Ricardolindo
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I am pretty sure that Israel without the Nazis would have been a much smaller coastal state centered around Tel Aviv, though, and I have my doubts that such an Israel could have defended itself.
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Israel without the Nazis and the Holocaust
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If Britain had pre-1939 border plans in Palestine (I think it did but I can't remember specifics) that's probably what it has.
Different waves of immigrants and when likely has a huge impact on how Israel is too. Example off the top of my head, if Mizhari Jews outnumbered European ones for a time, or the big 1990 wave of Soviet Jews doesn't happen or happens earlier in a WW2-less world
Different waves of immigrants and when likely has a huge impact on how Israel is too. Example off the top of my head, if Mizhari Jews outnumbered European ones for a time, or the big 1990 wave of Soviet Jews doesn't happen or happens earlier in a WW2-less world
Jackson Lennock
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Such an Israel would amount to a de facto vassal of a Hashemite Greater Jordanian State.
Abdullah proposed Israel being an autonomous province of a Greater Jordanian/Syrian Kingdom before the 1947-1948 war, IIRC.
But more likely, I think, is that Israeli would get the 1947 partition borders but without the Negev.
<Modified version of a map I found on DeviantArt
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Jackson Lennock
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Many Jews in Poland were already starting to speak primarily in Hebrew, rather than Yiddish. The Zionist movement had a general idea of abandoning notions of the Yiddish Jew, the Ladino Jew, etc. for a revived (or new) Hebrew Jew.
Revisionist Zionism would probably be much stronger. The Revisionists were odd - they were right wing, but they also believed in official minority rights, quotas for Arabs in government positions and cabinets, etc. The prevailing logic seemed to be that the Jewish state would do what it needed to do to protect itself, but all non-Jews who are within the tent were to be protected and given equal status legally. Theory (ideas) and practice are, of course, two separate things.
Ricardolindo
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I just don't see Israel getting so much without the Nazis and the Holocaust. There would be fewer Jews in Palestine and less international support.
Ricardolindo
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Even today, most Israeli Jews are Mizrahi Jews.
Jackson Lennock
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Yes and no. Mizrahim and Sephardim get clumped together as a single thing - mainly because a lot of Sephardim moved to mostly Mizrahi regions and because Mizrahim use Sephardic rites and customs - but they're not the same. You could say fairly that most Jews in Israel today are of Mizrahi-Sephardic descent, but that includes people of mixed Ashkenazi and Sephardic/Mizrahi background. Meanwhile Mizrahim is just an umbrella term meaning Eastern Jews (ergo, there are Yemenites, Syrian Jews, Baghdadi Jews, Persian Jews, Bukharan Jews, etc.). Many "Russian Jews" (ergo, Soviet or Russian Empire Jews) were Mizrahim (such as Bukharan Jews, or Turkic-speaking Krymchak Jews, or the Crimean Karaites) or 'other' (Georgian Jews, Mountain Jews of the North Caucasus and Azerbaijan, etc.). Many 'Russian Jews' are Ashkenazim from Ukraine. The labels are as messy as the history of the Jews as a people.
^That's a fairly accurate map, but also one with many flaws I could point out. Many Jews in France and the Netherlands were Sephardic emigre, for example. There were sizable Baghdadi Jewish communities in India over time. North African Jewry is associated with Sephardim, but there are many 'Berber Jews' who predated the arrival of the Sephardim.
EDIT: Fascinatingly, there's very little evidence of Roman-era conversions of Jews to Christianity (though there is some evidence of Samaritans who did so), but some Modern Palestinian and Negev Bedouin families are descended from Sephardim who fled the inquisition. The question of Crypto-Jews (not dissimilar, say, to the question of Crypto-Armenians in Eastern Turkey today) is an entirely different can of worms.
Israel's attempts to be inclusive to Jews of various overlapping but not mutually exclusive but also not identical definitions leads to weird politics that are really hard to place along usual ideas of left and right. You have a secular right wing Interior Minister, with the support of an Ethiopian Jewish centrist MK, who recently tried to put a cap on people who were half-Jewish or a quarter-Jewish ethnically migrating from Ukraine because the two figured the people of mixed Ukrainian and Jewish ancestry didn't 'count' for national or religious purposes. Alternatively, there's a quarter to half a million people in Israel who basically live as Jews, are of Jewish ancestry in part, but technically aren't Jewish because the Ultra-Orthodox have run the conversion system and won't include them (it's one of the biggest pressing issues for reform in the country). What's more important - ethnicity, religion, culture, patriotism, civic loyalty, etc.? Everybody's afraid of the country not being Jewish majority, but nobody can agree on what being Jewish even means. Meanwhile there's an ongoing process of 'Israelization' of the Arab community west of the wall, such that those folks are more interested in integrating into Israeli (not the same as Jewish) society overall, which is why the majority of Israeli Arab-speakers (because Arab-speaker is not the same as Arab, and Arab is not the same as Palestinian) voted for the moderate Ra'am party or for the Zionist parties in recent elections.
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Ricardolindo
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I'd count Georgian Jews and Mountain Jews as Mizrahi Jews.
Jackson Lennock
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If one defines Mizrahi as anything east of Istanbul, then it's a fair way of putting it. But it's not what the word has historically been understood to mean.
Georgian Jews as a community predate the destruction of the Second Temple, supposedly. The general breakdown is Sephardim and Ashkenazim are those who left the middle east after the destruction of the temple (some going to Spain, referred to as Sefarad, others going to the Rhineland, referred to as Ashkenaz) whereas the Mizrahim are those who remained in the East (Mizrach). The Georgian and Mountain Jewish communities existed before the destruction of the Temple, and are some of the most ancient.
Bukharan Jews are Mizrahim who seem to have followed the trade routes, which is why they're still in the umbrella category of Mizrahim.
EDIT: Ashkenazi Jews' ancestors probably made a pitstop in Italy for a century or two before moving into South France and then north alone the Rhone River to the Southern Rhineland, Alsace, and Lorraine. Some genealogical studies have observed that among European non-Jewish populations, Italians from Tuscany and Sicily are closest to Ashkenazi Jews.
Ashkenazi Jews are a peculiar group from a genetic history perspective, because there was a massive bottleneck effect. Some 400 families who moved to North Italy around the year 1,000 became the basis of as many as 16 million people by 1900. The only other example of such an explosion I can think of is the Quebecois. My guess is that's where the Tuscan/North Italian similarity came from? As for the Sicilians, maybe that's a product it being a melting pot at the center of the Mediterranean with lots of Jews and Arabs and Phoenicians (ergo, another Semitic group) having moved there over time.
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Ricardolindo
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Mountain Jews are descended from Persian Jews who migrated to the Caucasus during the Sasanian era.
Jackson Lennock
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The big Ashkenazi and Sephardic exoduses were following the destruction of the Sanhedrin and the Jewish Revolt against Heraclius. I was wrong to say the destruction of the Second Temple. Communities established in the caucasus during the Sasanian era likewise precede this destruction.
Palestina Secunda (the Jordan Valley and Galilee) were still Jewish majority until that point.
Ricardolindo
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Thanks for the informative reply. However, my point was that if we consider Persian Jews Mizrahi, we also have to consider Mountain Jews Mizrahi. BTW, Persian Jews are themselves descended from Babylonian Jews.
Ricardolindo
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This thread is now off topic, but here is an interesting fact: Georgia was the only country with a historical Jewish community where anti-Semitism never existed.
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That wasn’t true even before the country was ruled by the fucking Tsars.
What is up with you and the whitewash in this thread?
Ricardolindo
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Georgia says "Prior to Georgia's annexation by the Russian Empire in 1801, the 2,600-year history of the Georgian Jews was marked by an almost total absence of antisemitism and a visible assimilation in the Georgian language and culture." The Bagrationis even claimed to be of Davidic descent.
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‘Apart from one of the most notoriously antisemitic governments in history, Georgian governments were not antisemitic.’
If you actually read the article you linked to, you’ll also find the section about Jewish communities being broken up and sold off as serfs to competing feudal lords.
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Ricardolindo
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The Russian Empire was not native Georgian rule, though. Russian Georgia was not independent.
Thanks for pointing this out. Reading the section, though, it appears many Georgians also became serfs.
Jackson Lennock
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I don't see the point of giving RicardoLindo too much flack about things where they seems off base. RicardoLindo is just reading stuff on Wikipedia or elsewhere, in a language that isn't their first language, and reaching some understandable but incorrect conclusions. Plus, who among us hasn't either (a) merely skimmed an article or (b) only read a portion of a wikipedia page but not the whole thing?
Just say where you think RicardoLindo is wrong and accept the idea that RicardoLindo is just wrong about things but not necessarily intent on whitewashing history.
Just say where you think RicardoLindo is wrong and accept the idea that RicardoLindo is just wrong about things but not necessarily intent on whitewashing history.
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You know what? That’s fair. I was inclined to be uncharitable after the Hungary thing, but you’re right, that was uncivil of me.
Apologies, @Ricardolindo.
Jackson Lennock
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No worries.