Israeli Bourekas Films: A Lens into Colonial Dynamics

• In Event: Mizrachi Jews- Boundaries and Identities

Abstract

In Homi Bhabha's discussion (Bhabha 1994:66-85) on the relationship between colonizers and the colonized, he argues that the colonizer often resorts to spreading a stereotype of the colonized as a way to manage the threat posed to their identity by the presence of the colonized subject. This stereotype presents a paradoxical blend of the unknown and the familiar, stripping the colonized subject of originality while making them seem strangely recognizable.
In the Israeli society of the 1960s and 1970s, a colonial paradigm can be observed in the dynamics between two distinct Jewish groups: the Ashkenazim, who held sway over the means of production and occupied the overwhelming majority of elite positions, and the Mizrahim, who found themselves in a subordinate position socioeconomically (Svrisky 81). The lecture posits that during this period, a colonial hierarchy emerged with Ashkenazim as the colonial rulers and Mizrahim as the colonial subjects.
This colonial relationship found expression in Israeli cinema through the unique genre of Bourekas films, which emerged as the sole original Israeli cinematic form. These films, directed and produced predominantly by Ashkenazi filmmakers, centered their narratives around Mizrahi characters. However, my claim would be that they did so by imposing a stereotype rooted in the archetype of shtetl Jews from classical Yiddish literature onto the Mizrahim. Thus, the films portrayed Mizrahim as if they were Ashkenazi shtetl residents from nineteenth-century Eastern Europe.
This portrayal effectively stripped the Mizrahim of their uniqueness while assimilating anything perceived as foreign or threatening by Ashkenazi standards into a familiar framework—the pre-modern, pre-Western Eastern European Jew, who also happened to be the ancestors of the Israeli Ashkenazi elites (Eilon 81).
The lecture expands on these ideas outlined in my book, "Israeli Bourekas Films – Origins and Legacy," published by Indiana University Press in 2023.

Author

• Rami Kimchi, Ariel University