Yali Hashash, "Whose Daughter Are You?: Ways of Thinking about Mizrahi Feminism"

Frankely Judaic: Explorations in Jewish Studies

Since the earliest years of the modern state of Israel, Jews from Arab and Muslim lands, known as Mizrahim, have had to fight for equal rights and opportunities. Mizrahi Jews were looked down upon by the Zionist establishment as primitive–in many ways the very opposite of the image of the New, Western-style Jew that the establishment hoped to foster. And so, Mizrahi activists have for decades struggled to be recognized as full and equal members of Israeli society. But often lost among the larger struggle are the voices and experiences of Mizrahi women, who fought not only for Mizrahi rights but also for the rights of Mizrahi women to prosper and determine the course of their own lives. This episode of Frankely Judaic features Yali Hashash, a social historian and head of the gender and criminology program at Or Yehuda College in Israel, and a fellow at the Frankel Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Hashash’s book, Whose Daughter Are You? Ways of Speaking Mizrahi Feminism, explores the lives of Mizrahi women throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. The 2022-2023 fellowship year at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, "Mizrahim and the Politics of Ethnicity," includes scholars from the United States and Israel who explore Mizrahi (Arab-Jewish) society and culture as an interdisciplinary and intersectional field of study.