Ethnic fusion in migration: The new Russian–Mizrahi pop-culture hybrids in Israel

Orientalist attitudes among Russian Jews

The very term ethnicity carries an Orientalist meaning in Israel and is mainly used with reference to the Jewish immigrants from Islamic countries. The notion of Mizrahim should be understood in relation to that of Ashkenazim – Jews of European and North American origins who belong to the upper strata of the Israel society and are not identified as ethnic (Shoshana, 2011). Like whiteness in other cultures, their ethnicity is invisible, unmarked and perceived as normal. Due to their pale skin and cultural resemblance to Ashkenazim, Russian immigrants are not identified with any ethnic culture, since ethnicity is perceived more in the Mizrahi, non-White context (Lomsky-Feder et al., 2005).

A down-looking and patronizing perception of the Jews descending from the Arab countries has laid the groundwork for ethnic power relations in the Israeli society since its foundation, serving a justification for Ashkenazi political and cultural hegemony. Even before they came to Israel, and more so after the mass immigration wave in the 1950s, Mizrahi Jews were identified with the Arabic cultures of the East and considered inferior and backward. As a result of their peripheral social and geographic locations in the Israeli society, the initial educational and economic disadvantage among Mizrahim is still lingering in the second and third generations (Smooha, 2008), along with the rapid formation of the Mizrahi middle classes. In the immigration wave from the FSU in the 1990s, a million Russian speakers arrived in Israel, characterized by high rates of higher education, secularism and belonging to the ranks of urban intelligentsia. In the local ethnic hierarchy, most Russian immigrants have been deemed as potentially belonging to the dominant Ashkenazi group (Al-Haj, 2004).

Yet, reflecting their occupational downgrading and low incomes, many Russian immigrants have also settled in Israel’s peripheral towns, where the two ethnocultural communities often crossed paths and competed for scant jobs and other local resources. The 1990s and early 2000s were marked by clear ethnic tensions and mutual negative stereotyping between veteran Mizrahi and recent Russian immigrants (Remennick, 2007).

Most social research on the first-generation Russian immigrants in Israel assumes their Ashkenazi belonging and attributes them with the Orientalist view of Mizrahim (and Palestinians who will be not analyzed here), ostensibly exported from the FSU to Israel (Fialkova and Yelenevskaya, 2004; Shumsky, 2004). Other researchers sketch a more nuanced portrait of Russian Israelis as sharing some Orientalist ideas but not acting upon them in their daily contacts with Mizrahi Israelis (Gershenson, 2005; Lomsky-Feder et al., 2005). Idzinski’s (2014) study has challenged popular stereotypes of Russian-Mizrahi relations: young immigrants of the 1990s, who grew up in Israel’s primarily Mizrahi-populated small-town periphery, displayed greater identification with Mizrahim than Ashkenazim. For many young Russian speakers, adopting a Mizrahi style in behaviour, dress, music tastes etc. has become first a survival strategy and then a preferred symbol of belonging, vis-à-vis Ashkenaziness construed by them as cold, foreign and patronizing. Daily interactions between young Russian immigrants and native Mizrahim (at school, in the military, in colleges and workplaces) at times bred animosity but also curiosity and attraction, leading to a sizeable share of intercultural relationships and marriages (Remennick, 2009).

The present article continues this new line of thinking about Mizrahi leanings of young Russian-speaking immigrants; it points to the emergence of a new hybrid phenomenon of Mizrahi Russianness or Mediterranean Russianness. This Mizrahization is not only a result of class-status proximity between the two groups or their co-residence in Israel’s geographic periphery. It also reflects their joint cultural activities in the urban public spaces of trendy clubs and bars in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that has recently led to Mizrahi entrepreneurs and Russian-speaking cultural entrepreneurs jointly producing events and festivals. Moreover, this hybrid combination of Russianness and Mizrahiness stems from the desire of the Russian protest leaders to learn from the experience of the Mizrahi protest.

Israeli sociologist Sammy Smooha (2008) juxtaposes the immigrant trajectories of Mizrahi and FSU Jews concluding that the latter have been much more successful both in their economic and social mobility and maintaining their ethnocultural identity. Nevertheless, I found that, for some leaders of the nascent Russian ethnic mobilization, the Mizrahi protest movements are a source of inspiration and even imitation. In the eyes of young Russian immigrants, whose Jewishness is often questioned by the Orthodox establishment, both the ethnic pride and claims for a national belonging displayed by Mizrahim are strong and authentic. The ethnic mobilization of young Russian activists has emerged in the context of (now challenged) Ashkenazi hegemony and reflects, paradoxically, their desire to both resist and resemble them due to common Eastern European roots.

In the interviews, some Generation 1.5 activists mentioned that they often discuss their organizational ideas with their Mizrahi friends whom they met in social movements or at the university. These examples of Russian–Mizrahi intercultural bridging are especially interesting given the long-standing hostilities and mutual mistrust between the two communities during the 1990s and early 2000s. Given that three generations of Mizrahi Jews have gained considerable experience in resisting the Israeli establishment and have achieved significant upward mobility in many social arenas, their protest know-how can be valuable for the young Russian Israeli leaders.

Recent discussions on Orientalism and the ethnic conflict between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim in Israel gave rise to the notion of Mediterranean Option (Hochberg, 2011). This hybrid concept offers an escape from the dichotomy between East (Mizrahi) and West (Ashkenazi) in Israel and serves as an alternative frame of reference. It is no coincidence that both cultural protagonists examined in this article employed, albeit in different ways, the term Mediterraneanness. In her interview, the belly dancer Julia Kislev talked about the ‘Levantism of Kahanoff’ whom she admires and reads, and the pop-culture avatar rusiya yam-tichonit (Ksenia Sowa) chose to call herself Mediterranean, not Mizrahi. Thus, the new hybridity that is breaking the dichotomy between East and West and between Mizrahim and Russians does so, among other things, by referring to the Mediterranean Option that is ‘a dream or utopia not reflective of an existing political reality … Mediterraneanism promotes a particular politics of forgetting and exclusion under the disguise of pluralism and inclusion’ (Hochberg, 2011: 57). Regardless of the veracity and authenticity of this concept, the deployment of the Mediterranean trope enabled Mizrahi genres and styles’ transition from the periphery (geographic and cultural) to the centre of popular Israeli culture, as was the case of Mediterranean music becoming mainstream (Hochberg, 2011). Over the last decade, Eastern music has moved from the periphery to the center of the music scene and became a major actor in the struggle for the definition of Israeliness in the field of popular culture (Regev and Seroussi, 2004). Thus, this Russian–Mizrahi hybridity can be seen as Russian immigrants’ adoption of the dominant trends in Israeli popular culture.

In the Israeli ethnic hierarchy, Russian immigrants are endowed with whiteness, apparent similarity to Ashkenazy elites and European cultural capital, all highly valued in the Israel society (Lomsky-Feder et al., 2005). Contrary to them, the Mizrahi Israelis share the valuable resources of nativity, authenticity and proper Jewish identity (Lomsky-Feder and Leibovitz, 2010). In the context of nascent Russian protest movement, these resources are deemed highly desirable and may advance Russian-speaking entrepreneurs within the field of popular culture in Israel.

Cultural entrepreneurs from Russian-speaking Generation 1.5

I shall now focus on young Russian Israeli cultural leaders who are musicians, DJs, organizers of ethnic-style events and parties, bloggers and poets, who create video-clips and participate in TV shows and news programs, all for the purpose of promoting their visibility and claims for social inclusion. Their cultural activism (Özden and Kuryel, 2010) and/or entrepreneurship (Anheier and Raj Isar, 2008) emerge as vehicles for protest by these interwoven cultural means. In this respect, these Generation 1.5 activists can be described as cultural and ethnic entrepreneurs (or cultural brokers) in the local civic field. These cultural brokers engage in media coverage, advertising and producing events, often learning from other ethnic entrepreneurs, including leaders of the recent Mizrahi cultural revival movement. This nascent cooperation hinges on their shared goal of maintaining their identity (Russian and Mizrahi) vis-à-vis Israel’s cultural mainstream. Moreover, they often share the same urban space in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and hold their (sometimes joint) events in trendy, renovated bars and clubs.

Linguistically and socially, Generation 1.5ers are located at the intersection between their home and host cultures (Remennick, 2003). After living in Israel for 15–20 years and sharing common experiences and narratives, young Russian-speaking adults apparently feel the need to connect and express their specific forms of activism and creativity. These young adults often construe themselves and their groups as ethnic elites that play a special role in leading the majority of their peers to a better place in Israeli society.

The theory of ethnic fusion and hybridity

The principal theoretical perspective guiding the present article is the theory of cultural fusion and hybridity in the context of social construction of ethnicity in migration. I propose a new theoretical concept, ethnic fusion, and explain its symbolic mechanism. Arguably, the tropes of crossover, fusion, and hybridism are very central to the post-modern outlook – a natural development in an era marked by increasingly frequent and intense cultural encounters of all kinds in the framework of global migration. Cultural fusion concept (Croucher and Kramer, 2017) and the theory of cultural hybridity (Burke, 2009; Smith and Leavy, 2008) serve as theoretical anchors of this article.

Cultural hybridization refers to ‘the ways in which forms become separated from existing practices and recombine with new forms in new practices’ (Pieterse, 2015: 64).

The intermixture makes the hybridity unique. Those who occupy hybrid spaces benefit from having an understanding of both cultures (Smith and Leavy, 2008). Thus, Russian cultural entrepreneurs who can easily cross the lines in a world of amorphous borders have power and advantage. Hybridity is about creativity and imagination; it is used by the young immigrants to promote and legitimize their culture of origin.

According to Croucher and Kramer (2017), cultural fusion is the process through which newcomers to a culture adopt the behaviors of the dominant culture while maintaining elements of their minority identity in order to successfully function in the dominant culture. During this process, the dominant culture is also transformed as a result of the introduction of the newcomer cultures. Cultural fusion therefore represents this blending of learning new behaviors/traits and maintaining old behaviours. Contrary to the assimilation outlook, which deems minority cultural continuity counterproductive for their social inclusion and mobility, this theory contends that immigrants are able to function well by actively fusing minority and host activities, modes and styles. Intercultural transformation is facilitated by participation by host and minority actors in joint communication fields.

Viewed in comparative terms, the hybridized pop cultures (especially music) of different immigrant and minority groups in the world, such as South Asian immigrant festivals (Brettel and Nibbs, 2009) and African American Rap music in the US (Krims, 2000), Rai music of Algerian migrants in France and US (Swedenburg, 2001), Arab–Jewish music in Israel (Saada-Ophir, 2006) and Black music popular among Israeli–Ethiopian youth (Ratner, 2015) – all seem to manifest the same phenomenon of challenging cultural hegemony and seeking empowerment by constructing fluid and multifaceted identities. I now introduce and explore several empirical cases (individuals and events) that exemplify these emerging cultural hybrids.

Belly dancer Julia Kislev

Julia emigrated from Crimea to Israel in 1992 at the age of 25 with a degree in graphic design and worked as an illustrator. She is now 48 and has an adult daughter. She immigrated as a young woman and, formally, does not belong to Generation 1.5 (who immigrate during their school years). But in the past, she was a member of the community-based association Fishka, and now is active in Generation 1.5, and Humorless Russian Women and their Friends and is a central figure of the ethnic revival among young Russian Israelis.

Thirteen years ago, she started learning belly dancing and went on to become a dancer and teacher of this Levantine–Arab dance tradition. From 2007 to 2009 she created and produced Stakanchik (‘small glass’ in Russian), a line of parties and live music at the Lima Bar in Tel Aviv that promoted Russian culture in an Israeli urban milieu. Julia produced various cultural events aimed at bridging the social gaps in a multicultural society. In the interview, she described her attraction to Mizrahi culture:

Very soon I was attracted to the Mizrahi culture in Israel. I started learning belly dancing and fell in love with it, engaging in it professionally. For me belly dancing is part of making a statement that we live in the Middle East. I think it’s important. It makes our presence in the region more organic…

Julia Kislev is not the only Russian-speaking belly dancer in Israel. There are several women who emigrated from the FSU and became successful belly dancers in Israel. One of whom is Ella Greenbaum who performs at cultural events held by contemporary Israeli poetry group Ars Poetica that is at the intellectual forefront of the new Mizrahi protest. Russian-immigrant belly dancers have also performed at parties organized by young Russian-cultural brokers, e.g. the Mimouna (post-Passover Moroccan–Jewish holiday) organized by Fishka in 2013, or the March 8 Party (International Women’s Day) organized by Humorless Russian Women and their Friends in 2018; they performed in video-clips shot by the Russian-speaking rave band Orgonite and Mediterranean Russian Girl. In other words, belly dancing, which is a powerful Eastern ethnic symbol, is becoming increasingly widespread and accepted in the new fusion culture of Russian speakers in Israel. Russian-speaking artists and cultural entrepreneurs are adopting belly dancing, which they identify with the Eastern tradition construed as exotic and spicy. It is worthy of note that the origins of belly dancing in Israel are Arabic, not Jewish, and it was primarily associated with the Arab culture. However, it is becoming increasingly more common to book a belly dancer for Mizrahi Jewish weddings, bridal henna parties, and other events and ceremonies. Moreover, belly dancing in its new context (Israeli or Western) is often infused with a feminist connotation of women’s empowerment that differs from its original meaning in the Arab culture. This new meaning constitutes a hybrid phenomenon in its own right.

Belly dancing is becoming a key Middle Eastern icon in the West and very popular among local women. American and European women have adopted belly dancing as a symbol of personal and sexual liberation, a meaning that did not originally exist in the Arab world (Shay and Sellers-Young, 2003). This can be interpreted as another expression of Orientalism, exoticizing of the East as ultimate ‘other’. The Eastern ‘other’ became a source of inspiration by means of artistic and expressive forms; images created from this perspective are often imbued with stereotypical and exotic attributes that are consistently replicated. Western belly dancing challenges the Orientalist frame, but at the same time validates the Western ideologies and aesthetics at the very core of Orientalism. As Dox (2006) pointed out, Western belly dancing is dancing around Orientalism.

In this respect, the phenomenon of Russian-speaking belly dancers performing at events, parties, and in video-clips targeting young audiences, constitutes a widespread Orientalist symbol while at the same time overcoming Orientalism. This phenomenon thus exemplifies a hybrid Russian–Mizrahi culture, indicating that Russian speakers in Israel belong to the Middle Eastern vibe and space.

Mediterranean Russian girl

Ksenia Sowa emigrated from Moscow to Israel when she was 15. She is 31 and works as an art director at an advertising agency. She has invented a media persona by the name of Mediterranean Russian Girl (russiya yam-tichonit in Hebrew), and is a colorful figure on the immigrant cultural scene. Her brand fuses Russian and Middle Eastern features both in her job (where she has produced covers for Russian versions of popular Mizrahi songs) and in her online avatar (Facebook, video-clips, blogs, etc.).

Ksenia has created a Mediterranean Russian persona that looks like a Russian fairytale princess fused with extravagant Mizrahi elements. She fashions a long braid, wears a traditional Russian headscarf, a white dress with a folk red necklace, on top of which she sports a massive Mizrahi-style gold chain and chai medallion. In numerous media interviews she recounted that when she first came to Israel she was ashamed of her Russian accent until she came to the conclusion that people should be proud of their roots and origins, and that it is actually her Russian accent that makes her unique. This motivated her towards creativity and innovation. In an interview for the daily Haaretz (Elias, 2017) she said:

When I first came to Israel the language was very difficult for me. I was afraid to speak and make mistakes. At some point I started asking myself, why should I be ashamed of who I am? I immigrated at a relatively late age, so why shouldn’t I have an accent? Once I reached all these conclusions with myself, I stopped being ashamed – and the whole thing started from there… When I came to Israel I didn’t know enough about this country, I didn’t know what to expect. We settled in Petah Tikva [a Tel Aviv suburb] and it was a culture shock. I come home and my neighbors are listening to Lior Narkis [well-known Mizrahi singer]. That’s the culture and you start learning it.

In the following, I depict a video-clip about Mizrahi cooking that Ksenia has posted on her Facebook page. As in her other clips, she is sitting against a backdrop of an Eastern-style wall carpet of the kind some Russian immigrants brought with them to Israel. Hanging from the top right corner of the carpet is a palm-shaped hamsa amulet – a Mizrahi good luck symbol. Popular Russian music is playing in the background, accompanied by a traditional Russian instrument, a balalaika. Ksenia, dressed in a colorful apron, is sitting at a table near a stove on which there is a lidded pot and various ingredients. ‘Dear viewers, hello. Today we’re going to visit Mediterranean Russian Girl’s cookery corner, this time with a recipe from my mom’s kitchen. Let’s begin with the spices. We’ll take some hawayej [Yemenite spice blend], turmeric and ras-el-hanout [North-African spice mix]’. She adds these hot spices to the pot and says in Russian: ‘Raz, dvah, tree [one, two, three – the word raz resembling the first word of the spice mix, ras], add some zhug [Yemenite hot sauce] and, of course, a spoonful of hummus, and fortify it all with hot pepper’. She picks up a hot green pepper, breaks it in two and tosses it into the pot. ‘We’ll garnish it with fresh coriander, and most important – we’ll close it all off with some arak [local hard liquor] to open up the flavors’, and she pours a bottle of arak into the pot. Then she tosses all the remaining spices into the pot, and stirs the concoction with a large spoon. ‘Now we’ll put on the lid, give it a good shake, and cook it on medium heat for one hour’… An hour later, ‘It’s time to check the result’. She removes the lid, revealing thick Russian beetroot soup – borscht… She swears in Russian ‘Blyad! It came out borscht again’.

This humorous video constitutes a hybrid artifact that can be interpreted in different ways. A Russian girl dressed in traditional Russian costume, with traditional Russian music playing in the background, is making a Mizrahi dish, admixing exaggerated quantities of ingredients and spices that are identified with Mizrahi cooking – spicy herbs, hummus, hot peppers and arak. Everything is cooked together, and in the end we discover that the pot contains traditional Russian borscht instead of the intended Mizrahi dish. The clip presents a portrayal of the ethnic stereotypes of Mizrahim and Russians in Israel in the context of food, music, and speech. However, more than anything else it focuses on food, which is one of the central aspects of ethnic identity. Ethnic Mizrahi food is magically transformed into an iconic Russian food. Hiding behind the protagonist’s adopted Mizrahi–Levantine identity is her true Russian identity, which is ultimately revealed. This ethnic fusion is created by mixing ethnic stereotypes, exaggeration, mockery and laughter.

Yet, according to Leveen (1996: 29), ‘ethnic jokes can not only be not offensive, they can serve as an important strategy for defining ethnicity positively, and can provide a welcome means for asserting pride in one’s ethnic identity’. This aptly describes the humoristic video-clip described above: ‘The message being relayed by the ethnic joke-teller is that: “I/My group am/is different from you/your group, although the differences may be laughed at, and we may laugh together despite the differences”’ (1996: 52). The clip’s social audience, which shares the ethnic joke about Mizrahi and Russian food, potentially constitutes a community of laughter and sense of ‘we-ness’ in laughing with thousands of others who have already seen and even commented positively on the clip. Thus, this ethnic humor video-clip serves as a conflict-soothing mechanism that constitutes a hybrid mode of communication and conciliation.

Russian Mimouna

Food–taste and smell, tangible signs of ethnicity – play an important role in the encounters between immigrants and locals in the host society. As a universal human need, cooking and food-sharing rituals also help bridge social gaps and broker friendships between neighbors and coworkers belonging to different cultural traditions (Rhys-Taylor, 2013).

When Vova Tashaev (33), a professional chef (who now lives in Ukraine and owns a successful chain of Mizrahi cuisine restaurants) joined Fishka club in 2013, a decision was made to open an intercultural cooking workshop named ‘NOT in MY Grandma’s Kitchen’. He saw this workshop as a vivid expression of Fishka’s intercultural mission:

I see myself as a chef and culinary entrepreneur, a sort of cultural broker… so this workshop aimed at breaking the barriers between Russian, European, and Middle Eastern culinary traditions. Cooking and tasting each other’s dishes is the easiest way to bring strangers together, foster interest and mutual trust.

At nightfall on the last day of Passover 2013, about 100 guests gathered in the courtyard of the Fishka building in Tel Aviv, young Russian immigrants joined by their native-Israeli friends and local residents. At tables and ovens in the yard, cooking workshop participants made mofletta and traditional Russian blini (blintzes), and served both dishes to the guests. Everyone could see that the two dishes, which come from very distant Jewish cultures (Russian and Moroccan), are in fact very similar in appearance and flavor. Vova supervised the cooking workshop. A variety of Russian, Israeli mainstream and Mizrahi-style music poured from the loudspeakers. Augmenting the Mizrahi flavor, the evening concluded with a belly dance performance by Julia Kislev, a former Fishka staff member. Reflecting on the nature of this successful cultural project, Vova said:

I think the Mimouna party reflects the very core of Fishka’s vision and purpose: demonstrating that Russian Israelis are an indispensable part of the Israeli social fabric. The Russian community that was known for its inward orientation is opening its doors wide to invite everyone to join us on our own turf, to try our food and compare it with your own…

Israeli Novy God

The Gregorian New Year (Novy God in Russian) was probably the most popular holiday in the FSU, and still is in Russia and other post-Soviet countries. As in the rest of the world, it is celebrated on the night between 31 December and 1 January, marking the transition to the New Year at midnight. Even after 20 years in Israel, Novy God remains the favorite holiday for Russian-speaking immigrants, despite difficulties in celebrating it (Fialkova and Yelenevskaya, 2013). In Israel, where Orthodox Judaism is the official majority religion, the Gregorian New Year has a precarious status due to its historic association with Christmas. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is celebrated in September, while 31 December holds merely administrative significance, a reluctant nod to the outside, non-Jewish world.

In December 2015, the leaders of the online community Generation 1.5 (Alex Rif and others) came up with a new initiative – Israeli Novy God. The goal was to introduce this ‘Russian minority holiday’ to the general Israeli public in its genuine, family-based forms by hosting Israeli guests at Novy God parties in immigrants’ homes. After two years of pilot projects (including a popular video-clip dispelling local Israeli misperceptions of this holiday), on New Year’s Eve 2017 the following advertisement was posted:

Feast in Tahrir: Celebrating Israeli Novy God Together, from Morocco to Siberia. Join us at the wild New Year party that weaves together Russian and Mizrahi-Jewish cultures – lighting the 8th Hanukkah candle by the decorated New Year Tree… On the program: New Year stories, jokes and toasts by our one and only host – Mediterranean Russian Girl – followed by a live performance by rave band Orgonite! DJ Evgeni Chertkov with musical fusions from Siberia in the East, via Caucasus, Russia and Ukraine, and all the way to Morocco in the West!

The event was hosted by the earlier-mentioned Ksenia Sowa, or Mediterranean Russian Girl, who was dressed as Snegurochka (The Snow Maid of Russian folklore) in a blue-and-silver frock, with a long blond braid. She invited the organizer Alex Rif to the stage.

Alex: I first want to say goodbye to the old year 2016. For me it was a real breakthrough in promoting Russian–Soviet culture in Israel, letting it escape the walls of our homes and reach out to our Israeli friends, becoming part of our rich cultural tapestry…!

Orgonite was founded by a group of Russian-speaking youths who grew up in Akko, and has recently become a well-known and successful band. The band’s style may be defined as Russian-Middle Eastern rave. They combine Hebrew, Arabic, and Russian in their songs. The repeated chant, ‘Yalla, hamsa in the air’ erupts during a performance from a mixture of dreadlocks and colorful braids adorning the heads of the three band members, with an iridescent Adidas logo on the colorful sports outfits they habitually wear when they perform. They recently produced some video-clips of new adaptations, e.g. of a well-known Russian song ‘We’re Having Fun’ that they sing in Russian, or an adaptation of the song in Arabic ‘Ya Habibi Yaani’. Their clips feature a mishmash of visual ethnic symbols, including a belly dancer, Arabic music accompanied by a darbuka drum, Russian grandmothers with pots of buckwheat porridge, as well as elements Russian, Arab and Mizrahi music. Band member Kartashov explains: ‘It’s the Soviet mutation that occurred in the Middle East. We represent Russians who were born there, came here, grew up with their Soviet and Israeli background in the two eras, the pre-digital and the digital. We’re simply showing what’s happened with the change of the environment, the times, and weather conditions’ (Averbuch, 2016).

This event can be interpreted as an attempt at cultural translation, which is one of the forms of hybridity (Burke, 2009), i.e. introducing traditional symbols and practices of New Year celebrations among Russian–Soviet immigrants to native Israelis. It began with an introduction of Russian words and images associated with Novy God: the decorated evergreen tree, Ded Moroz, Snegurochka, traditional dishes and drinks, the order and forms of toasting. These elements of the Russian cultural repertoire are intentionally intertwined with the elements of local tradition – celebrating the end of Hanukkah with a Hebrew blessing, lighting the candles and singing. The fusion between various cultural symbols in terms of appearance, language and style of speech, the food and liquor on the tables and the music compiled by the DJ for the party, all formed the key concept of this event, inviting all the guests to celebrate their differences and enjoy other cultures. This was definitely a hybrid cultural event.

Yair Kochav, Tahrir’s owner and Mizrahi cultural broker, shared his take on this event in the interview recorded after.

I grew up in Bat Yam [poor Tel Aviv suburb] in the years of mass ex-Soviet Aliya when newcomers from Russia and us local youths all mixed up in the streets and on the seashore. A lot of animosity was in the air, targeting these immigrants with reproach and mistrust. Why do they celebrate this Christian holiday with the tree? Are they really Jews? I was also among those locals who hurled these accusations at our Russian-speaking pals…since then I’ve changed a lot, I got a first-hand insight on what it means to be alienated from an Israeli [Ashkenazi] mainstream. Now I am promoting the Mizrahi identity project, with many other young Israelis who have been marginalized as ethnic others or as immigrants. I got interested in the Russian Israelis’ attempts to regain their home culture that was discounted here for twenty years, as an example of another minority seeking recognition. My activism aimed at greater visibility of the Mizrahi culture doesn’t stand alone, it seeks coalitions with other pals in need. When I open the door to expose my cultural home to the local hegemony, I must be prepared to let other minority cultures and outlooks in and act together with their leaders. This includes Russian cultural initiatives like Novy God.