Blackness in Israel

Rethinking Racial Boundaries

Uri Dorchin, Gabriella Djerrahian, Uri Dorchin, Gabriella Djerrahian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000258349
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Black Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores contemporary inflections of blackness in Israel and foreground them in the historical geographies of Europe, the Middle East, and North America. The contributors engage with expressions and appropriations of modern forms of blackness for boundary-making, boundary-breaking, and boundary-re-making in contemporary Israel, underscoring the deep historical roots of contemporary understandings of race, blackness, and Jewishness.

Allowing a new perspective on the sociology of Israel and the realm of black studies, this volume reveals a highly nuanced portrait of the phenomenon of blackness, one that is located at the nexus of global, regional, national and local dimensions. While race has been discussed as it pertains to Judaism at large, and Israeli society in particular, blackness as a conceptual tool divorced from phenotype, skin tone and even music has yet to be explored. Grounded in ethnographic research, the study demonstrates that many ethno-racial groups that constitute Israeli society intimately engage with blackness as it is repeatedly and explicitly addressed by a wide array of social actors.

Enhancing our understanding of the politics of identity, rights, and victimhood embedded within the rhetoric of blackness in contemporary Israel, this book will be of interest to scholars of blackness, globalization, immigration, and diaspora.

Part I

Background

Predicaments of Jewishness and blackness

1The image of the black in Jewish culture

An overview

Abraham Melamed

Blessed art thou O God who hast not made me an idolater, and not a barbarian, or a black (negro) or even an Indian.¹

This paper will offer an overview on the image of the black in the Hebraic and Judaic sources, as it evolved in biblical and rabbinic literature, until early modern times. It will focus upon the mechanisms by which an ethno-religious minority group, considered by the dominant majority to be the inferior “other,” identified its own inferior other, in an attempt to enhance its own superior image, and distance itself from those who are of truly inferior humanity. This especially since the Jews themselves were depicted as dark-skinned, or swarthy, by majority cultures; thus, the urge to distance themselves from those who are truly black and present themselves as white.

The dread of blackness

In Western culture, including Jewish culture, there is a primordial associative distinction between white and black as colors. Black is associated with negative phenomena, as something dark, dirty and ugly, thus threatening and repulsive. By contrast, white has a wealth of positive associations with cleanliness, purity (Song of Songs 6: 10), lightness, clarity (Joel 1: 7), thus necessarily beautiful, good and hopeful. The black garment symbolizes mourning and widowhood, or moral baseness (for instance, Babylonian Talmud (BT) Kiddushin 40a; Bamidbar Rabbah 9: 42). White, on the other hand, represents purity and virginity, hence is proper for a bride at the wedding canopy and for Hassidic Jews on Shabbat and holidays. The black-plumed raven, not to mention the black cat, are signs of evil and impending doom, while the white dove represents peace and hope. These are just a few examples; There is an enormous reservoir of examples, from various cultures and periods – since antiquity until modernity, attesting to the power of this color symbolism (Melamed, 2003).

Thus, activities considered to be bestial, such as sexual intercourse, should be performed only in the darkness of night (Ruth Rabbah 2: 17; BT Pesahim, 112b), hidden from public view. In the midrash on the sin of Ham (Bereshit Rabbah, 36–37), the locus classicus for the Jewish and Christian treatment of the image of the black, the punishment of Canaan for castrating his father Noah, is said to be the change of his skin color to black. This is explained by the assertion that the deed prevented Noah from having sexual intercourse, which is supposed to take place out of the public view, i.e. in darkness. The punishment, which fitted the crime, blackened the skins of the sinner and his descendants forever. Blackness is described as a punishment for a mortal sin and is directly associated with sexual depravity.

Likewise, the name of Lilith, the archetypical wicked women, is derived from the Hebrew word for night, Lailah, while the harlot seducing the innocent lad in Proverbs 7:9, does so in the darkness of night. Shakespeare describes his black mistress thus: “…as black as hell, as dark as night” (Sonnet 147). Here we can find already the connection between racial and gender stereotypes, which enhanced each other.

This mechanism of color symbolism is a byproduct of the primordial fear from the dangers of darkness, and the hope the light of day brings with it. This cluster of associations was superimposed by people of lighter skin color on those of a darker shade, in order to establish their superiority. Hellenistic and Roman authors directly identified black skin color with the darkness of night. Blacks, usually niger in Latin, were called nocticolor, i.e. having the color of night, or noctis alumnus, the adopted son of the night (Snowden 1970, Thompson 1989). Africa, the native continent of the blacks, was associated with the blackness of night. According to a story in BT Tamid 32b, the elders of the Negev tried to persuade Alexander the Great not to invade Africa, since it lies “beyond the mountains of darkness.” The Roman Historian Pliny called these mountains Mons Nomine Niger, a dangerous region, difficult to cross (Dan, 1969: 19). This mechanism was also used by people of so-called “swarthy” skin color in order to prove their superiority over the true blacks and associate themselves with those who are truly white. The Jewish case is a typical example of this phenomenon.

As a consequence, black skin and the physical features that generally go with it – kinky hair, a broad nose and flashy lips – were considered ugly, thus evil and frightening, while light skin and the hair and body features that generally go with it (preferably blonde hair and blue eyes), were considered beautiful, even divine. Greco-Roman culture saw a link between physical beauty and moral perfection. The same attitude can be found in rabbinic culture. A person described as “white,” would be necessarily described as beautiful, good and cultured, while the “black” would be described in opposite terms: ugly, evil, and primitive. The proportion of melanin in his/her skin cells became the touchstone of the individual’s human quality.

It is no accident that in most so-called “white” cultures, blacks were mostly designated by their skin color: “Ethiopian” in Greek means one whose skin shines. They were called niger in Latin, “negro” in English, noir in French, schwarz in German and Yiddish, and so forth. Even now, when the old Anglo-American “negro” was abandoned, due to the negative connotations attached to it, and replaced by “black,” which does not have these connotations, and even acquired a positive meaning in contemporary American culture (“black is beautiful!”), but still designates the same thing. Although terms relating to the black’s original geographic location, such as “African,” or “Afro-American,” are also current now. Skin color apparently became the main mean of identification because it was so convenient.

The case of Hebrew is different; It did not designate the blacks by skin color, but by ethno-geographic location. The biblical word for a black cushi, which has been used until modern times, means the descendants of Cush, son of Ham, son of Noah, and their land was called Cush, after him, apparently somewhere in Africa. His skin color is not even mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, nor were the original connotation of the name negative. Only much later, in rabbinic culture, was cushi unambiguously linked with blackness, and acquired the negative connotations that have remained with it ever since. Hence, the term cushi mostly disappeared from the vocabulary of contemporary Hebrew speakers, and the word shahor, i.e. black, replaced it. A once popular Hebrew nursery tune, “Cushi little doggy,” about a black dog with this dubious pet name, is no longer sung, and the once popular children story “Ten little Cushim,” is no longer told. Belatedly, Hebrew went over to the terminology of Western cultures, and now designate a person of African ancestry by skin color – with all its negative primeval connotations. However, in contemporary culture these associations are changing, black as a color is undergoing a gradual rehabilitation.

The swarthy Jew and his black counterpart

The same psychological processes that operated on the image of the black other in other cultures, operated on the Jews. Frequently similar negative traits were attributed to them. The Roman Historian Tacitus famously presents the Jews as wallowing in superstition, sexual promiscuity and idleness. He describes them as ignorant and base (Iudaeorum mos absurdus sordidsque). Ironically, the Latin sordes, which indicates baseness here, later came to signify a dark complexion (Stern 1980). These are the very faults attributed to blacks for generations, even by Jews. Particularly prominent are the superior sexual powers that both Jews and blacks were said to possess, making them fearsome competitors for the ruling white male. Paradoxically, the inferior other, whether woman, blacks, gentile or Jew – depending on the designator, was always identified as having sexual drive more potent than the one who considered himself superior, thus had to be contained and removed.

Moreover, a European tradition, dating back to the Middle Ages, maintained that Jews were semi-black, or swarthy. Christian iconography frequently shows the contrast between the black figure of the synagogue and the white one of the Church (Gilman 1986). Since Satan was depicted as black, and the Jews were perceived to be his allies, they were also depicted as black. What was seen as their physical ugliness (the “long” nose, the “flat” foot, the “hairy” body, and so on), were considered to be merely component of their “blackness” (Gilman 1994; Eilberg-Schwartz 1992). As early as Hellenistic literature, the Jews were described as a band of lepers (having defective skin), who were expelled from Egypt (which means black, since Egypt was son of Ham who became black, according to the Midrashic legend). This culminated in the Nazi race theory, which claimed that the Jewish “race” was created by miscegenation with blacks during the Hellenistic period, hence their similar swarthiness, ugly physiognomy and dubious character traits (Gilman 1992).

Under such circumstances, the Jewish other strived to distinguish himself from the black other, as different thus superior. Within the “nonwhite” framework of otherness, there evolved a hierarchic order of the others other.² The black was identified as their inferior other, in order to separate themselves from him, and show their own relative proximity, if not superiority, to the fair-skinned ruling group: they had, after all, received a unique revelation, and therefor theirs is an older, more developed culture.

That being so, the Jew always strived to identify himself with the dominant white male, even to portray himself as his superior, inter alia, to maintain the distinction between himself and his own other, the inferior black. There is a tense ambivalence here between feelings of superiority and inferiority. Even the rabbinic scholar, with his sense of superiority as the one chosen by divine providence, identified he who is by nature a master, as “German” (Bereshit Rabbah, 76: 4) i.e. a white European male. He is full of admiration for the handsome sons of Japhet (identified by the sages with the Greeks): “Japhet and his sons are all white (levanim) and handsome (yafim)” (Rabbi Eliezer 1963: 830).³ Being ‘white’ and ‘handsome’ are presented as equivalents. It is emphasized that they are all handsome, no exception. Such pronouncements stand out sharply against the rabbinic prohibition to praise the gentiles for their beauty (BT Avodah Zarah, 19b–20a). The very fact that such utterances were strictly forbidden, only proves how widespread they were in reality; one does not prohibit a nonexistent phenomenon.

An outstanding example appears in the medieval Jewish anti-Christian polemic literature. The very fact that the authors found it necessary to confront, again and again, the Christian claims that Jews were dark-skinned, and therefor ugly, in comparison with the fair and handsome Christians, shows how much the subject bothered them. They too seem to have accepted as an empirical fact that Jews had darker skins and internalized the notion that dark was ugly and degenerate in comparison with the beauty and goodness of being white. The great exegete Rashi interpreted the verse in Isaiah 52: 14: “As many were astonished at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men,” as follows:

When many nations looked upon them in their abasement and said, why is the appearance [of Israel] thus marred, they saw how much darker (hashuch to’aram) they were than other people, which our own eyes behold.

Rashi’s explanation is theological; the darkening of the Jews skin color was part of the punishment they suffered in exile as a result of their disobedience to God.

The assumption that the Jews were originally white and handsome finds different forms of expression in the course of Jewish cultural history. The desirable woman in the Song of S...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Background: Predicaments of Jewishness and blackness
• Part II Blackness in the Jewish Israeli society
• Part III Contested blackness
• Part IV Blackness and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
• Index