לצאת מבלי שוב? זיכרון והיסטוריוגרפיה בחברה הישראלית

In the last decade, new trends in Israeli public discourse have sought to rediscover the histories of the Jews in the Muslim world. Although a much-welcomed development, such a trend seems increasingly interested in solidifying the Zionist narrative and offers no alternative to age-old existing narratives. A comparison to the scholarly field that has developed over the past decade outside of Israel allows us to challenge some of the assumptions inherent in the narrative promoted by the State of Israel. In light of recent findings, we would like to offer a more inclusive research alternative that looks beyond the paradigms of the “lachrymose narrative.” We argue that the new scholarship reveals that Jews never existed in total isolation. Interactions with the general society were never completely positive or negative, but they always existed. In societies with many minorities, the matrix of relations was even more complex and included the relations between not only Jews and the majority society but also those between Jews and other minority groups. In addition, the colonial context is of great significance, because it helps to explain differences in the legal status of Jews and Muslims, different traditions of education and language, and the like, all of which vary from place to place. We propose, therefore, as researchers of Jewish histories in the Muslim world, to adopt a different position than is prevalent in Israel today and to call for the promotion of a historiographic understanding that combines the multiple perspectives of regional space in the discussion of Jews in the East, the shared space within which we live.