"The Virtual Genizah": Emerging North African Jewish and Muslim Identities Online. (18th July 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Boum, Aomar
• Is Part Of: International journal of Middle East studies. Volume 46:Number 3(2014:Aug.)
• Page Start: 597
• Page End: 601
• Publication Date: 2014-07-18
• Subjects: Middle East -- Periodicals; 915.603305
• DOI: 10.1017/S0020743814000658
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0020-7438

Abstract

Abstract : After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist narrative dominated the histories and historiographies of Middle Eastern and North African Jewries. Accordingly, Jews and Arabs were largely kept as distinct binaries divided by the intellectual walls that separated Middle East studies and Jewish studies programs. Local North African and Middle Eastern scholars also silenced or overlooked the Jewish dimension of Middle Eastern societies in the same manner that Israeli scholars ignored the historical connections between Arabs and Jews that existed both before and after 1948. The exclusive, sacred yet ebbing, nationalist paradigm has been plagued with historiographical fissures in recent decades, allowing a new wave of intellectual engagement by a young generation of Jewish and Muslim scholars who began to put the Jew and the Arab back into local and global histories formed through complex social, cultural, economic, and political networks.