“We Are All the Sons of Abraham”? Utopian Performativity for Jewish–Arab Coexistence in an Israeli Reform Jewish Mimouna Celebration

Abstract

Mimouna is a North-African Jewish festival, which in the past symbolized good neighborly relationships between Jews and Muslims. Today, however, this festival has transformed into a neutralized interfaith encounter, resembling a culinary-focused musical show. The particular event explored in this case study was organized by an Israeli Reform Jewish congregation, which is a non-Orthodox liberal Jewish denomination. In this event, the congregation strived to reconceptualize the diasporic concept of this festival. In effect, the performance is a cultural appropriation that reveals the failures to turn this tolerant vision into a current local political reality. The performance is constructed as a marketing script to brand Reform Judaism’s liberal ideology agenda and its sociopolitical position in Israeli society. The endeavor to establish the Mimouna as a safe space for fostering interreligious discourse and dialogue exposed its ideological vulnerability, thus bringing to the forefront the conflictual relationship between the Jewish and Muslim Arabs in Israel.

Keywords

• israel
• coexistence
• performance
• mimouna
• ethnography
• reform jewish congregations
• utopian performativity
• safe space