Rachel Shabi

Rachel Shabi's book is an intimate analysis of a complex racial and cultural situation surrounding Israeli Jews of mostly Arabic lineages, including the many salient political, social, pedagogical, economic, and cultural challenges they have faced and continue to face.

The work is rather fascinating, adding for me a much richer view of the problems facing Israelis than I had understood from either what I have read about Zionist/Anti-Zionist internal conflicts in Israel or my understanding of Jewish history and heritage. The work is quite easy and quick to read and digest, and not even a cursory knowledge of many of the important figures is really needed to get the gist of what Shabi is trying to describe. Shabi is clearly quite sympathetic to the Mizrahi (the term she prefers for the non-Ashkenazi Jewish Israelis), but is not overly hostile to other groups discussed.

For the most part, the information presented seems to be presented fairly, if not in a completely dispassionate manner. However, many supportive bits of evidence, especially in the middle of the book, are quite poor. These range from many accusatory « some people even say... » statements, uncited statistics, generalizations about people and values, oversimplified or questionable attributions of causes and motives, and implications through counterfactual examples or questions when evidence seems not to be available or supportive. That said, the book still presents a great deal of better-supported facts and sources of relevant and seemingly reliable information that still do well enough in making Shabi's case about the rather troubling past and still (though slightly less-so) troubling circumstances surrounding the treatment of Mizrahis.

The book could have been made a bit more solid, and there seemed also to be parts wherein the author undermined her own case by attempting to make strong claims on seemingly opposing sides of an issue without distinguishing how these two claims are not problematic (for instance, to put it rather crudely, how claims about Mizrahi music's importance and popularity don't undermine the position that this music is marginalized and ignored; answers may be implied by the book, but they don't seem to me adequate to allow the author to make both claims without further explanation). Otherwise, the book was quite good. I would love to hear a more detailed follow-up discussing either the specific nature of religious/cultural differences between Israeli Mizrahis non-Mizrahis or a bit deeper analysis (àla Jonathan Kozol, perhaps) of the educational cituation!… (mer)