IMAGInInG ThE “ISrAElITES” • 137does not argue for the opposite claim— that this period’s Muslims were
less sympathetic to Jews than were Christians. First of all, these jour-
nals cannot be taken as representative of the religious communities of
their editors (al-Muqtaṭaf and al-Hilāl, for example, fashioned them-
selves as modern, scientific journals and included non- Christian con-
tributors). Second, one sometimes finds anti- Jewish views expressed in
the Christian- edited journals and tolerant perspectives articulated in
the Muslim- edited journal. A more nuanced view— one sensitive to the
complexities and contradictions associated with these communities— is
clearly necessary.
Who Is a Yahūdī? Who Is an Isrā’īlī?to understand the various perceptions of Jews exhibited in these jour-
nals, we must begin by investigating what precisely was meant by the
term “Jew” (or its frequent alternative, if not equivalent, “Israelite”)
in this journalistic discourse. at least for some writers, there was a
meaningful distinction between the terms Jew and Israelite. In an al-
Muqtaṭaf article on “the Jews of France,” the author explains that
some members of the Israelite nation [al-ummaal-isrāʾīliyya] con-
sider labeling them “Jews” to be an insult to them. they pre-
fer to be called “Israelites” following the example of the Jews of
France.^20 But their scholars and writers disagree with this view
and, from antiquity until the present, always called themselves
“Jews” in all their books and letters. Despite this, we will use the
label “Israelites” in this article because most of them who reside
here in egypt prefer this name.The author later explains that technically, “Israelite” refers specifically
to “the ten tribes that were exiled during the first exile [by the Assyr-
ians in the eighth century bce] and whose location is now unknown,”
and that “it is likely that contemporary Jews are not [descended] from
them but rather from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.”^21 even al-
Muqtaṭaf, however, did not uphold this terminological distinction with
(^20) phyllis Cohen albert has investigated the history of the uses of these terms in the
French context. Cohen albert rejects the conventional wisdom that “in the wake of the
revolution emancipated French Jews began calling themselves Israélites, in preference
to Juifs, thus indicating that they had denationalized their Jewish identity, and limited
it to a newly narrowed definition in the religious sphere.” Instead, she contends that this
distinction was first articulated in 1890 in an article entitled “Juifs et Israélites.” See
Cohen albert, “Israelite and Jew,” 91– 96.
(^21) al-Muqtaṭaf 43:6 (December 1913), 561.