By Leah R. Singer
SAN DIEGO — It may come as a surprise that Jews and Arabs both call Kentucky home. Even more of a shock, however, is the women of these two very different immigrants groups are actually quite similar as each struggle with negotiating their identities.
Growing up in Kentucky as the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants, Nora Rose Moosnick observed this traditionally mismatched pairing of Jews and Arabs firsthand. Over the years, she found Arab and Jewish immigrants have been brought together by their shared otherness and shared fears.
This experience and reflection led Moosnick to write Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky: Stories of Audacity and Accommodation, in which she reveals how Arab and Jewish women have navigated the intersection of tradition, assimilation, and Kentucky’s cultural landscape.
Moosnick shared her reflections on Jewish and Arab life in Kentucky, her motivation for writing this book, and other thoughts with the San Diego Jewish World.
1. What was the motivation for you to study Jewish and Arab women living together in Kentucky?
It starts with the fact that I am a Jewish Kentuckian, which, in my experience, has been a strange location. I truly feel like a Kentuckian in my way of being such as being very humble. But I have also not felt like a Kentuckian. I never looked like one. I’m still asked regularly, “Are you from New York?” I was aware that I was both of Kentucky and not of Kentucky. I also realized that Arab Kentuckians may have a similar experience because of my family’s association with a Palestinian family, the Ackall’s.
My father taught chemistry at a small liberal arts school in Lexington, KY called Transylvania University. One member after another of the Ackall family went to Transy and my father befriended them, in particular, Mary Ackall. Mary continues to be a dear friend. She lives in Haifa, but maintains a Kentucky phone number and we talk routinely. She has always been of Kentucky, Israel and Palestine, negotiating these places with their different ways. Her father, Mousa Ackall, or Sido as everyone called him (grandfather in Arabic) became a grandfather of sorts to me.
2. From writing the book, what can each group learn from each other to foster understanding?
My hope is we can simply see that we have much in common and how this is especially true for Arabs and Jews away from urban centers. Historically, Arab Christians and Jews came to this country around the same time (late 1800s to 1920s), did the same things like peddled goods and opened stores, and looked alike and carried similar names (Abraham, Isaac, and Moses). We were confused for one another. Today, Arab Christians and Jews are still tied to one another perhaps because we are joined with Muslim Arabs who are relatively newer immigrants to this country.
3. How was studying these cultures and being a Jewish woman in Kentucky shaped your view of your community?
It has made me appreciate my community so much more. I have learned about the community that my parents encountered and what it was like to be Jewish in Lexington, KY in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. I realize how tight knit the Jewish community was at that time, meeting at the one kosher butcher shop in town for corn beef sandwiches on Sunday mornings while most folks went to church. Today, I see where the Muslim community is similar to the Jewish one from the past.
The book work has also made me feel more connected to my community simply because I have gotten so much support from non-Arabs and Jews as well as from Arabs and Jews. It has also expanded my social circle and “community.” I’m at events at the Temple, but I also feel honored to be invited to a steady flow of events that Muslim women put together like, most recently, an Iraqi wedding.
4. Why do you enjoy telling the stories of those who are often misunderstood or missing in popular rendering?
I am drawn to stories that I think are invisible or what I call hyper-visible as is the case for Muslim women today. Much is said about them and, more often than not, what is said about them distorts the realities of their lives. Their own words are missing. Muslim women are often construed as covered and not modern. I would like to think that in some small way I advocate for those whose lives are misrepresented in commonplace representations as has been also true for Jewish women historically.
5. What is the one lesson you hope people take away from reading your book?
I would like people to see women’s lives in all their complexities—that is, that being a minority woman in middle America is complex. It is certainly true that the women described in the book have been successful. Women tell me they live happy and contented lives in Kentucky. But I know, from my own life, there is more to the story. I, for instance, was raised with economic and social privilege, but was still inculcated with fear. Neighborhood kids telling me I killed Jesus when I was six or seven didn’t help matters. That said, being an insider/outsider or some combination of the two is dynamic and in constant flux, and can be very situational.
Arab and Jewish Women in Kentucky: Stories of Audacity and Accommodation can be purchased from the University Press of Kentucky or via Amazon.com.
*
Singer is a freelance writer based in San Diego.