Mizrahi Jews Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

קשה להפריז בתרומתה של הפרדיגמה של האזרחות המרובה לניתוח ההיסטורי-פוליטי של החברה והמדינה בישראל, אותה הציע יואב פלד כתשובה לגישת "הלאומיות המתודולוגית", ששלטה בכיפה וראתה בתהליכי בינוי האומה כפריזמה הבלעדית להבנת התפתחותה ההיסטורית של... more

קשה להפריז בתרומתה של הפרדיגמה של האזרחות המרובה לניתוח ההיסטורי-פוליטי של החברה והמדינה בישראל, אותה הציע יואב פלד כתשובה לגישת "הלאומיות המתודולוגית", ששלטה בכיפה וראתה בתהליכי בינוי האומה כפריזמה הבלעדית להבנת התפתחותה ההיסטורית של החברה בישראל. הדיון באזרחות היה לכר פורה למחקרים על משטר האזרחות, על מעמד האזרחים, ובמיוחד על אופני הקצאתן של זכויות האזרחות בחברה. כיום נדמה מאמרו המקורי של פלד כאירוע השייך לזמן היסטורי אחר. מטרתו של מאמר זה היא לבחון את מידת הרלוונטיות של המודל כתיאוריה חברתית-ביקורתית בהקשר הישראלי, ומעבר לכך לשאול מהי תכליתה של התיאוריה של האזרחות כחלק מסדר יום פוליטי פרוגרסיבי עכשווי. לאחר שאציע ביקורת למודל האזרחות המרובה אדון בקצרה בפוליטיקה המזרחית ויחסה לסוגיית הדת בישראל על מנת להציע נקודת מבט חדשה על האזרחות כתופעה חברתית וכפריזמה תיאורטית.

Iraq was once home to one of the oldest and longest-standing Jewish communities in the Arab world, and the center of Judaism for over a thousand years. Between 1948 and 1951, following the establishment of the State of Israel, around... more

Iraq was once home to one of the oldest and longest-standing Jewish communities in the Arab world, and the center of Judaism for over a thousand years. Between 1948 and 1951, following the establishment of the State of Israel, around 130,000 Jews fled Iraq and the 2500 year old diasporic Jewish community in the Middle East ceased to exist. The mass displacement is puzzling given the high level of cultural integration, coupled with the traumatic nature of departure, which make Iraqi-Jewish history a contested site of memory that is particularly subject to politicized narratives. While Iraqi Jewish experiences are narrated in terms of coexistence and persecution and used to bolster Zionist and anti-Zionist agendas, Iraqi-born Jews— those who experienced these events firsthand— are often the last to articulate their own stories and views.
My thesis presents oral history interviews of 25 Iraqi-born Jews regarding questions of identity, emigration, and relationship with Zionism. I argue for alternative narratives that acknowledge the dualities in identity and pluralities within communities, and reject simplistic narratives of Iraqi-Jewish experiences. My project aims to preserve the experiences in firsthand form from the last generation of Iraqi-born Jews, by incorporating oral history interviews as a focal point to explain and understand complicated and conflicting identities, address the gap left by existing literature in this area, tell previously untold narratives, and to preserve and give precedence to Iraqi-Jewish voices.

This essay was published in a special issue of ha-Kiṿun Mizraḥ, dedicated to the memory of the Iraqi Jewish author, Shimon Ballas (and edited by Almog Behar and Yuval Evri). The essay examines how Ballas, who was himself in exile from... more

This essay was published in a special issue of ha-Kiṿun Mizraḥ, dedicated to the memory of the Iraqi Jewish author, Shimon Ballas (and edited by Almog Behar and Yuval Evri). The essay examines how Ballas, who was himself in exile from Iraq, relates the experiences of other exiles. Considering Ballas’ oeuvre, I detect his tendency to draw literary portraits—that is, to dedicate each novel to a detailed literary portrait of a single, forgotten historical figure. Unlike Albert Memmi, another Arab Jewish author who was fond of portraits (“portrait of the colonizer,” “portrait of the colonized,” “portrait of a Jew”), Ballas’s portraits were never abstract. They were based rather on true biographies of forgotten historical figures, ones who were never at home in a single nation or culture. The gallery that Ballas forms by amassing together these various portraits allows him to challenge the necessity of the Zionist narrative and to reintroduce other historical possibilities. Focusing on Ballas’ novel Locked Chamber (1980), which sketches a portrait of a Palestinian in Israel, I argue that in trying to convey Palestinian experiences Ballas does not draw on the content of Palestinian literature but rather on its form—particularly as it has been refined by the Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani, whose work Ballas had researched and translated. By reading Edward Said’s thoughts on the episodic form of Kanafani’s writing, I show how Ballas borrows this technique both to convey the rupture introduced by 1948 into Palestinian and Arab time and to insist that he, too, is part of the Arab world.

The paper address the history of use of surnames by Jews in Iraq. It discusses the main patterns of forming surnames, the phonetic, graphic, and morphological peculiarities of these surnames that are primarily based on the Judeo-Arabic... more

The paper address the history of use of surnames by Jews in Iraq. It discusses the main patterns of forming surnames, the phonetic, graphic, and morphological peculiarities of these surnames that are primarily based on the Judeo-Arabic dialect spoken by Jews of Baghdad.

עבודת תזה: ותודה לאשכנזים- הפוליטיקה של אתניות מזרחית בישראל

שבחים חסידיים עלומים בטריפולי / יונתן מאיר

The article analyzes short stories by Eliezer Smoli (1901-1985), a recipient of the Israel Prize for children’s literature. The works discussed here, dating from the early years of the state to the 1980s, feature immigrants from Islamic... more

The article analyzes short stories by Eliezer Smoli (1901-1985), a recipient of the Israel Prize for children’s literature. The works discussed here, dating from the early years of the state to the 1980s, feature immigrants from Islamic countries as their main protagonists. After my initial review of the ways in which Mizrahim are depicted in historical and literary studies, I delineate my own methodology for exploring their characterization both as individuals and as a group. Smoli’s portrayal of immigrants from Islamic countries is complex and largely free of the negative stereotypes that prevailed during the early decades of the state. In his stories, Mizrahim are featured as Zionist pioneers with a culture of their own. Smoli portrays their family life and the Jewish cultural capital they brought to Israel in a positive light, conveying their perspective to his young readership while exposing the failure of the establishment to assimilate them. The article contributes to the scholarship of image and representation in general, and in particular, and to study of the depiction of immigrants from Islamic countries in Israeli children’s literature.

Using the fantastic poem of Emile Cohen lamenting the end of Iraqi Jewry's long and illustrious sojourn in Babylon/Iraq as a canvas, this commentary seeks to give people a taste of the "Iraq that was" for the Jewish community there,... more

Using the fantastic poem of Emile Cohen lamenting the end of Iraqi Jewry's long and illustrious sojourn in Babylon/Iraq as a canvas, this commentary seeks to give people a taste of the "Iraq that was" for the Jewish community there, specifically noting its fall. It is intended to hopefully inspire people to further study and interest in this particular community's history.

בדברים הבאים אנסה להשיב על שאלות אלו על בסיס קריאה ביקורתית בספר "מזרחים בישראל". ניסיון זה לגבש מענה לשאלות אלו על בסיס הקריאה של ספר זה מתבקשת ולו רק בגלל העובדה שאחד האתגרים המרכזיים שעמם הוא מתמודד הוא ניסוחה של נקודת מבט מזרחית... more

בדברים הבאים אנסה להשיב על שאלות אלו על בסיס קריאה ביקורתית בספר "מזרחים בישראל". ניסיון זה לגבש מענה לשאלות אלו על בסיס הקריאה של ספר זה מתבקשת ולו רק בגלל העובדה שאחד האתגרים המרכזיים שעמם הוא מתמודד הוא ניסוחה של נקודת מבט מזרחית ביקורתית על החברה בישראל. יתרה מזאת, ההתמודדות עם אתגר זה מעידה יותר מכל על אופיו של הספר ועל כותביו, המציבים את עצמם לא רק כחוקרים וחוקרות אקדמיים, אלא גם כפעילים בעלי תודעה פוליטית קונקרטית ביחס למושא המחקר שלהם (המזרחים בישראל). לפיכך, ניתן לראות בהופעתו של הספר כאחת מתוצאות הלוואי של הקמת הקשת הדמוקרטית המזרחית ושל פעילותה. לא זו בלבד שחלק נכבד מהמאמרים המופיעים בספר נכתבו על-ידי חברים פעילים בקשת, אלא שגם חלק ניכר מהנחות היסוד העיוניות והערכיות הכלולות בו מהדהדים בפעילותה הציבורית של התנועה. החיבור הזה, בין ידע תיאורטי לבין ידע פוליטי, הוא לדעתי תעודת הזהות של הקשת, המחויבת לא רק לעשייה הפוליטית, אלא גם להוביל בניסוח הידע אודות השאלה המזרחית בישראל.

Offered at Cornell University, Spring 2022. COURSE DESCRIPTION: This class examines modern articulations of identity by and about two distinct Jewish diasporas: Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. Sephardic Jews trace their origins to the Iberian... more

Offered at Cornell University, Spring 2022. COURSE DESCRIPTION: This class examines modern articulations of identity by and about two distinct Jewish diasporas: Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. Sephardic Jews trace their origins to the Iberian Peninsula prior to the end of the 15th century. Mizrahim are Jews who lived in the Middle East and North Africa until the mid-20th century, and their descendants. We will explore Sephardic and Mizrahi identities in works of fiction, memoirs, essays, poetry and films produced from the mid-twentieth century to the present. We will trace routes of migration across generations, paying particular attention to how texts construct identity in relation to language and place. Works will be drawn from wide geographic distribution including the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and produced in Arabic, English, French, Hebrew, Ladino, and Spanish.

Until the conclusion of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, there were roughly 750,000 Jews living in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, Algeria and Palestine/Israel. A comparative electronic survey of some 900 journals... more

Until the conclusion of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, there were roughly 750,000 Jews living in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, Algeria and Palestine/Israel. A comparative electronic survey of some 900 journals reveals that when scholars referred to these individuals collectively during the last 200 years they employed some twenty different signifiers. The question I address is simple yet potentially foundational: which collective signifier can define and capture most productively, inclusively and comprehensively the socio-political and cultural experiences of those who comprised the Arab Middle East's ten indigenous Jewish minority communities prior to their dispersal (in the post-1949 armistice period)? I propose that the signifier ‘Arabized-Jews’ exhibits explanatory properties that outweigh those of its alternatives both quantitatively and qualitatively. As such, ‘Arabized-Jews’ denotes Jews who were culturally and/or linguistically Arab yet who did not self-define primarily as Arab, let alone in political terms. In exploring the dialectic interface between ethno-politics, terminological formations and the production of meaning, this article suggests that it makes sense for contemporary scholars to employ ‘Arabized-Jews’ to refer collectively to Jews across the modern Arab Middle East.

After 1948, Israel’s governing elites embarked on a rigorous program of state building and settling hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants. In the process, the elites, primarily from the leading Mapai party, developed a process of... more

After 1948, Israel’s governing elites embarked on a rigorous program of state building and settling hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants. In the process, the elites, primarily from the leading Mapai party, developed a process of othering Jewish immigrants from Arab countries, Arab citizens, and Orthodox Jews. They were physically segregated in their own schools and communities, and the elite culture described them as a threat against the European culture of Jewish immigrants from central Europe. The process targeted Mizrahi Jews before moving on to deplore the “demographic threat” of Orthodox Jews and resulted in the current normative hegemonic discourse in Israel that paints numerous groups as threatening the state. This article proposes a four-part model for understanding “the other” in Israel: contemporary denial and nostalgia for a homogenous past, the view of Zionism as a civilizing mission, the application of separation of ethnic groups in planning, and demographic fear of the other. Altogether, they paint a picture of an Israel that has not come to grips with its past, and therefore continues the process of “othering” in its contemporary ethnocratic framework. Combining the analysis of geographic separation, and planning and media, it presents an innovative understanding of Israeli society.

These articles present the reader with an alternative Jewish History and a very different approach towards Arab-Jewish relations than the ones we see in an Ashkenazi-dominated Jewish world. The Andalusian legacy is thus not only a central... more

These articles present the reader with an alternative Jewish History and a very different approach towards Arab-Jewish relations than the ones we see in an Ashkenazi-dominated Jewish world. The Andalusian legacy is thus not only a central part of our Sephardic heritage, but is an essential element in the human relations between Jews and Arabs at a time when those relations are at an all-time low. Making use of this information we can better process the many complexities of history, religion, and language that are at the very heart of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean civilization and the ways in which Jews, Muslims, and Christians have co-existed in the region since the Muslim Revolution.

This paper focuses on the Jewish magical tradition as practiced in the Islamicate world in the Middle Ages. It begins with a bird’s-eye survey of the available evidence – both the extant magical texts and objects, and the discussions of... more

This paper focuses on the Jewish magical tradition as practiced in the Islamicate world in the Middle Ages. It begins with a bird’s-eye survey of the available evidence – both the extant magical texts and objects, and the discussions of such texts and practices by non-practitioners – and turns to a survey of the aims and techniques of the magical rituals themselves. It then examines the sources from which medieval Oriental Jews borrowed their magical texts and practices, including the continuous transmission of Jewish magical texts from pre-Islamic times and the borrowing and adaptation of numerous Arabic and Muslim magical texts and practices. Two specific practices, namely, rituals for summoning demons and the manufacturing of astrological talismans, are discussed in greater details. Next, an attempt is made to sketch the profile of the practitioners and their clients, who clearly included both men and women – but far more men than women! – and came from all strata of Jewish society. This also helps explain the vehement polemics against Rabbanite magical practices by the Karaites, as well as Maimonides’ repeated objections to most of these practices. Finally, the wide-spread recourse to magical practices, and the many debates about them, cast an interesting light on the problem of distniguishing between “magic” and “religion” in the Jewish world, where the two supposedly-separate spheres constantly interact with each other.

לינק לפרסום המקורי במוסף "ספרים" של הארץ 30.10.2006
ולינק לפרסום המאמר באתר "העוקץ" עם לינק למאמרו של דודי

For the past twenty-five years, and particularly during the last decade, the idea of the Arab Jew has been debated in multiple forums in different parts of the world. The Arab Jew is represented in literature and film, discussed in blogs... more

For the past twenty-five years, and particularly during the last decade, the idea of the Arab Jew has been debated in multiple forums in different parts of the world. The Arab Jew is represented in literature and film, discussed in blogs and social media, and featured in live performances. It has informed scholarship in literary and cultural studies, sociology, and history, in Israel, the Arab world, Europe, and North America. Yet the term “Arab Jew” remains controversial, especially in Israel, where it is widely viewed as a left-wing political concept. This article surveys the Arab Jew’s full range of expression to date, emphasizing the reciprocal movement of ideas across different geographies and between discursive spheres. It argues that the Arab Jew idea has developed as both a project of political intervention into the present-day separation of Arabness from Jewishness and a project of reconstruction focusing on the Jewish past in the MENA region. Examining recent episodes in the Israeli public sphere, the article investigates how contemporary discussions about Arab Jewish identity and culture utilize competing views of history. It concludes by reconsidering the relevance of the “Arab Jew” to the burgeoning historical scholarship on Jews in the MENA region during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Construction and De-construction of the Ashkenazi vs. Sephardic/Mizrahi Dichotomy in Israeli Culture: Rabbi Eliyahou Zini vs. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Authors(s): Joseph Ringel Source JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars,... more

The Construction and De-construction of the Ashkenazi vs. Sephardic/Mizrahi Dichotomy in Israeli Culture: Rabbi Eliyahou Zini vs. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Authors(s): Joseph Ringel Source JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The question was simple: should the Hebraist Zionist movement in Ottoman Palestine invest in publishing a newspaper in Arabic and, if yes, should it be communitarian Jewish or general in its topics? What began as yet another obscure... more

The question was simple: should the Hebraist Zionist movement in Ottoman Palestine invest in publishing a newspaper in Arabic and, if yes, should it be communitarian Jewish or general in its topics? What began as yet another obscure intra-Zionist deliberation gradually crystallized into what I argue merits the label of the earliest, explicitly Ashkenazi–Mizrahi ethnic controversy. This is with the smallest risk of the superimposition in hindsight of the terms and signifiers usually associated with Israel’s post-1971/Black-Panthers era onto the Ottoman period. Lasting between 1909 and 1913, the spirited exchange regarding the Arabic newspaper involved two dozen writers, mainly of the Sephardi–Mizrahi Haherut newspaper, and about one third of ethnic Ashkenazim writing elsewhere. It was nonetheless October 1911 that encapsulated the peak of the controversy, mainly due to writing by Mizrahi intellectual and activist Dr Shimon Moyal (1866–1915) and Ashkenazi intellectual and activist Dr Avraham Ludvipol (1865–1921). My decision to let primary texts speak for themselves at greater length than is customary results from my conviction that – in this case – extensive recourse to source material can convey best to twenty-first-century readers why the exchange is effectively “the mother” of all ensuing Mizrahi–Ashkenazi ethnic controversies. While clear definition for what constitutes such a controversy is provided, I close by offering a sample of views about the Arabic newspaper by four prominent Ashkenazi Zionists.

Nasreen Qadri is an Israeli pop singer of Palestinian-Arab origin whose professional achievements came in return for her loyalty to Israel. Successfully crossing cultural lines, Qadri claims Mizrahi identity, challenges the... more

Nasreen Qadri is an Israeli pop singer of Palestinian-Arab origin whose professional achievements came in return for her loyalty to Israel. Successfully crossing cultural lines, Qadri claims Mizrahi identity, challenges the Ashkenazi-Zionist definition of Jews and Arabs as antagonistic ethnonational binaries, and helps Mizrahim reclaim their Judeo-Arabic heritage. However, following her controversial attempts to convert to Judaism, she fell short of crossing into religious-national privilege in Israel-Palestine. Qadri’s failure to overcome colonial segregation testifies to how Israeli racism is based on a perceived religious blood community, which is anchored in state laws and to which non-Jewish women are mostly exposed. Qadri’s case demonstrates how racialized politics of conversion are related to demographic considerations that show the fragility of the Zionist settler-colonial project. Finally, this article suggests that Palestinians in Israel may face elimination, if they seek racial and religious equality with Jews based on a shared Arab culture with Mizrahim.

To tell you the truth, there's something strange in coming to a conference about Arab-Jews in Cambridge. We, my generation, were born in Israel, descendants of parents who were born in the Middle East under the colonial powers—Britain, in... more

To tell you the truth, there's something strange in coming to a conference about Arab-Jews in Cambridge. We, my generation, were born in Israel, descendants of parents who were born in the Middle East under the colonial powers—Britain, in the case of Iraq, France and Italy in other cases. We come to England to speak about our Arab-Jewish past, its present, and perhaps the possibility of its future: we come to speak in English about the Arab-Jew who was torn between Hebrew and Arabic, and England is not a neutral place in the twentieth-century history of the Arab-Jew. In the context of the Arab-Jewish community of Iraq, it was a place to oppose, as a colonial power, but also a place to look up to, to aspire to, even to imagine oneself as its descendant in a dream, for example in one of the poems by Amira Hess, the Iraqi-born Jerusalemite poet: " I am the daughter of Baghdad / I'm ready to swear / I was born in London. " 1 Our photo albums are filled with photographs of our grandfathers in British suits; some of our grandparents had British names. The colonial phase in Iraqi Jewish history is the main phase of the modern, secular, national Arab-Jew after the years of Ottoman rule, with its multinational character that stressed religious and communal identities. This modern " project " of the Arab-Jew (which can be seen in literature and politics, for example in the works of Anwar Shaul) was one in which the Arab-Jew was supposed to take part, in the design and building of a modern Iraqi nation having secular and liberal concepts. Some of the Arab-Jews participated in the growing Arab national movement, in particular the local national movements in various countries, and in the resistance to colonial rule.

Studies of the Arab-Zionist matrix are ordinarily written from what may be termed as a territorially Palestine-centric vantage-point; this -obviously -makes sense since the conflict"s sorrows, battles, deaths, expulsions and displacements... more

Studies of the Arab-Zionist matrix are ordinarily written from what may be termed as a territorially Palestine-centric vantage-point; this -obviously -makes sense since the conflict"s sorrows, battles, deaths, expulsions and displacements clearly emerged there. But this approach means something else too: that regional dimensions surrounding the Palestine/Israel question are often undervalued both historically and in terms of the region"s ongoing ethno-politics. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the ever-expanding controversy between proponents of a One-State, Bi-National-State or Two-State solution to the Palestine/Israel question (1S2S). This neglect leads the numerous participants in 1S2S exchanges to debate (and devise) solutions that rest on what I term here "mandated imaginations", that is, scholarly spheres that ultimately conceive of the (post-1922) Britishmandated territory of Palestine/Israel as a secluded island in both historical and contemporary terms. The problem is that this neither was, nor is, the case. The Palestine/Israel question acquired a potent regional dimension from at least the time of the Palestinian anti-colonial revolt of 1936-9 and the historic 1937 pan-Arab gathering in Bludan, convened to overturn the first Two-State solution proposed by the royal Peel Commission. It logically follows that if prevailing diagnoses of the very question itself are incorrect or partial -due to mandated imaginations, a Palestine-centric outlook and a neglect of historical and contemporary regional variables -then the corresponding socio-political prognoses (One-State, Two-States or Bi-National-State) may also be flawed in all terms other than rhetorical-ideational. To substantiate these propositions, this article is three-fold.

This essay investigates the vision of two Jewish scholars of a shared Arab-Jewish history at the beginning of the twentieth century. The first part of the essay focuses on Abraham Shalom Yahuda’s(1877-1951) re-examination of the... more

This essay investigates the vision of two Jewish scholars of a shared Arab-Jewish history at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The first part of the essay focuses on Abraham Shalom Yahuda’s(1877-1951) re-examination of the Andalusian legacy in regard of the process of Jewish modernisation with respect to the symbolic and the actual return to the East. The second part of the essay centers on the work of Yosef Meyouhas (1863-1942), Yahuda’s contemporary and life-long friend who translated a collection of Biblical stories from the Arab-Palestinian oral tradition, examining the significance of this work vis-à-vis the mainstream Zionist approach

During Israel’s first decades, conflict between immigrants from Islamic countries and the Israeli establishment focused on questions regarding equality. The immigrants protested against discrimination in the labor market, against poor... more

During Israel’s first decades, conflict between immigrants from Islamic countries and the Israeli establishment focused on questions regarding equality. The immigrants protested against discrimination in the labor market, against poor housing conditions, and against police brutality. The question of Mizrahi culture and identity was barely mentioned. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, the ethnic discourse in Israel shifted from economic issues to cultural issues. Different groups challenged the school curriculum, asking for more attention to the history and literature of Jews from Islamic countries. Mizrahi music started to develop on the fringe of the Israeli musical scene and moved slowly into the mainstream. Political parties (Tami and Shas) identified with Mizrahi identity and emphasizing it, started to appear and to achieve success. This article provides examples of the expression of identity and culture in different fields and analyzes the causes of this change.

This study explores the previously unstudied anti-Jewish Persian polemic Anbāʾ al-anbiyāʾ by the Jewish convert to Twelver Šīʿī Islam, Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī, the father of Ḥāǧǧī Bābā Qazvīnī Yazdī. It examines Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī’s discussion of a... more

This study explores the previously unstudied anti-Jewish Persian polemic Anbāʾ al-anbiyāʾ by the Jewish convert to Twelver Šīʿī Islam, Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī, the father of Ḥāǧǧī Bābā Qazvīnī Yazdī. It examines Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī’s discussion of a medieval Jewish controversy concerning the four-kingdom schema in the book of Daniel and Ibn Ezra’s interpretation of the dream-vision in favor of Islam as the fourth kingdom. The study shows that Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī, besides his reference to Muslim works in Persian, relied on different (partly printed) Jewish textual sources in the original Hebrew and Aramaic (Miqraʾot Gedolot, Neḇuʾat ha-yeled, Sefer haš-šorašim, Sefer Josippon), from which he quoted in his own Persian translation/adaptation. He thus made internal Jewish debates accessible to native Muslim scholars, such as Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī, who borrowed from Anbāʾ al-anbiyāʾ. Ismāʿīl Qazvīnī was a cross-cultural intermediary and go-between who expanded the traditional range of Šīʿī polemical arguments against Judaism in pre-modern Iran.