Oriental Neighbors: Arabs and Sephardi Jews in Mandatory Palestine

Monday, May 11, 2015
4:30 PM
UCLA Public Affairs, Room 1234

In this talk, Professor Moshe Naor will present some new directions in the analysis and research of relations between Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine through focusing on the Jews from Arab and Middle Eastern countries. Such a perspective reveals patterns of affinity, coexistence, and cooperation but also of a conflict between Arabs and Jews. He will focus on the changing political and social status of the Sephardi Jewish community in Palestine after World War One and their role as political and cultural mediators between Jews and Arabs. He will discuss the claim that a dual society existed in Mandatory Palestine, while focusing on the border neighborhoods in the mixed cities. He will also discuss the prevalent historiography and its tendency to separate the history of Zionism and the Jewish community in Palestine from Middle Eastern studies, to divide political-institutional history from social and cultural history, and to largely ignore the historical debate concerning the hybrid Arab Jewish identity.

Moshe Naor is a Visiting Professor with the Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at UCLA. Dr. Naor received his Ph.D. in History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has been a Visiting Professor of Israel Studies at Tulane University; York University in Toronto, Canada; and San Diego State University. Dr. Naor's research interests focus on the social, political and military history of the Jewish community in Palestine and the State of Israel. His book, Social Mobilization in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948: On the Israeli Home Front, was published in 2013 by Routledge Press. His current research deals with Middle Eastern Jews and Jewish-Arab Relations in Mandate Palestine.

Cost : This event is free and open to the public. RSVP requested.