Racist video exposes Ashkenazi ignorance of Mizrahi culture

A racist skit by Ashkenazi students has touched a raw nerve among Mizrahi Israelis, who still experience widespread attacks on their proud traditions.

"I cried for a long time after I watched that video," says Mirit, a 28-year-old teacher. "I cried for myself, for myself when I was a student there, and for the girls who are in that school now."

Mirit (not her real name) is referring to a recently publicised video that has caused a public uproar in Israel, raising, once again, questions about racism and discrimination in the country.

An Israeli from a Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) background, she was once a student at the prestigious Horev Ulpana, a girls-only religious high school in Jerusalem, where the video was made for the Purim "coronation," a humorous Purim tradition. The video was made two months ago but provoked an outcry when it was uploaded to Youtube last week. It has since been removed.

Among the graduates of the elite school are Supreme and District Court judges and other well-known legal professionals and academics. As in most prestigious schools, the students at Horev are overwhelmingly from Ashkenazi (Western) backgrounds, and many of them are recent immigrants from the United States and France – a fact that the video, entitled If the Ulpana Were Mizrahi (referring to Jews from the Middle East and Africa) intended to spoof.

The video includes eight scenes from daily life, each one portrayed twice: once as they are, according to Ashkenazi customs and mores, and once as it would supposedly be if it were run according to Mizrahi customs. In the "Ashkenazi" episodes, the girls are well-behaved, demure, quiet, respectful, and modestly dressed.

In contrast, in the Mizrahi sections, the girls appear in "brownface" with brown paint smeared on their faces, behave wildly, act vulgarly, disrespect their teachers, listen to loud, clanging music, and do not abide by the school's strict modesty codes. 

As Mizrahim, they tear down the pictures of leading Ashkenazi rabbis and irreverently slap on pictures of Mizrahi rabbis in their place, implying that they revere none of them. 

In addition to the students, several adults, presumably school personnel, also participate.

The denunciations of the video were fast and furious, from the opposition and the coalition alike. Education Minister, Yoav Kisch, said that he was "appalled" by the video. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement in which he declared, "I completely reject the expressions of racism on the part of the students at the ulpana in Jerusalem. There is no room for discrimination and racism in the State of Israel. We are all one people."

The ulpana released its own statement. "It would have been better had this video clip never come into the world, and we have made a mistake. The Ulpana apologises and is sorry for the content, even though it was done as a parody as part of the Purim celebrations."

The statement continued, "Everyone who has been exposed to the activities of the Ulpana over the years knows that this video clip does not reflect the activities of the Ulpana, which grants harmonious and genuine expression to the relationships among the various ethnic groups …within Israeli society."

Mirit, however, does not remember her experience at Horev as genuine or harmonious. 

"We were six Mizrahi girls in my grade. We were supposed to be so proud that we had been accepted to such an elite school – even though we knew that we were accepted only because our families gave lots of money. We were almost never invited to the other girls' homes, and they were never allowed to come to ours.  And they would never set us up with one of their brothers or anything like that.

"As Mizrahim, we were supposed to know that we were second best," she says bitterly. "Watching the video, I realised what they really thought about our traditions. And even worse, I realised what they really thought about us."

Her only protection was when her peers wanted something. "I was an excellent student, so the other girls often wanted my help with homework and were nice to me," she said. 

Maytal, a 30-year-old teacher in a religious boys' school, says she was deeply troubled by the video and even more by the dilemmas it poses.  She does not want to give her full name because she is speaking without authority from ministry officials. "The video is crude and racist.  And it's actually pretty stupid. 

“But there's an inherent problem here, and as a teacher, I am not sure what to do about it.  In many Western countries, schools are just supposed to teach relevant topics, and not get involved in religious traditions and values.

“But in Israel, schools do get involved in values and ideologies. That's why parents choose to send their children to specific schools – like Horev – where the other children are like them, so that they will reinforce the values that they want to hand down to their children. Most of girls at Horev are Ashkenazi, so the parents want them to learn Ashkenazi traditions and values."

She sighs in frustration. "I don't think the exclusion of Mizrahim and Mizrahi traditions is necessarily racist. But obviously it leads to exclusion and discrimination. And yet, I wouldn't want our schools to be value-neutral, like they are in some other countries."

Yossi Ohana, a Mizrahi activist, insists that the exclusion of Mizrahi culture and tradition is the source of the racism. In 2002, Ohana founded Kehilot Sharot ("Singing Communities") to bring together diverse audiences to sing and study piyutim (Jewish liturgical music, especially from the Mizrahi tradition) together.

"I could barely watch that video clip, I felt physically disgusted by the racism, the vulgarity and the stupidity," Ohana says. "But this isn't about one dumb video clip – it's about Ashkenazi ignorance of the infinite depth of Mizrahi culture. 

“The girls in that video know nothing about the wealth and wisdom of our traditions. The sense of superiority the Ashkenazim have over the Mizrahim – which most Westerners feel towards most people from the East – is so entrenched that Mizrahi culture is never taught in our schools or even our universities.

Mizrahim have internalised this sense of inferiority, and so they view Ashkenazi institutions and traditions as superior and more prestigious, he says. "This spills over into every area of our lives.

“Learning Mizrahi traditions, seeing Mizrahim receiving respect in positions of authority would have made a very great difference in my own life, and would continue to make a difference in the lives of Mizrahi children today. Because Mizrahim are considered unworthy, because our traditions are devalued, we have learned not to value ourselves."

Ohana calls on non-Mizrahim as well as secular Jews to recognise their own racism. He recalls a series of interviews that a former president of Israel's Supreme Court, Aharon Barak, gave to Israeli media in early 2023, in which he said that he was unable to find "worthy" Mizrahi candidates for the court.

"Imagine what it means to a Mizrahi child to hear that there is no Mizrahi who is worthy of sitting on the Supreme Court?  This fills me with shame and disgust. And if you do not oppose these attitudes, you are part of the discrimination."

Rabbi David Menachem agrees with Ohana and calls on the largely Ashkenazi-dominated religious schools to "give place to the Mizrahi tradition." Menachem is a charismatic cantor, piyutim singer, composer, internationally renowned musician, and rabbi of a religious Zionist congregation in Mevasseret Tziyon, a suburb of Jerusalem.  The son of Iraqi immigrants, he is a graduate of both Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox and religious Zionist educational institutions. 

"Our educational system is structurally racist. If the playlist is solely Ashkenazi, if interpretation of the Torah is solely based on the Ashkenazi – that is not only racist; it is a limited form of Judaism, and everyone suffers. And this video proves this," he says.

Noting that he is aware that there are Mizrahi teachers at the Horev ulpana, he continues, "It is not enough to count Mizrahim – not every Mizrahi knows about his or her Mizrahi-ness.  We shouldn't care about counting or descent, we must care about the content that a person brings with them."

He directs his anger at the Mizrahim, too. "We must stop playing a cultural role for the Ashkenazim. We have turned ourselves into entertainment and folklore, because we don't know anything about our own culture. Judaism in Morocco dates back 1500 years, and all we show here is our special foods and rhythms?  Is that all we have to offer – taste and smells and sounds?

“What about our sages and our traditions? In an attempt to ingratiate ourselves, we have turned ourselves into vulgar stereotypes. We must not undervalue ourselves.  We must hold our heads high. That must be our response to this video, and to what it represents."

In Israel's current fractious and polarised climate, it seems inevitable that the video would also become fodder for politicians and publicists.

"I watched the video," declared Tali Gotlieb, an MK from the Likud.  "It is made up entirely of humour and satire, and it highlights the differences between the cold, closed off, and boring Ashkenazim and the warmth and joy of the Mizrahi tradition. There is no racism here."

Those who claim the video is racist, she continued, "are spreading fake news and lies, taking things out of context, and spreading hatred".

Writing in Srugim, a website geared to religious Zionists, Rabbi Avraham Stav, a graduate of and teacher in religious Zionist institutions, argued, "We are losing proportions … moreover, [the response] to the video proves once again that religious Zionism is the only group in Israel that is allowed to have ugly stigmas thrown at it."

In contrast, in the liberal Haaretz daily, columnist Tamar Kaplansky wrote that she was particularly incensed by the right-wing government which makes "manipulative and deceitful use of the Mizrahi struggle, in order to pass more and more laws that degrade (also) Mizrahim", a reference to the fact that the coalition recently defeated proposed legislation that would have criminalised discrimination against Mizrahim and Ethiopians in ultra-Orthodox schools, thus also ensuring that these institutions will continue to receive full government funding.   

In a passionate monologue on Israel's Channel 12, journalist and anchor Keren Marciano referred to the members of the Religious Zionist and Likud parties in the coalition who are leading the current battle against the Supreme Court in the name of democracy and diversity.

"And these are the 'leaders' who are going to appoint Mizrahi judges to the Supreme Court? Hahaha, I laughed. Or, since I am Mizrahi, I laughed raucously and with ululations. That's the way we Mizrahim are, after all."

Top photo: Former Israeli president Reuven Rivlin celebrates the Moroccan holiday of Mimouna with Mizrahi Jews in Israel last week (Mark Neiman, GPO)