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What is the definition of Mizrahi Jews and which communities are included?
Executive Summary
Mizrahi Jews are defined primarily as Jews whose ancestral origins lie in the Middle East and North Africa, encompassing communities with deep roots in places such as Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, and the Maghreb, and today largely represented in Israel and the United States. Scholars and overviews emphasize their distinct historical trajectories, languages, and communal practices, while noting overlap and contested boundaries with Sephardic identities; modern usage and self-identification vary by community and era [1] [2] [3].
1. How historians and community overviews frame a long, continuous Middle Eastern presence
Historical surveys and community profiles present Mizrahi Jews as an umbrella category for Jewish communities indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa with histories stretching back to Late Antiquity. Sources note earliest continuous communities in Babylonia (modern Iraq), Persia (modern Iran), and Yemen, with later significant populations across the Levant, Egypt, and North Africa [1] [3]. These accounts emphasize that the term collects diverse groups that developed distinct religious customs, vernaculars—such as Judeo‑Arabic, Judeo‑Persian, and other Judeo‑languages—and ritual practices shaped by their local Muslim and Christian milieus. The historical framing also records mass demographic shifts in the mid‑20th century tied to migration to Israel and to Western countries [3].
2. Which communities are commonly included — the map of named groups
Contemporary summaries commonly list Iraqi, Iranian (Persian), Yemenite, Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Algerian, Libyan, and sometimes Turkish and Bukharan Jews among those included under the Mizrahi label; some sources extend the category to Jews from Sudan and other North African locales [2] [4]. Those surveys emphasize that within Israel these disparate communities often formed distinct synagogues and social networks—Persian, Yemenite and Maghrebi congregations are a few examples—and that each subgroup preserved unique liturgical rites and languages. The cataloguing varies by author: some lists explicitly separate Maghrebi Jews or treat them as overlapping with Sephardic communities depending on historical migrations.
3. The contested line: Mizrahi versus Sephardi and Ashkenazi — where definitions diverge
Analyses stress an important scholarly and communal debate over boundaries between Mizrahi and Sephardi identities. Sephardi Jews originate in the Iberian Peninsula and many settled in Ottoman and North African lands after 1492; their customs influenced local communities and the Spanish‑rite liturgy spread broadly. Some contemporary sources and communities conflate Mizrahi and Sephardi categories because of shared liturgical practices or the use of the Spanish rite in synagogues, while others insist on a clear distinction based on pre‑expulsion Middle Eastern origins and separate languages and traditions [5] [6]. The definitional divergence reflects both migration history and later political and social labeling, especially in Israel where classification influenced communal status and policy.
4. Demographic and modern identity shifts that reshape the label
Post‑1948 demographic movements and nation‑state pressures produced a transformation in who is called Mizrahi and how that identity is mobilized. Large migrations to Israel and the diaspora concentrated formerly regionally distinct groups and prompted both assimilation pressures and cultural revival; many Mizrahi Jews adopted or were assigned the Hebrew label ʿEdot Ha‑Mizraḥ in Israeli discourse. Contemporary scholarship and community writing document a dual trend: institutional flattening of diversity into broad categories for administrative or sociological analysis, and concurrent revival of particular sub‑ethnic identities—Yemenite, Persian, Bukharan—preserving languages, cuisine, liturgy, and memory [3] [6].
5. What sources agree on and where narratives diverge — methodological takeaways
Across the reviewed sources there is consensus that Mizrahi Jews are primarily those from Middle Eastern and North African backgrounds and that the group is internally diverse; they share long regional histories and distinct languages and practices [1] [2] [3]. Disagreement arises over precise boundaries: whether North African Maghrebi Jews uniformly belong to Mizrahi or should be treated as overlapping with Sephardic categories, and how much modern political labeling and migration histories should dictate the term’s use [5] [4]. The most recent syntheses (notably 2025 summaries) reiterate both the historical continuity of Middle Eastern Jewish communities and the modern complexity of identity, urging attention to local subgroups rather than a single monolithic definition [3].