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3 American Yemenite Jews: Interethnic Strategies Dina Dahbany-Miraglia The great chasm dividing American society is that between blacks and whites. People of color who are not historically identified with Afro-Americans have been caught between these two identities. Since most Jews are considered white, Jews who can be perceived as black are anomalous. Yemenite Jews in New York City are among those caught in this position. Among other problems, Yemenite Jews in the United States must validate their Jewishness. Using sociolingUistics, Dahbany-Miraglia presents and analyzes some verbal strategies used by the Yemenis in coping with this situation. Introduction Ethnic identity is, as Bram (1965) and Nagata (1974) point out, like plastic: easily bent and shaped by societal and group ideologies, expectations, and practices. Societies may sortpopulations according to cultural, physiognomic, religious, national, and other criteria, and groups may differentiate themselves from each other by using one or more of these parameters of distinction. It is, however, individuals in situations who act out and therefore, reify these distinctions. To American Yemenite Jews ethnic identity is primarily instrumental, a series of strategies they exercise to implement personal goals. One of the more important of these goals is the establishment of their basic identity: that of Jews. In the United States Yemenite Jews are often obliged to "prove" their Jewishness, something they did not have to do in the Middle East. Ethnic identity is often viewed in the professional literature as emanating from either a "cultural heritage shared by a group" or "as a form of social organization that functions to achieve certain common ends (Keyes 1981:4)." The first is often labeled "primordial" as it is seen to be based on genetic, culture content, and other heritable commonalities. In the second, called "circumstantial," ethnic identity is a "dependent variable, created and controlled by a broad combination of external interests and strategies, which invest it with a potential for action and mobilization (Nagata 1981:89)." 63 64 American Yemenite Jewish Interethnic Strategies For American Yemenite Jews, ethnic identity comes from a primordial base in which religion and genetics are two major components . Both components are part of the core from which instrumental expressions of ethnic identity radiate, expressions that are not always Yemenite Jewish. One reason is their second-class status in everyhost country in which they have lived: as Jews in Yemen and Turkish (Ottoman) Palestine, as Middle Eastern Jews in British Mandate Palestine, and as anomalous individuals in the United States where their physiognomy contradicts American ethnic categorizations. A people who are non-elite must eXt~rcise flexibility in "the presentation of self (Goffman 1959)." Adaptation to a host country's peculiarities is the first order of business. Inventing, developing, and manipulating a variety of ethnic-derived interactional strategies are especially necessary for populations that do not neatly fit into a host country's categories. This paper deals with "circumstantial" elements of ethnic identity . The focus here is on why specific identities are selected and verbalized, and on a not very often examined aspect: how individuals verbalize ethnic identities in situations. Analyses of verbal expressions of ethnic identity are few. They are scattered in the sociolinguistic literature and can be found in only a small number of the vast number of publications on ethnidty and ethnic identity. Joshua A. Fishman, a sOciolinguist, is noted for his in-depth longterm investigations into the relationships of speech and ethnic identity (1965, 1968). Other linguists, such as Gumperz (1971, 1982), Fox (1974), and Sankoff (1974) have dealt with language in situations, concentrating on codeswitching, but not necessarily as it relates to ethnic identity. The few anthropological publications include Karen Blu's 1980 book on the Lumbee, my dissertation (Dahbany-Miraglia 1983), and a handful of articles,;uch as Plotnicov's and Silverman's on Ashkenazic Jewish (Yiddish-speaking European Jews) ethnic signalling (1978). Blu's data are mosdy anecdotal examples of boundary maintainance and her approach is entirely ethnographic. My dissertation examines American YemoE!nite Jewish verbal expressions of ethnic identity from a sociolinguistic perspective. Plotnicov's and Silverman's article exemplifies Ashkenazic intra-ethnic behavior with Yiddishism and Yiddish-based ve'rbalizations that are tied to Judaism and Ashkenazic Jewish culture. My work with Yemenite Jews in the Greater New York area has shown that although the criterion of their basic identity is immutable, they will verbally claim or silently acquiesce to other identifications in response to siluational conditions and to various host country perceptions of thei:r identities.! In every...

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