Rachel Wahba

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Rachel Wahba is a therapist and an author of her own book; a memoir about her family. Wahba was born in India to an Iraqi Jewish refugee mother and an Egyptian Jewish refugee father.[1] [2]She is a Sephardic Jew and often felt outcasted from the Western/Ashkenazi Jews as most of the Jewish cultures and foods were defined through that particular sect.[1] She grew up in Kobe, Japan[1] and later immigrated to the United States with the help of the Red Cross as she was officially stateless and did not possess a passport[3], where she had experienced resentment from her fellow American Jews because she is a dark skinned Jew, her inability to speak Yiddish, and being an Arab Jewish lesbian.[4] Her mother fled a suburb of Baghdad in which she lived, in the mid-1940s[3] during the Jewish exodus from Arab lands, forcing her to leave her belongings behind and migrate elsewhere. She has a daughter, Nina rachel who assists her in establishing a lesbian-feminist Jewish community.[1]

[edit] Bibliography

  • Nice Jewish Girls
  • Twice Blessed

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d Rachel Wahba:Nice Jewish Girls. h-net.org. Retrieved on 2007-08-22.
  2. ^ [http://www.loolwa.com/flying_camel.html Rachel Wahba "Benign Ignorance or Persistent Resistance?"]. loolwa.com. Retrieved on 2007-08-22.
  3. ^ a b Rachel Jew From Iraq. jewishsf.com. Retrieved on 2007-08-22.
  4. ^ [http://www.loolwa.com/flying_camel.html Rachel Wahba "Benign Ignorance or Persistent Resistance?"]. loolwa.com. Retrieved on 2007-08-22.