Joshua Robbin Marks

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Apr 4, 2021, 5:39 AM

New Mideast: Pesach In Dubai After Abraham Accords

Over Passover I did something that was unthinkable before last September's signing at the White House of the Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. I took a direct flight of just under...

Dec 26, 2019, 7:16 AM

Jesus Was A Mediterranean Jew In The Jewish Homeland

Judaism arose in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean in the 2nd millennium BCE and the heritage of modern Jews is rooted in what the Hebrew Bible calls הים הגדול. The Great Sea. Jews were dispersed from their ancestral homeland of...

Oct 2, 2019, 8:51 AM

Ashkenazi Origins: Israel to Italy to Rhineland to Eastern Europe

A recent article in The Washington Post about the increasing diversity of the American Jewish community stated that "many American Jews have roots in Eastern Europe" in contrast to Jews with roots in the Middle East and other non-European...

Sep 26, 2019, 2:30 AM

Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews In Ashkenazic Lands

Jews are Mediterranean and Middle Eastern including Ashkenazim. I wrote about the Levantine origins of Ashkenazi Jews in a previous blog post for TOI. The shared ancestry of Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews did not end when we were...

Apr 2, 2019, 11:39 PM

Ashkenazi Jews Are Middle Eastern

Members of the Hashomer movement in the Upper Galilee. Hashomer (Hebrew: השומר, "The Watchman") was a Jewish defense organization in Palestine founded in April 1909. (Wikipedia Commons)

On a recent Friday night I learned about the Jews of Turkey at a Shabbat sponsored by JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) which took place at Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel in the Westwood neighborhood...

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About Me

Joshua Robbin Marks is a journalist based in Israel. He has written for The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, Washington Jewish Week, The Jerusalem Post, Ynetnews and many other publications.