Arab Jews exist?

Question

If those terms: "Arab Moslem" and "Arab Christian" exist, can't anyone be an "Arab Jew"?

..and what would be their political stance? pro-Arabs or pro-Israel? :)

Answer 1

There are Arab Jews in several senses. The word Arab is sometimes used to refer to Middle Eastern people who speak Arabic or their descendants. There are a lot of these. Many of them live in Israel now. They are usually rabbidly pro-Israel, but, because of the terrible way they were treated when they were first brought to the country, some are anti-Zionist, but aren't really pro-Arab either.

There are also Jews who live in Muslim and Arab countries. They are usually more pro-Arab than the ones in Israel. THere's a large community of Syrian Jews in the diaspora. They are usually anti-ZIonist, but also not pro-Arab ina nationalist sense. They are more inclined to accept that Arabs have legitimate claims against the State of Israel.

The largest number of Jews in a Muslim country are the Jews of Iran (26,000 of them) but Iranians are Persian and speak Pharsi, not Arabic. In case you are wondering, they are usually very anti-Zionist and suspect Israel of both politicizing their existence, and planning to drop a nuke on their heads.

THere are also those Jews who are Jewish by their mother and Arab by their father. This is not so uncommon in Israel, where they are colloquelly called Ahmad Ben Sarah. They usually resent both groups as they are treated not so well, as many people who get trapped between worlds are.

Lastly there are Arabs who convert to Judaism. In Israel this is rare as the government rabbinate will usually not accept their conversion for fear of infiltration, the Haredi Rabbinate, called the B'datz Eidah HAredis, does accept them for conversions, but the Rabbis can be arrested if it's found out who did the conversion. In AMerica and Europe it's usually not a problem at all.

I happen to know a formerly Christian Palestinian who converted. He's very anti-Zionist, and more pro-Arab.

Answer 2

Sure.

It's a little complex, because Jewish is also an ethnicity, not just a religion, but a person can become Jewish through conversion, or a person might have a mixed heritage, such as the Lemba of South Africa, who are black Jews (I don't know of any particular groups of Arab Jews as such; ethnically, Jews and Arabs both belong to the larger group known as Semites).

Answer 3

An Arab Jew is a matter of self-consideration which can refer to native Arabic-speaking Jews or perhaps an Arab who converts to Judaism. The term is often rejected by pro-Zionists. In Judaism, a "full Jew" is anybody who is a descendant of a Jewish mother and in Islam an "Arab" is anybody with an Arab male ancestor.

The Jews in the, from or originated from the Arab World are known by several names in Israel the common would be "Mizrahi" (Hebrew: מזרחי) which literally means "oriental" in Hebrew and they are known as "Musta'arab Jews" in the Arab World, those are the Jews that speak native Arabic and almost little to no Hebrew (other than religious uses of course) but they speak a distinct dialect known as Judeo-Arabic which is written in the Hebrew script, but Arabic-speaking Jews know both Hebrew and Arabic scripts. These people are known as "Mustaarabim" in Hebrew, most Hebrew speakers add the suffix "-im" because it's a plural form for a race.

Other Jews from the Arab World are known as Maghrebim, these are from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.

The Arab American professor Ella Shohat is of the Jewish faith, and the anti-Zionist Jew from Iraq Naeim Giladi more-often identifies himself with the Arab identity.

Ovadia Yosef, the late rabbi was born as Abdullah Youssef in Iraq but he doesn't consider himself Arab. Amnon Yithczak, also a rabbi is of Yemenite heritage and doesn't consider himself Arab, in fact if anything he doesn't like Arabs.

Yemenite Jews are native to the Arabian Peninsula, basically they are Arab but they don't consider themselves Arab and would probably get mad if you call them an Arab. They look fully Arab and no different from their Yemeni Muslim counterparts.

Judaism in Yemen is very significant too, because many of the ancient Arab kingdoms in Yemen adopted Judaism as their state religions such as the Himyarite Kingdom and the Sabaean kingdom.

Some of these Mizrahi Jews still keep their Arabic heritage alive, especially musicians who sing in both Hebrew and Arabic. Like the famous Israeli singer Dana International, full Yemenite ancestry and has some songs in Arabic, and Zehava Ben who is a Moroccan Jew and also sings in Arabic and Hebrew and she is proud of her Moroccan heritage.

Andre Azoulay who is a Sephardic Jew from Morocco and senior advisor to King Muhammad of Morocco also considers Arab Jew.

Personally, I do believe in Arab Jews. Especially for Yemenite Jews, no matter how hard many try to keep their Arabian bloodline hidden they are full Arab.

Answer 4

Jews have lived in Arab lands for centuries. They were most often brutally oppressed and subject to constant rape, murder and expulsions.
Most "Arab Jews" now live in Israel or the West.

Answer 5

Arab is more of a nationality or a race, not a religion... Judaism can be both a religion and a race... so yes, you could have someone who was both.

Answer 6

My friends family are Jewish from Iran and left Iran for the US when the Shah was in power.

Answer 7

yeah there are plenty of them.

most though have fled to Israel because of anti-Semites in the Arab world.

Answer 8

there are arabian jews,but if you know judaism is for childs of israel but some arabians believed it

Answer 9

Sure...Judaism is open to anyone who wishes to join.

Answer 10

There are plenty, what is your point?