Spatial Perceptions of the Middle East in the Writings of Eliyahu Eliachar

• In Event: Locale, Empire and Nation: Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Jewish Spatial Identifications

Abstract

With the realization of the post-WW1 agreements a new set of borders were implicated on the Middle Eastern space. These new borders of Palestine, in a similar way to other political entities, were not solely a practical definition of space, but rather an identity-defining instrument for the developing Jewish Yishuv. However, for the local Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews, who lived in the Ottoman Empire’s spatial setting, the Middle Eastern space was perceived as one integrated spatial unit. Family ties, business relations, and educational opportunities between urban Jewish communities of Jerusalem, Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria, were maintained before and after the beginning of the British mandate. This spatial perception of the Middle Eastern space as one geopolitical unit which includes Palestine as well as other regions, was the basis for Sephardi federative ideas which aspired Jewish integration in the Middle Eastern environment while preserving a separate Jewish cultural and political identity.
The writings of Eliyahu Eliachar, a Jewish public figure, an elected representative of the Sephardi community and businessman, clearly exemplify this spatial perception and the world-view it formulated at least until the 1960s. Eliachar was born in Ottoman Jerusalem in 1899, a scion of a Sephardi family which had belonged to the local elite for four generations. His spatial understanding was based on a cognitive map of the Middle East as one unit in which Jews, Palestinians and Palestine were an immanent part. This paper will deal with spatial perceptions of the Middle East in the writings of Eliyahu Eliachar.

Author

• Dikla Rivlin Katz, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem