2 In 2016, following a prolonged struggle, the Biton Committee for the Empowerment of the Legacy of Sephardic and Eastern Jewry in the Educational System was formed. Led by the Algerian-born poet Erez Biton, the committee stressed the urgent need to revise curricula to include the hitherto conspicuously and vexingly absent Middle Eastern Jewish narrative, stating in its recommendation, ‘A pupil can complete his studies, from first grade to matriculation exams, without learning a single Middle Eastern Jewish literary work; the situation is the same in history and all other subjects.’ Biton Committee's Report, Education Ministry of Israel website, at https://edu.gov.il/owlHeb/Tichon/RefurmotHinoch/Documents/bitonreport.pdf, p. 5, accessed 28 November 2018.

3 See Rokem, Freddie, Performing History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in Contemporary Theatre (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000), pp. 1–25Google Scholar.

4 Details of the Farhud and its aftermath are based on Meir-Glitzenstein, Esther, Zionism in an Arab Country: Jews in Iraq in the 1940s (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 10–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bashkin, Orit, New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), pp. 100–40Google Scholar; Shenhav, Yehuda A., The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion and Ethnicity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 113–17Google Scholar.

5 See White, Hayden, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

6 Rokem, Performing History, p.2

7 Urian, Dan, ‘Sefrou and Baghdad’, Israel Affairs, 17, 4 (2011), pp. 542–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 558. This tragic love story implicitly has intertextuality with Romeo and Juliet’s plot, but there is no explicit reference to this in the play.

8 Ibid., p. 543.

9 The play has not been published so all the quotes in the article are from an unpublished script provided by the The Israeli Center for the Documentation of the Performing Arts, Tel-Aviv University.

10 See Michael, Sami, Unbounded Ideas: Ruvik Rosenthal Talks with Sami Michael (in Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 2000)Google Scholar.

11 See Quinn, Michael L., ‘Celebrity and the Semiotics of Acting’, New Theatre Quarterly, 6, 22 (1990), pp. 154–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carlson, Marvin, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

12 A well-known example is the casting of Palestinian actors Makram Khoury and Yousef Abu Warda in the roles of Didi and Gogo in Beckett's Waiting for Godot, directed by Ilan Ronen (Haifa Theatre, 1985). This existential play became a political allegory for the Palestinians’ oppressive and unresolved situation. See Urian, Dan, The Arab in Israeli Drama and Theatre (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 91–2Google Scholar.

13 Or-Yehuda was founded in 1955 by Jews who emigrated from Iraq. It is located near south Tel Aviv.

14 Shenhav, The Arab Jews, p. 144.

15 The 1948 war between Israel and the Palestinians ended with 700,000 refugees, the destruction of approximately four hundred Palestinian villages, and Israel's expropriation of Palestinian property and lands. See Morris, Benny, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

16 Shenhav, The Arab Jews, p. 142.

17 Maya Cohen, ‘Time for Reexamination’, Israel Hayom, 9 November 2015, at www.israelhayom.co.il/article/328023, accessed 23 November 2018.

18 See Shem-Tov, Naphtaly, ‘Displaying the Mizrahi Identity in Autobiographical Performances: Body, Food, and Documents’, New Theatre Quarterly, 34, 2 (2018), pp. 160–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Shem-Tov, , ‘Celebrating Jewish-Moroccan Theatre in Israel: Production, Repertoire, and Reception’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 29, 1 (2019), pp. 56–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Yael Zerubavel claims that Zionism constructed a national collective memory through various means, including literature and culture. These, in turn, consolidated the official Zionist narrative of the state of Israel – from Holocaust to rebirth. This narrative constructs the national identity while marginalizing, disremembering and subjugating other memories, or perhaps even appropriating them into the national narrative. On the other hand, countermemory is the creation of a historical narrative that rewrites and challenges the Zionist narrative, while enabling a place for and recognition of groups whose history is not aligned with the national narrative. See Zerubavel, Yael, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 3–12Google Scholar.

20 A city adjacent to Tel Aviv. In the 1950s many Iraqi Jews settled there.

21 The play has not been published so all the quotes in the article are from an unpublished script provided by the playwright.

22 Urian, The Arab in Israeli Drama and Theatre.

23 The Father's Daughters unpublished script. An Egyptian singer-songwriter (1902–91) renowned throughout the Arab world. The dialogue between the sisters is ironic because Abdel Wahab was influenced by classical music, particularly Beethoven, which is evident in the combinations between West and East in his music.

24 Ibid.

25 Vicki Shiran, Shoveret Kir [She Breaks a Wall]: Poems (in Hebrew) (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved Publishers, 2005), p. 25.

26 Lev-Aladgem, Shulamith, ‘Remembering Forbidden Memories: Community Theatre and the Politics of Memory’, Social Identities, 12, 3 (2006), pp. 269–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 273.