The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage

This book explores the experiences of Jewish women from North African and Middle Eastern backgrounds. The variety of well-written essays introduces readers to the worlds of a range of women, mainly non-Orthodox, who grapple with issues of multiple identities as well as of survival. One woman writes of her flight from persecution in Libya in 1967; another of a massacre in Iraq. An Iranian woman living in Los Angeles discusses the continuities in attitudes to children, women and giving birth in traditional Iranian culture, even for those transplanted from their homeland. An Iraqi woman describes how her grandmother arriving in Israel from Iraq in the 1950’s was convinced that the Ashkenazi Jews who now surrounded her were European Christians. A woman born in Petach Tikva to parents who had arrived in the Flying Carpet immigration from Yemen in 1949 relates her experiences growing up as a Yemenite in Israel, where her Ashkenazi peers at school would express surprise that “Mizrachiim” (Eastern Jews) had the capacity to study hard subjects. She describes a “transplanted” traditional Yemenite society in which women were expected to do the domestic work, serve the men on holidays, and rarely came to synagogue, both because of the lack of formal education and because of the culture of passivity. It is fascinating to hear discussions of changes in Orthodoxy in Israel regarding the role of women from a Yemenite perspective. As the writers discuss how they struggle to integrate their heritage into their lives in America, Canada and Israel, this book reminds us of the multiple narratives of Jewish women and of the richness of Jewish culture.