Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity?

On Identity Politics, Social Capital, and Academic Ethics in the Post-Truth Era

Abstract

This article deals with the contemporary public status of Jewish-Arab culture, and the question of whether it is flourishing or, conversely, slowly fading and disappearing. In the wake of the political transformations in the Middle East and the emigration of Arab Jews to Israel, particularly during the 1950s, major changes occurred in Jewish-Arab identity and the relevant culture. The most prominent feature of this is that the Arabic language, a language used by Jews for more than 1500 years, is no longer a language used by Jews for daily purposes—certainly not for literary aims. But do these changes herald the end of the road, or rather a new phase foreshadowing continuity even if in different cultural patterns? The main argument of this article is that scholars who insist that Jewish-Arab identity still exists today, and that the relevant culture is still flourishing, are not impartial researchers, but rather make these claims out of foreign motives echoing post-truth populist strategies. Consequently, their interventions on the issue of Arab-Jewish identity are scientifically unsubstantiated. The article will also address a controversy around this issue which emerged from a research group dealing with “Jewish Life in Modern Islamic Contexts”, convened during 2018-2019 at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.