Ashkenazic experts framed Mizrahi cultural preservation as their own benevolent civilizing work

Evidence

Offering no acknowledgment of the social pressures placed on Mizrahi immigrants to adapt to Ashkenazic Israeli culture, Bat-Dori claims that the immigrants swiftly abandoned their traditional ways of life because they thought them to be not worth preserving. The preservation of Mizrahi culture was entirely the work of Ashkenazic experts: “And so we began to uncover these treasures through persuasion. We went to the villages, talked with people, opened armoires, took out clothes and musical instruments. We convinced them that they had something beautiful to show us.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 723

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader scholarly literature on colonial salvage ethnography and how imperial powers framed themselves as preservers of ‘dying’ indigenous cultures — parallels anthropologist-of-colonialism arguments about the salvage paradigm.
• SEED: Angle: how ‘preservation’ narratives in a settler-colonial context launder dispossession — the expert who ‘uncovers treasures’ erases the coercive assimilation that made preservation necessary.