'Dad Works, Mom Makes a Living: Life Stories of Mizrahi-Jews and Arab-Israelis in the ‘First Mobility Generation’

Abstract

This article explores the life stories of Mizrahi and Arab men and women, born in the 1950s and living in two Jerusalem neighborhoods. Most of the interviewees were born in poverty, but during the 1970s managed to enter middle class professions.

The mother figure in the stories is revered for the sacrifices she makes, although she is portrayed as a static figure rooted in a traditional community. Her work outside the home is referred to as just ‘making a living’. Mizrahi and Arab women in particular express a negative attitude towards their mother’s ‘self’. In contrast, the father figure is—perhaps surprisingly—portrayed as a hero. Against the backdrop of life’s difficulties, the father appears as a clever survivor or a romantic who retains his inner dignity. The father is a role model for the narrator’s ‘self’.

Structural similarities are to be found between the Mizrahi and Arab stories, with gender-related differences. The Arab and Mizrahi narratives have embedded within them elements of Western hegemonic individualism, though they also construct new ethno-class identities that resemble Afro- and Latin-American ‘minority cultures of mobility’.