Hadar Cohen

On Mizrahi Trauma

My deepest gratitudes to Jo Kent Katz for laying this foundation for healing Jewish trauma in white Ashkenazi bodies. It takes great courage to examine the Self in service of collective healing and liberation, to dive into the deep pain, examine it, name it and know with all our bones that we are not our pain. Though we may be consumed by it at times, we are not defined by the pain we carry. Our nature is that of pure Divinity. Everything else is a pattern waiting to be released. 

The holy work of collectively recognizing our inherited patterning is a testimony to the healing that is possible when we honor our pain, and not become our pain. Seeing our pain, meeting it and allowing it to return to divinity is a critical component of activism. It is with this frame that I want to share my perspective on Mizrahi Jewish trauma in hopes that it will be in service to the wider conversation of collective healing. I do not claim to speak for all Mizrahi Jews, only for myself and for what I have witnessed in my body, my family, my community.

In recent years, I have found myself pushing against the claim of Jewish unity. This ideology maintains that through it all, the most important connection is between Jews and other Jews. The reasoning is that we have all collectively suffered at the hands of the world and to survive, we must stay connected to each other as Jewish people. Yet this belief overrides the various identities and power dynamics that exist within the Jewish world. Even though Jewish trauma is immense and certainly bonds us as Jewish people, we cannot erase the racial paradigm that complicates this notion of Jewish unity. Racial violence exists within Jewish community and we must contend with this reality. In particular, the Jewish world has yet to realize and understand the violence of Ashkenazi hegemony. 

With the creation of the State of Israel, the European colonial frame of domination became center stage in Jewish consciousness. This view maintained that Jewish safety comes with rights to land, particularly that of Israel/Palestine (Of course true safety cannot come with acquisition or domination of land and other bodies). The Zionist frame depended on seeing “the Arab” as lesser. It didn’t matter if “the Arab” was Jewish or even Arab at all (as those who were not Arab including Kurdish and Persian Jews were included under this umbrella). What mattered is that a positionality of power is maintained. Thus the term Mizrahi homogenized Jews from all over the Middle East and North Africa to serve as inferiors to the Ashkenazi European Jews. 

Mizrahim were seen as barbaric and unenlightened, stripping us of our culture, tradition, and wisdom. Harsh forms of violences were committed by the Israeli government such as The Yemenite, Mizrahi and Balkan Children Affair and the radiation and ringworm experimentation on Mizrahi bodies. Culturally, Mizrahim were directed to assimilate into Ashkenazi hegemony. Jewish practices celebrated by Mizrahim for thousands of years were all of a sudden not understood as Jewish anymore, but rather as practices that must be erased and forgotten for the Zionist regime to live on. To be Jewish is to be Ashkenazi, so Mizrahim were no longer seen as Jewish. Zionism created a massive traumatizing split in our consciousness: we cannot be both Mizrahi and Jewish, either we hold on to our Jewishness and forget our racial identity or we hold onto our Mizrahi identity and separate from the Jewish world. 

To say that Zionism fractured the Jewish world is an understatement. Zionist principles depend on the notion of Jewish unity - of “us against the world”. Yet who exactly is the us? Mizrahi Jews certainly never got their place in this Jewish unity world. 

It is important to note that racism towards Mizrahim is not limited to the State of Israel. The Zionist view became pervasive in Jewish communities everywhere and particuarly the United States. Zionism is built on racism towards Mizrahim so by adopting Zionism as a central Jewish framework, communities all over the world are collaborating with this oppression of Mizrahim. Often, there is strong invisibilization of this oppression, painting it as happening “over there”. Yet all who subscribe to Zionism are upholding the violent Ashkenormative frame that has wiped out Mizrahim as part of the Jewish world. 

The ignorance of American Jews in understanding racism against Mizrahi Jews transnationally is widespread. The erasure is multi-layered: our bodies are not welcome as they are or worse exotified, our tongues require reconditioning to let go of our throat based pronunciations, our prayer liturgy is disregarded, Rabbinical schools do not teach about our traditions, our devotion and embodied practices are being appropriated, our stories are forgotten. The world has erased us. As if we never existed and do not currently exist. 

In my view, this is at the heart of modern Mizrahi trauma. The erasure of our stories, our lineages, and our identities is immense. This rupture leads our community to disorientation, confusion, and a lack of knowing ourselves. It is especially painful to then see our traditions appropriated. Or worse, see the Ashkenazi Jewish left preach solidarity with Palestinians without caring for our struggle and history.

Through my research in somatics, mindfulness and the pursuit of wisdom, I have found how this collective trauma crystalizes itself into patterns that plague our bodies, minds and communities. These patterns are both coming from a Jewish consciousness as well as a SWANA (South West Asian and North African) consciousness. They might relate to those who have experienced state violence. It is important for me to note that all these patterns that I name, I found in my body. These patterns do not define me, but give me access and understanding to greater healing. 

There are some similarities with the original map, a map that offers a portal of healing by articulating the patterns of Jewish trauma that are bound in the body.  I would like to add the following patterns that come from my experience of Mizrahi Jewish trauma:

• Betrayal, Manipulation & Mistrust
  
  The chaos of loss of our land, our families, our tradition has led to deep mistrust. It is as if no one has our backs, no one is ultimately trustworthy and the best I can do is protect myself through betraying and manipulating others.
  

• Aggression 

  
  Unprocessed grief generally appears in the body as aggression. Violence against Mizrahi communities is still invisibilized in most communities. Not only do we suffer the pain of racialized state violence, we also suffer the gaslighting that happens both externally and internally to our pain. This mixture does not give us space to process our grief and therefore masks itself as aggression. This can be seen as physical, emotional, mental or spiritual violence.
  

• Self-Annihilation & Confusion
  
  The Zionist frame paints the conflict as “Jews veruses Arabs”. Well if you are an Arab Jew this leads you into an existential crisis. Am I in conflict with myself? Where do I belong? If I am Jew, I am rejected for my racial identity. If I am Arab, I am rejected for my Jewishness. There no longer exists a space to be both. The lack of clarity in identity causes a perpetual cycle of confusion that leads one to desire self-annihilation. To not exist, not be part of anymore.
  

• Need to Blame & Attack Others
  
  The trauma of our pain is really deep. There is no narrative explaining how this could have happened. The lack of narrative making our pain coherent causes us to want to blame and attack others. There must be someone responsible for this tragic pain. No one is taking responsibility, so this unprocessed emotion reveals itself as constantly blaming. This pattern emerges because actually there was serious harm that was done. There is responsibility that needs to be taken and it hasn’t. This unfinished process crystalizes the pattern of needing to find someone to blame. 

• Theft
  
  Unprocessed pain continues to reveal itself as the form by which it originally experienced pain. One of the main traumas of Mizrahi community is that of theft. Our babies were stolen, our land was stolen, and our heritage was stolen. When the trauma lives in the body, it can manifest as perpetuating this pattern of theft. It can appear as stealing what does not belong to us from others, such as work or resources. 

Liberation comes when we refuse to be caught and obsessed with our own trauma and pain. It is when we know that our pain is a messenger of wisdom bringing us closer to Divinity. It takes great courage to face ourselves. To see collective patterns as they live through us and shift our view from external to internal. Our identity shapes what we came here to heal, but it is not our essence. Systemic and collective trauma requires a community made up of individuals that personally take responsibility for what lives through them. 

Hadar is a Mizrahi feminist multi-media artist, healer and educator. She is a Jewish mystic with Sephradic roots who works to build decolonial frameworks for worshiping God. Her artistic mediums include performance, movement, writing, weaving, sound and ritual. hadarcohen.me // patreon

With gratitude to Arielle Bendahan, Shahar Zaken, Daniela Sirkin, and Daniel Kronovet for sharing thoughts and edits on this piece.