From Neighboring to Bordering: Mizrahi Jews as Mediators, Spies, and Go-Betweens

This lecture traces the genealogy of Mizrahi Jews as cultural and political intermediaries positioned between the Jew and the Arab, Hebrew and Arabic. It explores how they were cast both as bridges between cultures and as agents for maintaining and creating boundaries, serving the Zionist project as translators, mediators, and spies, while often regarded with suspicion. Through two case studies - Mizrahi espionage and Kol Yisrael’s Arabic broadcasts - it examines mediation as a dynamic process encompassing translation, propaganda, and border-crossing, revealing it as a site of tension, creativity, and resistance within the borderlands of Arabness and Mizrahi identity.