Podcast: Matti Friedman on How Jews from Arab Lands Have Shaped Israel

This Week’s Guest: Matti Friedman

In the American Jewish imagination, the story of Israel’s founding is a story of East European pioneers, socialist kibbutzim, and a Jewish state rising from the ashes of the Holocaust. All of these things are indispensable elements of Israel’s early history. But they are not the whole picture.

After the founding of the state, Israel absorbed a massive influx of Jews from Middle Eastern lands who came from a society much different from that of their East European co-religionists. These Jews, known as Mizraḥim, are also a core part of the story of the Jewish state: they now represent over half of Israel’s Jewish population, profoundly shaping the culture, religion, and politics of 21st-century Israel.