Journal about Jews Spotlights Antisemitism

Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism and long-time Emory University professor — although herself from an Ashkenazi background – has introduced the inaugural issue of “Distinctions: A Sephardi and Mizrahi Journal,” published by JIMENA, which stands for Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa.

“When many people think of antisemitism, they tend to think of the six million Jews murdered across Europe by the Nazis and their collaborators, a genocide that took the lives of one third of the Jewish people,” wrote Lipstadt. “Sadly, many people don’t think of the struggles that Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews have faced in their homelands throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Iran. Though they often lived in harmony with their non-Jewish neighbors, there were far too many moments of discrimination and persecution. Far too many people fail to recall that one million Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews were displaced from their ancestral lands in the past century.”

She noted that “thanks to groups like JIMENA, this strategy acknowledges the stories of exclusion, expulsion and persecution experienced by Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, and helps us learn from them so that we can more effectively call out and combat antisemitism in the present day.”

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Ty Alhadeff, JIMENA director of education as well as director of JIMENA’s Sephardic Leadership Institute, who lives in Seattle, said that Lipstadt’s first teaching position was at the University of Washington. But it is her position with the U.S. government to combat antisemitism that prompted his organization to enlist her for its inaugural issue.

“I hope that this first issue, focusing on the experiences of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews with the various faces of antisemitism, will resonate particularly with the Sephardic community in Atlanta,” said Ty Alhadeff, JIMENA director of education.

“I hope that this first issue, focusing on the experiences of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews with the various faces of antisemitism, will resonate particularly with the Sephardic community in Atlanta, whose families, like my family and that of our editor-in-chief, Stuart Eskenazi, came to the U.S. from the Island of Rhodes, then part of the Ottoman Empire, in the first decade of the 20th century, and established synagogues such as my own Congregation Ezra Bessaroth in Seattle and that of our sister kehila, Or VeShalom, in Atlanta,” said Alhadeff.

He pointed out that “at the same time our communities were growing, those of our families who stayed on the Island of Rhodes experienced the rise of Italian fascism and eventually deportation on July 24, 1944, of 1,767 Rhodesli Jews at the hands of the Germans and their accomplices, leading to the annihilation of all but 151 Jews from Rhodes who managed to survive Auschwitz.”

According to Alhadeff, JIMENA recently created a collection of Sephardic and Mizrahi lesson plans and educational units on antisemitism to help advance the White House’s recently released U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.

JIMENA is also conducting a demographic study of Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews in America; however, it is currently limited to the cities of New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and Seattle.

The first issue of “Distinctions” features stories of women and their families from Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria, and Morocco, who have had experiences of suffering and overcoming antisemitism, both today and in the past. “The writers are all leaders in their fields,” said Alhadeff.

The cover image for the inaugural issue of “Distinctions: A Sephardi and Mizrahi Journal,” published by JIMENA.

One story is by Sharon Nazarian who has worked on international affairs as a senior vice president for the Anti-Defamation League. Other authors include Rena Nasar First from Stand With Us, Regina Sassoon Friedland from the American Jewish Committee, and journalists Tabby Refael and Rachel Benaim-Abudarham.

Alhadeff said that the hope of those behind the online quarterly journal is to “elevate the voices and talents of Sephardi and Mizrahi scholars, researchers, artists and activists. Our content will challenge conventional narratives about Jewish people and communities, while addressing contemporary Jewish concerns through a classical Sephardi and Mizrahi lens. The journal will celebrate the forces and factors that unite Sephardic and Mizrahi people while recognizing their diverse identities and backgrounds.”

The second issue will focus on Israel, he added.