Anna Min Al-Yahud: Arab-Jew, traditionalism and Mizrahi middle-class on the Israeli stage

This paper explores the theatrical performance Anna Min Al-Yahud by way of intersecting three major phenomenon in the current Mizrahi (a Jew of Middle Eastern origin) critical discourse in Israel: the rise of the Mizrahi middle-class, Arab-Jew, and traditionalism. The plot deals with a Kafkaesque pandemic of accents and languages of diasporic countries from which Jews in general, and Middle Eastern Jews, in particular, originated. The pandemic echoes the Tower of Babel myth that threatens to destroy the unified Israeli identity. This dystopic-comic performance exacerbates the severity of contradictions between the Mizrahi-Jewish identity and the uniform European-Zionist narrative. Anna Min Al-Yahud proposes an open multilingual and multicultural way of life which will enable a common social life in Israel today.