Recent years have seen a growing interest in Jews from Arab or Muslim majority countries of the Middle East and North Africa across a variety of time periods. Scholars working at Western or Israeli universities often focus on aspects of Jewish communal and political life in Muslim majority countries prior to their exodus in the aftermath of the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948, or on their absorption into the margins of Israeli society in subsequent decades and the increasing role of Mizrahi Jews (Jews with Middle Eastern ancestry) in contemporary Israeli politics and culture.
recording available

Where
W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
Klaus Mangold Auditorium
Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
(Opposite the Museum)
Growing Research Trend
There is a growing trend in research that reaches beyond nationalist or communalist narratives to conceptualize Jewish communities in Middle Eastern countries as parts of local societies and evolving nation states. Moreover, a tradition of Jewish Studies exists in various Arab and Muslim majority countries that is largely separated from Western scholarship. Some North African and Middle Eastern countries, like Tunisia and Iraq, have seen a renewed interest in the Jewish heritage of the country, and Jewish contributions to national history.
Conference Topics
Bringing together established and younger scholars from different continents and academic disciplines, the conference discussed questions of culture, identity and memory of Jewish life in Arab and Muslim majority countries, self-identification and belonging, as well as prospects for ethno-religious diversity and intercommunal relations in the MENA (Middle East & North Africa) region.
Conference Program
Download (PDF / 0.69 MB / in English)This conference was a window into an area of scholarship that has hitherto been largely overlooked in Germany. It was jointly convened by the W. Michael Blumenthal Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin and the “Research Network Re- Configurations. History, Remembrance and Political Transformations in the Middle East and North Africa”, located at Philipps-Universität Marburg, in cooperation with the Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg and “Europe in the Middle East - The Middle East in Europe” (EUME), a research program at the Forum Transregionale Studien.
Interviews with Conference Participants
Jewish Museum Berlin 2017
Interview with Najat Abdulhaq (MiCT – Media in Cooperation and Transition, Berlin); Jewish Museum Berlin, 2017
Conference Recordings
Here you can find a video recording of the opening session as well as audio recordings of the panels.
Video Recording of the Opening Session:
Peter Schäfer |
Welcome Speech |
Mark Cohen |
Jews in the Islamic World during the Middle Ages |
Orit Bashkin |
The Jew as a metaphor, Jews and the Arab Nahda |
Aomar Boum |
Synagogues, Shrines and Cemeteries: Morocco's Jewish Life in Memory |
Chairs: Achim Rohde (Philipps-Universität Marburg) and Yasemin Shooman (Jewish Museum Berlin) |
Audio Recordings of the Panels:
Panel 1: Between Dhimmi Status and Convivencia
Chair: Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin (Ben Gurion University of the Negev; EUME, Berlin) |
|
Kerstin Hünefeld |
Juggling Sharia Law – An Analytical Insight into the Pseudo-epigraphic Letters of Protection from Yemen and their Jewish Authors' Strategies of Empowerment |
Miriam Frenkel |
Jews' Response to their Dhimmi Status |
Mikhail Kizilov |
The Karaite and Rabbanite Jews in the Tatar and Ottoman Crimea in the Early Modern Times: The Legal Status and Relations with Muslim Authorities |
Panel 2: Majority-Minority Relations: Muslim Perceptions of Jews and Judaism
Chair: Walid Abd El Gawad (W. Michael Blumenthal Fellow) |
|
Liran Yadgar |
Ibn Taymiyya's Views on Judaism |
Orly Rahimiyan |
The Images of Jews in the eyes of the Iranians during the 20th Century |
Menashe Anzi |
Theosophy and Anti-Theosophy in Basra: Jews, Muslims and Booklets in Arabic |
Panel 3: Minority-Minority Relations: Eastern Christian Perceptions of Jews and Judaism
Chair: Georges Khalil (Forum Transregionale Studien; EUME, Berlin) |
|
Alexandra Cuffel |
Jewish-Christian Relations from the Fatimid-Mamluk Period: Recent Findings and Program for Future Research |
Panel 4: Historiography and Identity Politics
Chair: Sophie Wagenhofer (Verlag Walter De Gruyter) |
|
Ahmad Dallal |
The Jews of Yemen: Intertwined Identities and the Distortions of Contemporary Historiography |
Hakan T. Karateke |
Jewish Perspectives on the Ottoman Polity: A Methodological Assessment |
Panel 5: Jewish Spaces in the Ottoman Empire
Chair: Gudrun Krämer (Freie Universität Berlin) |
|
Menachem Klein |
Jews and Arabs in the Main Palestine Cities in the Late Ottoman Period |
Harvey E. Goldberg |
The Symbolic Role of the Jews in the Struggle between State and Society in Late Ottoman Libya |
Michelle Campos |
Rethinking Jewish Spaces and Places in the Modern Middle East |
Panel 6: Jews in Pre-Modern Iran
Chair: Tal Ilan(Freie Universität Berlin) |
|
Alberto Tiburcio |
A Reconsideration of Sources on Jewish Communities in Iran (1666—1747) |
Dennis Halft |
Twelver Shiite-Jewish Interaction in Early Modern Iran |
Panel 7: Jewish-Muslim Relations in 20th Century Lebanon and Syria
Chair: Reuven Snir (University of Haifa) |
|
Seth Anziska |
Lingering Between Jaffa and Beirut: Jewish Presence and Absence in Postwar Lebanon |
Aline Schlaepfer |
"Where did the Waqf Money Go?" – Dynamics of Conflicts and Solidarities between the Jewish Communities of Saida and Beirut in the Early Republic of Lebanon. |
Faedah M. Totah |
Jews of the Old City of Damascus |
Panel 8: Contemporary Cultures of Remembrance in Literature and Film, Part 1
Chair: Christina von Braun (Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg) |
|
Yuval Evri |
Between Fractions and Continuities: The Arab-Jewish Literary World at the Turn of the Twentieth Century |
Najat Abdulhaq |
Rethinking Narratives: The Emergence of the “Arab Jew” in Contemporary Arabic Literature |
Yaron Shemer |
Rethinking Egyptian Jews' Cosmopolitanism, Belonging, and Nostalgia: Egyptian Cinematic Perspectives |
Panel 9: Contemporary Cultures of Remembrance in Literature and Film, Part 2
Chair: Achim Rohde (Philipps-Universität Marburg) |
|
Mazin Ali |
ahud Al-Eraq baad 2003: Sahfiya, Thaqafiya, Akademiya |
Ronen Zeidel |
On the Last Jews in Iraq and Iraqi National Identity: A Look at Two Recent Iraqi Novels |
Cooperation
The conference was jointly developed with the Research Network Re-Configurations. History, Remembrance and Transformation Processes in the Middle East and North Africa, a research unit located at Philipps-Universität Marburg’s Centre for Near and Middle Eastern Studies, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF). Re-Configurations provides an institutional framework for an innovative, interdisciplinary, comparative, empirically-founded, and theory-led investigation of the transformation processes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA region).
In cooperation with the Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg and Europe in the Middle East - The Middle East in Europe (EUME), a research program at the Forum Transregionale Studien.
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