Diane Joy Schmidt*

Review of Jews and the Arab World

At a time when Arab and Jewish  relations  have  reached a  fever   pitch,   Jews   and   the Arab   World   by  Ron   Duncan Hart traces the many centuries during which Jews and Arabs have  lived  together  peacefully in the Middle East, and illumi- nates how the current period of nationalistic strife, beginning in the 20th century, is an anomaly. This meticulous, scholarly work provides an excellent introduction to this history, and gives us reason to hope for peace in the future by reminding us of this very recent past.
Hart  explains,  “For  1,400 years  Jews  and Arabs  have lived  side  by  side  and  mostly with mutual respect. The oldest center of Jewish life outside of Israel was Baghdad. The greatest Jewish scholars lived there and prepared the ‘Babylonian’ Talmud. In Western Europe, a major center of Jewish life was the  800  years   under   Muslim rule in Spain. When the Muslims were driven out of Spain in 1492, Jews were expelled from that country three months later, mostly joining the Muslim retreat into North Africa and the Ottoman Empire. The Jewish/Arab conflict that started in the twentieth  century is an anomaly, and this book analyzes the issues that transformed that long history of co-existence into the conflict of today, including the four stages of the current conflict and the new developments that have occurred in recent years.”

The story begins with Abraham, born in the city of Ur in what is now Iraq, and his two sons Ishmael and Isaac, and traces the common linguistic and cultural roots of Jews and Arabs. Muslims follow the line of the first-born son, Ishmael, as the father of the Arabs, whose mother Haggar was Egyptian.
“In  contrast,  Jews  follow Isaac, the second born son, who was born of tribal purity, as the father of the Jews.” The Quran affirms that Islam is the religion of the God of Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, and Jacob, that Abraham and Ishmael founded Islam, and together laid the black stone as the cornerstone of the Ka’aba at the center of Mecca. As People of the Book, Jews were accepted in Muslim society, in a minority status.
Across  fourteen  centuries, Hart introduces many historic figures that spark further interest. There is the warrior queen and seer Damia al-Kahina, “the Jewish Queen of the Amazigh.” Born  into  a  Berber  tribe  that had become Jewish, she led a decades-long united tribal resistance to Arab advances during the 7th century. Today,  she is a legendary national heroine of Algerian independence; others revere her as a feminist and sorceress whose knowledge of tribal ways gave her the ability to foresee army advances through communication with birds.
There is the Spanish Jewish traveler and chronicler, Benjamin de Tudela, who witnessed the high status of the Jews of Baghdad in 1168 and described how the Chief Rabbi, mounted on a horse with heralds proclaiming the way, made weekly visits  to  the  Caliph,  where  he was placed on a throne.
In Babylonia, Saadia Gaon translated the Torah into Arabic, “postulated the rational basis of Jewish thought and argued that Jews should accept the rational teachings of Aristotle and Plato in addition to the Torah,” and “prepared  the basis for the later work of Maimonides. Saadia made it legitimate to be Jewish and Arab at the same time.”
In   Muslim Spain, “Cordoba became the most important center of Talmudic studies in Europe. Poetry was a valued art form in the Muslim world, and the Jewish poets of Cordoba excelled.”  Some  of  the  great- est Jewish scholars come from this period: Solomon ibn Gabirol, Judah Halevi, Abraham ben Ezra, and Maimonides.
Following   the  expulsion   of Jews from Spain in 1492, Hart introduces the larger-than-life Doña Gracia Nasi, who helped thousands of Jews settle in the Ottoman Empire.
Many also went to Morocco, where during World War II, the king  refused  to  allow  the  Na- zis to put the Jews of Morocco into camps. While the Jewish population is small today, the Jewish dialects of “Haketía and Judeo-Arabic are still spoken among many, and the traditional Jewish ballads are sung…” The Mimouna Association was created in 2007 by young Muslim students willing to promote and preserve the Jewish-Moroccan heritage.
Finally, Hart relates the painful events of the last one hundred years, and how anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic views have hardened among Arab states, especially among the young people who, unlike their grand- parents, never experienced living together with Jews. 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries after 1948.
He writes how a young population, with no prospects for jobs, creates tremendous unrest. Hope  may  ultimately  come  in the form of greater opportuni- ties for women. “As women’s educational levels increase, fer- tility rates tend to decrease and women’s opportunity to participate in the economy increases,” writes Hart.
Ron  Duncan  Hart,  Ph.D. is the director of the Institute for Tolerance Studies in Santa Fe, and is also former president of the  Jewish  Federation  of  New Mexico. He is a cultural anthropologist with a Ph.D. from Indiana University and postdoctoral work in Jewish studies at the University of Oxford. He worked in South America for twenty years   with   UNICEF, the Ford Foundation and other international agencies, and is a former university vice-president and dean of academic affairs.
Hart   has   awards   from   the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society,   National   Endowment for the Humanities,  the Na- tional Science Foundation, and Fulbright among others. He has written a number of books on Jewish life and cultural history, including Crypto-Judaism: The Long Journey, Judaism, Sep- hardic Jews: History, Religion and People.
In  an  unusual  confluence, Hart, his wife, and his daughter’s interests have influenced and enlivened one another’s. Colombian-born   Gloria   Abella Ballen is an international award-winning artist, and author of The Power of the Hebrew Alphabet. Of their daughter,  Vanessa  Paloma  Elbaz, Ph.D., who has achieved international renown and is now on the University of Cambridge music  faculty,  Hart  writes  that her “research in Morocco on gender and music in Jewish life has opened new areas of understanding” for him.
Jews and the Arab World: Intertwined Legacies by Ron Duncan Hart, 2020, Institute for Tolerance Studies is available from online sources including www.gaonbooks.com.

* Dianne Joy Schmidt is an award-winning journalist and author who writes regularly on Jewish subjects in the American Southwest.

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