THE CULTURAL IDENTITY OF IRAQI JEWS IN ISRAEL

Abstract

We can say that culture includes knowledge, arts, morals, beliefs, customs and other capabilities that a person obtains from life. The difference in the cultures that the groups of Jews from different parts of the world carried to (Israel) led to a difference in customs and traditions between them, and this in turn led to a conflict between them in particular and between cultures in general. That is, the culture of the Sephardi Jews and the culture of the Western Ashkenazi Jews.Sephardi are the Jews who immigrated from Arab and eastern countries, while Ashkenazim are the Jews who immigrated from Western countries (European, America and Russia(. Therefore, (Israel) worked in two directions with these immigrants, some of them called for integration with the new society, and the other part to assimilate them. But with all these attempts, some of them ended in failure. The eastern Jews (Iraqis in particular) have kept the Iraqi customs and traditions that they were brought up with and did not lose their identity. I will discuss in this research some of these customs and traditions that they maintained even after their immigration to (Israel). Such as the use of some Arabic expressions, oriental food, eastern folklore, through some stories and novels written by Iraqi Jewish writers who immigrated to (Israel), such as Shimon Palace, Samir Naqqash, Anwar Shaul, Sami Michael.