Israel categorized non-European Jews as fragmented edot while viewing Europeans as one coherent culture.

Evidence

During Israel’s first decade, Jewish immigrants from Asia and Africa were known as members of ‘edot hamizrah, oriental communities. This reference carried with it a notion of fragmented bodies, with little in common save for their origins in the lands of Islam and some association with Arab culture. True, one finds in political discourse of the time use of the term ‘edot to describe all Jews, or even all of Israel’s inhabitants regardless of religion or ethnicity. Similarly, the colorful term shevatim (tribes) was also at times employed to describe the variegated origins of Israeli Jews. By and large, however, ‘edot and shevatim referred to oriental Jewry, whereas Israelis of Hungarian, Polish, or Rumanian origin were presented as melded into a coherent “Ashkenazic.” culture. Paradoxically, however, Ashkenazic dominance made possible the provision of immigrant broadcast services tailored to the desires of each national community—Polish, Rumanian, Hungarian, and so on—whereas oriental Jews received relatively little acknowledgment of the distinctions between them and Ashkenazim, or among the ‘edot themselves. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 690

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Complaints About Immodesty piece on how uniform labels mask internal diversity, and to broader literature on internal orientalism (e.g., Said’s Orientalism applied domestically).
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that Ashkenazi dominance enabled differentiation for European communities while erasing it for Mizrahi ones is a compact, counterintuitive kernel worth sitting with.