nassar Incident.”
Yosef Ben David Maman, “The First Explosion,” HaHerut, June 23, 1911; Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, “Another Antisemitic Incident in Haifa,” HaHerut, June 19, 1911.
Mahmoud Yazbak, Haifa in the Nineteenth Century: The History and Society of the City (Haifa, 1998), 180 (Hebrew).
Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, “Antisemitic Incident.”
On this concept, see: Campos, Ottoman Brothers.
Schayegh, Middle East, 1.
David Tidhar, Encyclopedia of the Founders and Builders of Israel, Vol. 5, p. 2260, https://www.tidhar.tourolib.org/tidhar/view/2/896.
On this issue, see: Bernstein and Pfefferman, “From Haifa to Berlin.”
Tidhar, Encyclopedia, Vol. 5, p. 2260.
Michelle Campos, “Freemasonry in Ottoman Palestine,” Jerusalem Quarterly 22, no. 23 (2005): 37–38.
Shmuel Eyal, “Ben-Shabbat at 50,” Haboker, November 22, 1938.
Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, “We and Our Foes,” HaHerut, May 10, 1912.
“The Arab-Hebrew Question in the Land of Israel,” Doar Hayom, October 21, 1932; Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, “A Question and Its Solution,” Doar Hayom, August 14, 1921.
Tidhar, Encyclopedia, Vol. 5, 2618.
Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, “The Time Has Come,” HaHerut, March 24, 1911. For more about the debate concerning the publication of an Arabic-language newspaper, see: Bezalel, You Were Born, 377; Tidhar, Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, p. 1424.
Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, “On Our Status in the Land,” HaHerut, July 3, 1912.
Bezalel, You Were Born, 377; Tidhar, Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, p. 1424.
On this debate, see, for example: Bezalel, You Were Born, 386–8; Yuval Evri, The Return to Al-Andalus: Disputes Over Sephardic Culture and Identity Between Arabic and Hebrew (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2020). (Hebrew), 186–93; Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, “Hebrew and Arabic,” Haaretz, December 6, 1927.
Ben-Shabbat “Hebrew and Arabic.”
Gnazim archive, 20–354.
Noy, Experts or Witnesses, 25, 26, 29, 82, 84.
Moshe Rabi, “Congratulations to Eliahu Habuba,” Les Cahiers de l’AIU, August 5, 1964. See also: Mendel, Latin of the Middle East, 39.
Yair Seltenreich, People from Here: Education and Educators in Galilee Moshavot During the Yishuv Period 1939–1882 (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2014), 348 (Hebrew).
Eyal, Ben-Shabbat, 353.
“The Sephardi Public in Tel Aviv,” Hed Hamizrah, July 31, 1941.
David De-Vries and Omri Perlman, “Sweet and Power in Palestine: A Micro-History of Rape Allegation in World War II,” Law, Society and Culture 26 (2022): 566 (Hebrew).
Bezalel, You Were Born, 163.
“To the Hebrew Public in Haifa!” Doar Hayom, December 13, 1922.
Report on the Activities of the Jewish Community Committee, January–March 1919, HMA: 208/3.
Kidron, Nationality and Locality, 181–4.
Demand of the Association of Sephardim in Haifa, HMA: 209/14; Committee to Clarify the Disputes in Haifa, February 6, 1923, HMA: 209/15; The Association of Sephardim in Haifa, Report on Activities for November 1922 to May 1923, HMA: 209/15.
From the National Council, Mediation Committee, March 22, 1923, HMA: 209/15.
Association of Sephardim in Haifa, Report on Activities, HMA: 209/15.
Gnazim archive, 20–98923.
“On behalf of the Association of Sephardim,” Doar Hayom, November 13, 1923.
Aaron Gertz, ed., Statistical Handbook of Jewish Palestine 1947 (Jerusalem: Department of Statistics, Jewish Agency for Palestine, 1947), 48; From Haim Ben-Kiki, Secretary of the Association of Sephardim in Haifa, “Letter to the Editors,” Haaretz, December 21, 1922.
For more on this issue, see: Abraham Haim, Particularity and Integration: The Sephardi Leadership in Jerusalem under British Rule (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2000), 69–74 (Hebrew).
“The Sephardim Demand,” Doar Hayom, March 26, 1923.
Yaacov Franko, “We the Frankos,” Doar Hayom, May 13, 1923. For further discussion about Franko’s article, see: Evri, Return, 229–31.
Guy Bracha, “Al-’Alam al-Isra’ili:” The Place of the Journal in the Jewish and Arabic Press in the Middle East on the Background of the Changes in the Syrian and Lebanese Jewish Communities 1921–1948, PhD dissertation, Bar-Ilan University, 2012.
Franko, “We the Frankos.”
Hillel Cohen and Yuval Evri, “A Shared Homeland or a Jewish National Home: Sephardi Natives of the Land, the Balfour Declaration, and the Arab Question,” Theory and Criticism 49 (2017): 291–304 (Hebrew).
Haim Ben-Kiki, “The Sephardi Community in Haifa,” Doar Hayom, March 2, 1920.
“Letters from Haifa,” Haaretz, June 10, 1923.
“Letters from Haifa.”
Committee of the Association of Sephardim in Haifa, Review and Report on Activities for November 1922 to May 1923, HMA: 209/15.
“Unity of the Jews,” Doar Hayom, September 7, 1921; “The Sephardi Jews of Haifa,” Filistin, September 17, 1921 (Arabic). More on this issue, see: Jacobson and Naor, Oriental Neighbors.
Ben-David, “In the Association of Sephardim in Haifa,” Doar Hayom, January 3, 1923.
Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, “The Hebrew Community in Haifa,” Haaretz, July 11, 1923.
“Letters from Haifa,” Haaretz, August 23, 1923.
Shmuel Ben-Shabbat, “Hebrew Community.”
On this issue, see: Hanna Herzog, Political Ethnicity – The Image and Reality (Ramar Gan: Yad Tabenkin, 1986) (Hebrew); Jacobson and Naor, Oriental Neighbors; Evri, Return.
“The Dispute in the Haifa Community,” Haaretz, November 5, 1923.
“In Haifa,” Haaretz, March 23, 1941.
