An article earlier this month (October 9) in the Beirut-based Daily Star purports to describe a high-level of integration into Arab society achieved by the Jews of Arab lands, prior to the advent of the Zionists. By describing fascinating instances and examples of Jewish integration into Arabic society, the author, Mazen Wehbe, attempts to demonstrate his claim that there existed “a degree of cultural integration that could have lasted until the present had it not been for militant Zionism, which sought to remove Jewish Arabs from their natural setting and create a new kind of Israeli Jew.”
Wehbe’s first stop is, appropriately enough, Lebanon, where he quotes from a speech made in 1870 during a ceremony of some kind at the since-defunct Jewish School of Beirut. According to the article, Jewish or Christian businessman and lawyer Antoun Shehayber addressed the school’s director as “Syrian, Arab and Jewish” and himself and his contemporaries as “we, the Syrian Arabs... Arab in appearance, and our costume is Syrian, we still strive to attain the highest degree of science and progress.” Wehbe comments, “In today’s world, the adjectives ‘Syrian, Arab and Jewish’ would probably be met with disbelief if they were used to describe a rabbi who headed a Jewish school in Beirut.”
During the same period, according to the Daily Star article, Shehayber and a man named Kuhin (Cohen) “set up a Jewish-Arab theater.... People from all sects came to the often-packed theater to watch Arabic adaptations of Moliere, as well as original plays performed in Hebrew, and sometimes French and Turkish. In many ways, the Beirut Jewish-Arab Theater was a response to the classic misrepresentation of the Jew in European theater.... It was not uncommon for a Jewish actor on the stage of the Beirut Jewish theater to quote Koranic expressions and Arabic poems, and mix French with Hebrew.”
Wehbe notes his source: “The information above was taken from a single article written by P.C. Sadgrove and published in 1992 in the Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Sadgrove said the plays are now in the possession of the Abulafia family in Israel. The plays interested Sadgrove because to him they were an affirmation that, at the height of the Arab renaissance, Arab Jews were committed to ‘broader cultural, social and political values of parallel Arab and Syrian identities.’”
The article goes on to note the “cultural participation” of Jews in Arab societies elsewhere, as well: “Around the same time in Egypt, Yaaqoub Sannouh, an Egyptian Jew who was also a member of Jamaleddine al-Afghani’s Islamic nationalist circle, was calling himself the ‘Egyptian Moliere’. His plays were aimed at a general Egyptian audience, and he played a prominent role in the development of the Egyptian dramatic tradition. In fact, Egyptian Jews are acknowledged to have played important roles in Egyptian culture, specifically theater, cinema, music, the printing industry and the Arabic press. It is well known that Um Kulthoum [one of the most famous contemporary Arab singers - A7 ed.] in Egypt never performed without Daoud Hosni, an Egyptian musician who was Jewish.” And, according to Wehbe, “until 1948, we could still find outspoken authors like Murad Faraj in Egypt advocating Egyptian nationhood based on equality and fraternity....”
In Iraq, too, according to Wehbe, “we find a multitude of different Jewish authors making similarly important contributions.... Murad Mikhael in Iraq writing patriotic stories entitled He Died for his Country, and She Died for Love.”
One vehicle for this integration, according to Wehbe, was the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools, established in Paris in 1860. The article goes on claim that “The Alliance’s effect on Arab Jews was seen and denounced by Zionists, who abhorred Jewish integration into Arab society and accused the Westernized Jewish schools in the Levant of weakening the racial awareness of Middle Eastern Jews. Yehuda Nini from the Institute of Contemporary Jewry in Jerusalem said the Alliance schools ‘paved the way for a gradual alienation from Jewish tradition and Jewish nationalism, and for the perception of Western lands, rather than the land of Israel, as destinations for migration.’”
In his article, Wehbe portrays the Zionist view as follows: “Many Zionist authors argued the Jewish Arabs were only superficially ‘Arabized’. Zionist writers like Itamar Levin and Norman Stillman generally minimized the role Jews played in Islamic civilization and Arab culture.”
On the one hand, the author writes that the Zionists opposed the Westernized Alliance schools, but also the Levantine integration of Jews in Arab lands.
Wehbe concludes: “But the spirit of the Levant gave the Jews a voice. After all, it was in Beirut, not in the Yishuv (Palestinian Jewry), and certainly not in Europe, that a biblical play called The Sacrifice of Isaac was performed in the 19th century. One night in 1883, the characters of Abraham, his wife Sara, and Hagar, the bondmaid, stood together on stage with his son Isaac, ancestor of the Jews, and Ismail, ancestor of the Arabs.”
Wehbe’s first stop is, appropriately enough, Lebanon, where he quotes from a speech made in 1870 during a ceremony of some kind at the since-defunct Jewish School of Beirut. According to the article, Jewish or Christian businessman and lawyer Antoun Shehayber addressed the school’s director as “Syrian, Arab and Jewish” and himself and his contemporaries as “we, the Syrian Arabs... Arab in appearance, and our costume is Syrian, we still strive to attain the highest degree of science and progress.” Wehbe comments, “In today’s world, the adjectives ‘Syrian, Arab and Jewish’ would probably be met with disbelief if they were used to describe a rabbi who headed a Jewish school in Beirut.”
During the same period, according to the Daily Star article, Shehayber and a man named Kuhin (Cohen) “set up a Jewish-Arab theater.... People from all sects came to the often-packed theater to watch Arabic adaptations of Moliere, as well as original plays performed in Hebrew, and sometimes French and Turkish. In many ways, the Beirut Jewish-Arab Theater was a response to the classic misrepresentation of the Jew in European theater.... It was not uncommon for a Jewish actor on the stage of the Beirut Jewish theater to quote Koranic expressions and Arabic poems, and mix French with Hebrew.”
Wehbe notes his source: “The information above was taken from a single article written by P.C. Sadgrove and published in 1992 in the Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Sadgrove said the plays are now in the possession of the Abulafia family in Israel. The plays interested Sadgrove because to him they were an affirmation that, at the height of the Arab renaissance, Arab Jews were committed to ‘broader cultural, social and political values of parallel Arab and Syrian identities.’”
The article goes on to note the “cultural participation” of Jews in Arab societies elsewhere, as well: “Around the same time in Egypt, Yaaqoub Sannouh, an Egyptian Jew who was also a member of Jamaleddine al-Afghani’s Islamic nationalist circle, was calling himself the ‘Egyptian Moliere’. His plays were aimed at a general Egyptian audience, and he played a prominent role in the development of the Egyptian dramatic tradition. In fact, Egyptian Jews are acknowledged to have played important roles in Egyptian culture, specifically theater, cinema, music, the printing industry and the Arabic press. It is well known that Um Kulthoum [one of the most famous contemporary Arab singers - A7 ed.] in Egypt never performed without Daoud Hosni, an Egyptian musician who was Jewish.” And, according to Wehbe, “until 1948, we could still find outspoken authors like Murad Faraj in Egypt advocating Egyptian nationhood based on equality and fraternity....”
In Iraq, too, according to Wehbe, “we find a multitude of different Jewish authors making similarly important contributions.... Murad Mikhael in Iraq writing patriotic stories entitled He Died for his Country, and She Died for Love.”
One vehicle for this integration, according to Wehbe, was the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools, established in Paris in 1860. The article goes on claim that “The Alliance’s effect on Arab Jews was seen and denounced by Zionists, who abhorred Jewish integration into Arab society and accused the Westernized Jewish schools in the Levant of weakening the racial awareness of Middle Eastern Jews. Yehuda Nini from the Institute of Contemporary Jewry in Jerusalem said the Alliance schools ‘paved the way for a gradual alienation from Jewish tradition and Jewish nationalism, and for the perception of Western lands, rather than the land of Israel, as destinations for migration.’”
In his article, Wehbe portrays the Zionist view as follows: “Many Zionist authors argued the Jewish Arabs were only superficially ‘Arabized’. Zionist writers like Itamar Levin and Norman Stillman generally minimized the role Jews played in Islamic civilization and Arab culture.”
On the one hand, the author writes that the Zionists opposed the Westernized Alliance schools, but also the Levantine integration of Jews in Arab lands.
Wehbe concludes: “But the spirit of the Levant gave the Jews a voice. After all, it was in Beirut, not in the Yishuv (Palestinian Jewry), and certainly not in Europe, that a biblical play called The Sacrifice of Isaac was performed in the 19th century. One night in 1883, the characters of Abraham, his wife Sara, and Hagar, the bondmaid, stood together on stage with his son Isaac, ancestor of the Jews, and Ismail, ancestor of the Arabs.”