Musta'arabi Jews
Musta'arabi Jews (
In many Arab countries, Sephardi immigrants and the established Musta'arabi communities maintained separate synagogues and separate religious rituals, but often had a common
In contrast, in
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Background
The word "Mustaʿrabi" itself, and its Hebrew equivalent mistaʿrevim, meaning "those who live among the Arabs",
Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant, Syria and the surrounding region was brought under Arab rule in the first half of the seventh century, and the Jews of the land, like the Christian majority at that time, became culturally Arabized, adopting many of the ways of the new foreign elite minority rulers, including the language.[2]
Musta'arabim, in the Arabized Hebrew of the day, was used to refer to Arabic-speaking Jews native to
In Israel
The Musta'arabi Jews in the
The Musta'arabi Jews in the Land of Israel were descendants of the ancient Hebrews who never left the Land of Israel, instead remaining there through the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD to the First Aliyah in 1881, prior to the onset of Zionist immigration.[
Due to the persecution of the rural Jewish population since the Islamic period into the Crusader, Mamluk and Ottoman periods, the Musta'arabim decreased from a majority of the Galilee's population to its smallest minority.[citation needed]. In many of them, there were indigenous Jewish villagers until the Ottoman period.[citation needed] Only in Peki'in there was a Musta'arabi population that has survived.[citation needed] Due to the Arab revolt in the 1930s they were forced to evacuate their ancestral historic village and to move to Hadera, where most of them are living today.[citation needed] The synagogues and cemeteries of Musta'arabi Jews, as in Peki'in, are considered the oldest in the Jewish world and can be dated largely to the Talmudic period but also to Mishnaic and Second Temple period.[citation needed]
Unlike the majority of the Jewish communities, Musta'arabi Jews of Israel remained mostly rural farmers as in the ancient periods of Israel.[citation needed]
Roman and Byzantine era
In late
Crusades
The Jews in Palestine defended against the
Mamluks
During the
Safed, Tiberias, and the area that surrounds them saw an increase in population, in 1500 it is estimated that over 10,000 Jews were living in the Safed Region.[9] Jews started to move towards etrog exportation and Rabbinic studies.[citation needed]
Galilee Revival
In 1492 the
Ottoman Era
The main Jewish population center moves away from the Galilee and towards Jerusalem.
Zionism
The arrival of mainly
Today
The Musta'arabim have assimilated into mainstream Sephardic Israeli life and it is unknown how many Israeli Jews of Musta'arabi descent there are. In America, they follow the general Syrian traditions, and have mainly settled in New York, California, and Washington.[citation needed]
Syrian Musta'arabi rite
Old Aleppo rite
The Aleppo Musta'arabim in Syria originally had a distinct way of worship, set out in a distinct prayer book called Maḥzor Aram Soba. This ritual is thought[15] to reflect Eretz Yisrael rather than Babylonian traditions in certain respects, in particular in the prominence of piyyut (see below).[16] In a broad sense, it falls within the "Sephardi" rather than the "Ashkenazi" family of rituals, but has resemblances to non-standard Sephardi rites such as the Catalan[17] rather than to the normative Castilian rite. It also contains some archaic features which it shares with the Siddur of Saadia Gaon and Maimonides' laws of prayer.
The following are some of the differences that stand out in the Aram Soba Maḥzor.
- The order of the Psalms in the morning service is different.
- The following prayers are worded differently (while still preserving the same message of the prayer): Baruch She’Amar, Kaddish, Kedushah, certain blessings of the Amidah, Tachanun, and the Birkat Hamazon (grace after meals).
- The Kaddish has a long set of “messianic references in the second verse” (unlike the Sephardic rite where it is much shorter and the Ashkenazicrite where it is absent).
- Psalm 8 was recited each night before the Evening Service, a practice no longer in place anywhere else.[18]
- There was a tradition to recite 72 different verses from the Bible immediately after the Amidah of the Morning Services.
- There is a tradition, still followed by many Syrian Jews, called Alpha-Beta, which consists of reciting Psalm 119-134 before the Evening Services on Motzaei Shabbat: this also appears in the prayer book of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews.
- There was also an important tradition pertaining to the month of Elul, the month of repentance before the Days of Judgment. At dawn of Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, special Seliḥot prayers were recited. There were different seliḥot prayers, piyyutim, and Biblical verses to be recited for each week of that month. Syrian Jews, like other Sephardim, still recite Seliḥot during the entire month of Elul. However, the seliḥot recited by the Syrian Jews are standardized and do not vary from day to day as do the seliḥot of the Aram Soba Maḥzor.
- On Eichaat night and not in the morning: Syrian Jews still recite it before rather than after Arbit.
- The Baladi Yemenitetradition.
On March 9, 2009, the Sephardic Pizmonim Project posted a scanned PDF of the 1560 Venetian edition of the "Maḥzor Aram Soba" to the "Archives" section of its site. A mirror of the work is also available. For further links to both the 1527 and 1560 editions, see below. In addition, a weekday version of Maḥzor Aram Soba 1560 can be found here.
A facsimile edition has recently been published by Yad HaRav Nissim, using pages from the best surviving copies of the 1527 edition.
Influence of the Sephardic rite
After the immigration of Jews from Spain following the expulsion, a compromise liturgy evolved containing elements from the customs of both communities, but with the Sephardic element taking an ever-larger share. One reason for this was the influence of the Shulchan Aruch, and of the Kabbalistic usages of Isaac Luria, both of which presupposed a Sephardic (and specifically Castilian) prayer text; for this reason a basically "Sephardic" type of text replaced many of the local Near and Middle Eastern rites over the course of the 16th to 19th centuries, subject to a few characteristic local customs retained in each country. (See Sephardic law and customs#Liturgy for more detail.)
In
As details of the oral tradition faded from memory, the liturgy in use came still nearer to the "Livorno" standard. Nevertheless, a distinction persisted between the "Sephardic" rite (based on the Livorno siddurim) and the "Musta'arabi" rite (basically similar, but retaining some features derived from the older tradition).
In the early years of the twentieth century, the "Sephardic" rite was almost universal in Syria. The only exception (in Aleppo) was a "Musta'arabi" minyan at the Central Synagogue of Aleppo, but even their liturgy differed from the "Sephardic" in only a few details such as the order of the hymns on Rosh Hashanah. Some differences between the two main prayer books published in Aleppo in the early twentieth century may reflect Sephardi/Musta'arabi differences,[19] but this is not certain: current Syrian rite prayer books are based on both books.
Use of Piyyut
Approximately 30% of the Mahzor Aram Soba is composed of piyyutim.
The use of
Following the dominance in Syria of the Sephardic rite, which took the Geonic disapproval of piyyut seriously, most of these piyyutim were eliminated from the prayer book. Some of them survive as pizmonim, used extra-liturgically.
Today
The Syrian Musta'arabim have completely assimilated with the Sephardic Jews and are no longer a distinct entity. Certain families identify as "Sephardim" in the narrower sense, and are distinguished by their practice of lighting an extra candle on Hanukkah. (This is said to be in gratitude for their acceptance by the older community. It is not shared with Sephardim in other countries.)
According to Joey Mosseri, a Sephardic historian living in the Syrian Jewish community in
See also
References
- ^ a b Landman, Isaak (2009). Volume 2, The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia. Varda Books. p. 81.
- ^ a b c The New Israel Atlas: Bible to Present Day, Zev Vilnay, Karṭa, Israel Universities Press, 1968, p. 91
- ^ ISBN 0-691-12373-X.
- ISBN 0-948466-11-1.
- ISBN 3-89244-668-7.
- Beth Yoseph, was known as a descendant of the Murishkes.
- ISBN 0-88125-031-7.
- ^ .
- ^ ISBN 0-688-12264-7.
- ^ "Jewish Virtual Library, Jews in the Byzantine Empire". Jewish Virtual Library.
- ^ "Jewish Virtual Library, Jews during the Crusades". Jewish Virtual Library.
- ^ "Jewish Virtual Library, Jews in the Mamluk Sultanate". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
- ISBN 978-0-8143-4110-0.
- ^ Abramovitch, Ilana; Galvin, Seán; Galvin, Seǹ (2002). Jews of Brooklyn. UPNE.
- ^ Ezra Fleischer, Eretz-Israel Prayer and Prayer Rituals: as portrayed in the Geniza documents (Jerusalem 1988) pp 202ff.
- ^ Other shared features are the practice of reciting Psalm 8 at the beginning of the evening service on Shabbat and festivals (Fleischer, above) and the wording of the Modim blessing of the Amidah (B Outhwaite and S Bhayro (eds), From a Sacred Source: Genizah Studies in Honour of Professor Stefan C Reif (Leiden 2011), pp 132 and 135.
- ^ For this, see Maḥzor le-nosaḥ Barcelona minhag Catalonia, Salonica 1527.
- ^ This is thought to have been a feature of the Palestinian minhag: Fleischer, above.
- ^ Seder Olat Tamid (1907) is thought to reflect the Musta'arabi rite, while Seder Olat ha-Shaḥar (1915) is thought to reflect the Sephardic rite: Abraham Ades, Derekh Erets p. 224 ff.
- ^ Goldschmidt, D, "Machzor for Rosh Hashana" p.xxxi. Leo Baeck Institute, 1970.
- ^ R. Nahshon, cited in R. Johanan's commentary on the Sheeltot (B. M. Lewin, Otzar ha-Geonim, Berachot no. 179).
- Pesach and on Shemini Atzeret.
Further reading
- Gilbert, Martin (1969). The Atlas of Jewish History. William Morrow & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-688-12264-7.
- Yassif, Eli (May 20, 2019). The Legend of Safed: Life and Fantasy in the City of Kabbalah. Wayne State University Press.
- Abramovitch, Ilana; Galvin, Seán; Galvin, Seǹ (2002). Jews of Brooklyn. UPNE.
- Ades, Abraham, Derech Ere"tz: Bene Berak, 1990.
- Betesh, David, The Aram Soba Mahzor: New York, 2006.