Israel is no redoubt of the West

For his four-part 'Sepharad' series on BBC Radio 3*, Dennis Marks has been on a journey through Sephardi history - in his words, 'an aspect of Jewish identity constantly overlooked'. His interview with the Israeli Sephardi novelist AB Yehoshua, who shares his view, appears in The Observer.

Although Yehoshua's family has lived in Israel for generations, his mother's ancestors come from Morocco and Salonika, and he has drawn on his own prehistory in his novels and political essays. A fierce and friendly 73-year-old with a shock of white hair, he contrasts Orthodox absolutism with the easy, hedonistic tolerance of the Sephardis. Most of all, he stresses what unifies Jew and Muslim - their common history in the Balkans and the Near East. 'When the Arabs say we are here to impose Western civilisation and cannot integrate in the East, I say, "No, we are not Western. We are Mediterranean, an identity that is composed of what you see in Turkey, in Greece and in Egypt".'

This part of Israeli history is most potently demonstrated by the Mimouna. When North African Jews flooded into Israel after Suez (in fact it was after these states gained their independence - ed), they were at the bottom of the social heap. So they asserted their identity by establishing a picnic 100 metres from the Israeli parliament. To nobody's surprise, it became a magnet for politicians. North Africans might have had the country's dirtiest jobs and the worst houses, but their votes were as valuable as those of Jews from New Jersey. This year, the politicians chose to visit the Moroccan communities in the Negev and the Mimouna in Jerusalem was quiet. However, the previous night made up for it. Car horns and sound systems pounded the air until 4am. Perhaps after the suicide bombing in early April, the youth of Jerusalem were reclaiming the streets.

Yehoshua's most recent novel, A Woman in Jerusalem, published a few weeks ago, reflects this desire to honour the civilian rather than the military casualties of the intifada. He tells the story of an unnamed personnel manager in a bakery who sets off to arrange a burial for a Russian migrant worker who has been one of those anonymous victims. In Yehoshua's words: 'It was written in the dark days of the intifada. I wanted to take the most anonymous death - a foreign worker with no family - and put love into this dark place.'

Like all his work, it offers glimpses of an alternative world. It is peopled by Moroccan merchants, Salonikan physicians, rabbis from the Rhineland and cleaners from Siberia: 'A thousand years ago, 90 per cent of Jews were living in the Islamic world. By the eve of the Holocaust, this was reversed. Now we are 50/50 and this can be the basis of a Mediterranean identity.'

While we are constantly told that Israel is a Western redoubt in the Middle East, it is a useful corrective to absorb the scents and sounds of Oriental Jewry. When the last day of Passover coincides with Orthodox Good Friday, the experience is even more surreal. At breakfast in my hotel near the Old City, Yemenite pop blended with the four-part harmony of a posse of chanting Russian Orthodox priests as they sat down to eat Jewish unleavened bread. In this nation of zealots, there is always something to deconstruct our preconceptions."

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*To listen to the final programme, click on 'Listen again' and 'Sunday feature'