Yad Mizrah (יד מזרח) is a newly-founded literary, arts, and culture magazine— based in Jerusalem— devoted to promoting and celebrating Mizrahi and Sephardic literary culture and work. It is the first and only contemporary English-language literary magazine rooted in Sephardic and Mizrahi literary tradition.
Yad Mizrah, meaning “Eastern Hand,” was founded on an outrageous realization: all modern Jewish literary magazines are typically rooted in and inspired by our Ashkenazi brothers’ and sisters’ literary tradition, history, and culture. No other literary magazines, ones that were rooted in Sephardic and Mizrahi literary heritage and culture, it seemed, existed.
Of course, Sephardic and Mizrahi literary heritage is one that is incredibly rich, diverse, and historic; from Al-Andalusia’s poets Shmuel HaNagid and Yehuda HaLevi, to Inquisition-era poet Miguel de Barrios; Zionist writer Yitzhaq Shami, born in Hebron in Ottoman Palestine; American-Sephardic poet Emma Lazarus and her poem “the New Colossus” etched onto the Statue of Liberty; Erez Biton, “the father of Mizrahi poetry in Israel,” and countless more; each of these people have dramatically influenced Jewish culture of the past and present.
Our aim is to bring people together for meaningful discussions about Mizrahi and Sephardic life, history, and experience through poetry, fiction and nonfiction, memoir, op-ed, visual art, and more. More importantly, by spotlighting Sephardic and Mizrahi voices, Yad Mizrah strives to more accurately reflect today’s diverse Jewish literary landscape on an international scale.
Submissions are open to all writers; writers of Mizrahi and Sephardic descent are especially encouraged to submit.