The Triumph of the Israelmutt: Judaism’s Future

Recently, my friend forwarded me this mildly antisemitic Wojak meme he saw on X, showing the different races of Jews. He asked me which Jew I was, and I said I was most likely the “Israelmutt,” a “race” of mixed-origin Jews unique to Israel.

The Israelmutt is a growing population in the Jewish community. Jews are blending into something new. The labels of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi are becoming antiquated, and a new Israeli Jewish identity is replacing our diasporic ones.

In biblical times, there were 12 tribes, each represented by a symbol such as a lion, a wolf, or an ox. The nation was incomplete without the other tribes, each representing an aspect of God’s plan for our creation. However, after the Babylonian exile, we became a diasporic community much like the neighboring communities of Greeks and Arabs, who would eventually form diasporas of their own.

These days, while many tribes are “lost,” we have new ones: Haredim, masorti, dati, hiloni. In America, we have Reform, Chabadniks, Yeshivish, Persian, Russian, Sephardi, Israeli, anti Zionist, and many others. In many of these communities, people marry within, not necessarily based on religious observance, but on tribal affiliation.

I recently went on a date with a Persian girl who told me that dating a non-Persian speaker is a significant compromise. I imagine that as I continue to date other women, I will get rejections for similar reasons from other communities.

When I went to Chabad and talked about the Persian girl, the rebbetzin told me I should find a nice Ashkenazi girl and that I am totally an Ashkenazi. But I don’t identify culturally or religiously as one.

I don’t fit into the mainstream American Jewish community and find myself frustrated whenever I have to describe which Jewish “tribe” I fit into. On my mother’s side, I’m Afghan and Yemeni. We often joke that my mom is “half Houthi, half Taliban.” On my father’s side, my grandfather is the grandson of Viennese and Ukrainian Ashkenazim. My grandmother, meanwhile, descends from Yerushalmi Sephardim who lived in the same community as the family portrayed in The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem.

This mixed Jewish identity is increasingly common among Israelis as the old boundaries surrounding intertribal marriage continue to erode in the melting pot of the modern Jewish state.

What I wonder is why we continue to partition ourselves after the mass ingathering of the exiles into Israel since 1948. Israel still maintains separate chief rabbis for Sephardim and Ashkenazim despite a growing population taking bits and pieces of customs from all over the Jewish world.

Halachically, I am Ashkenazi because of my father, but he never considered himself Ashkenazi. He always identified more with the gruff, tough Sephardim he grew up with in Israel. When I went to yeshiva, I was frustrated by feeling pigeonholed into acting like a Litvak, even though I never found that culture appealing.

“You’re in an Ashkenazi yeshiva,” one student told me. “Try to fit in. Don’t wear your talis.”

My question to the religious Jews who still cling to their minhagic pride is whether they really think that we will still be speaking Persian and Yiddish when Mashiach comes. Will Mashiach be wearing a shtreimel and kapota like he is in Williamsburg? These categories are ephemeral, and the State of Israel’s diversity and prosperity are evidence of that.

These categories made sense as the Jews entered the diaspora, since the surrounding cultures, economies, and climates influenced the development of halacha and minhag. Communities separated from one another developed different customs based on their circumstances. These differences eventually became the traditions we now associate with Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrahim, and other Jewish communities.

But now we are increasingly centralizing in a few locations, and our cultures are inevitably intermixing. Modern Israel is already creating a shared Jewish culture. Rather than clinging to the divisions of exile, we should embrace the “Israelmutt,” the Jew whose identity reflects the reality of the modern Jewish state.

The categories of Ashkenazi and Sephardi are already broader and more fluid than many people realize. While they are often understood as ethnic identities today, they also came to represent broad halachic traditions. Mizrahi Jews, despite having distinct histories of exile and settlement throughout the Middle East and North Africa, are generally grouped under the Sephardic tradition.

The story is even more complicated in North Africa. Jewish communities had lived in the Maghreb long before the Spanish Expulsion of 1492. Yet after the arrival of large numbers of Sephardic exiles, many local communities gradually adopted Sephardic customs and halachic traditions. As a result, Jews with no direct ancestry from Spain could come to identify as Sephardic.

The Jews of Ethiopia, who were isolated from much of the rest of the Jewish world for centuries, also do not fit neatly into the Ashkenazi and Sephardi binary. They developed their own Jewish institutions and traditions largely independently of the rabbinic Judaism that persisted elsewhere in the Jewish world.

As we approach Israel’s 80th year of existence, it is time for Israel to liberate itself from the shackles of diasporism. Sabra mutts like me should have a chief rabbi, halachic institutions, and minhagic traditions with equal status to those of our Sephardic and Ashkenazi counterparts.

We should continue to respect the innate beauty of our diversity. I was surprised to learn that Ethiopian Jews have holidays like Sigd that other Jewish communities lack. I love learning about the traditions of Jewish subgroups and adopting them into my own observance. Yiddish, Ladino, Amharic, Persian, and other languages spoken by Jewish communities should remain at least academic languages, given that they have been spoken for a significant portion of diaspora history.

Preserving these traditions does not mean preserving the divisions between them.

Very soon, the Israel mutt will be the rule, not the exception, in Israel. We are no longer defined by the vague geographical regions known as Ashkenaz, Sepharad, and Mizrah. In fact, many of the lands that once sustained these Jewish civilizations are now virtually Judenrein, emptied of the Jewish communities that lived there for centuries. Our identity is increasingly tied to our homeland, and we should begin contemplating how to embrace that future.

How does this inevitable majority define itself? “Israelmutt” might work for me, but comparing ourselves to mixed-breed dogs probably won’t appeal to everyone. I prefer “mixed tribe,” or רַב־שִׁבְטִי (rav shivti), a Jew whose identity and ancestry cross the old tribal boundaries of the Diaspora.

Still, there is a reason I like the term “Israelmutt.” Everyone knows what a German Shepherd or Labrador is, but my Dalmatian, Jagdterrier, and Rat Terrier mix is a unique creation from God. Mixed breed dogs can benefit from the greater genetic diversity that comes from mixing previously separate populations, whereas generations of selective breeding within closed gene pools can leave some purebred dogs particularly vulnerable to hip dysplasia, cancers, reproductive problems, and other inherited disorders. I think Jewish culture can benefit from a similar kind of diversity. Without cultural exchange, adaptation, and the introduction of new ideas and traditions, we risk stagnating as a people.

When the musical traditions of Yemenite Jews, the commercial legacies of Persian and Sephardi communities, the scholarly traditions of Ashkenazim, and the ancient practices preserved by Ethiopian, Babylonian, and Yemenite Jews merge within one nation, we benefit from the same kind of diversity that characterized ancient Israel. Each community brings something different to our shared civilization, creating something new and truly beautiful.

We can create something new from the best of each.

The Israelmutt is not a dilution of Jewish culture but a celebration of it.

I am definitely not the first person to have this idea. Maia Zelkha, writing for Yad Mizrach, argues that we remain attached to diasporic identities because “we cannot yet imagine what it means to be Jewish outside of them.” As she writes, “A huge turning point in Jewish civilization is happening as we speak.” The mixed tribe Jew is a product of that turning point.

Eventually, the Wojak meme will have fewer and fewer “races of Jews,” and the next great Jewish minhag may not be Ashkenazi or Sephardi. It may simply be Israeli.