JEWISH CHICAGO
‘Wrong Kind of Jew,’ right kind of book
Aaron B. Cohen
January/February 2023

Many who oppose Jewish self-determination distort and seek to delegitimize Jewish memory, history, and identity by calling Israel a white, European, colonial, settler state. The assertion is antisemitic, given the millennia-long Jewish history of persecution and “othering” in Europe, which culminated in racist genocide. Hen Mazzig, a young Israel activist, gives the lie to this pernicious misrepresenting of Jews as white Europeans. He is Mizrahi (Eastern in Hebrew), whose parents were persecuted and expelled from Tunisia and Iraq. In his new book The Wrong Kind of Jew: A Mizrahi Manifesto (Post Hill Press), Mazzig writes personally and passionately about Mizrahi identity. His book is a cri de coeur, a call to acknowledge the collective experience and social position of half of Israel’s population: first- and second-generation Israeli Jews from North Africa; Arabia; the Middle East; and Western, Central, and South Asia. READ MORE