What’s in a Name?

My name is Eitan Fattal. My first name, Eitan (pronounced Ay-tahn), is a typical Israeli first name that means “strong.” You could consider Eitan similar to the name Ethan in English.

My last name is Fattal. You might assume this is a Hebrew last name, but it isn’t. In fact, most people with the last name Fattal don’t live in Israel and aren’t Jewish. You’ll find the last name Fattal in Iraq (where our name originates), Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. It’s an Arab last name that means roper or weaver. The name is a relic from a time, not so long ago, when roughly one million Jews lived in Muslim majority Middle-Eastern countries.

In the nations that I mentioned and others like Morocco, Yemen, and Algeria, there are no Jews today. After Israel gained its independence in 1948, most of these Jews were expelled or left to escape major waves of violent anti-Semitism. Does this surprise you? Maybe you’d be surprised that Jews in these countries were actually treated well for thousands of years compared to the treatment of European Jews in their adopted homes. But let’s qualify that statement…

Jews in the Middle East, called Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews (depending on their religious traditions), were considered dhimmi - protected but separate citizens. This means they afforded some legal protections, they were allowed to own property, and they were generally safe from acts of violence. But they were also considered socially inferior to Muslims under Islamic law and often had to pay extra taxes that kept them in abject poverty.

Although violence against Jews was rare in these parts of the world, it did happen occasionally before 1948. For example, my grandfather lived through the Farhud in Baghdad in 1941 (he wrote a book about it). During this state-sponsored event with links to Nazi Germany, a mob of Iraqi Muslims destroyed thousands of Jewish homes and businesses and killed about 180 Jews, including my great granduncle Meir.

Jews in Europe were considerably wealthier although they were also considered socially inferior. Compared to Mizrahi Jews, they were subjected to humiliation and violence far more often. They were scapegoated for national issues and faced countless state-sanctioned acts of terror called pogroms. Of course, the culmination of Jew hatred in Europe was the Holocaust. Two thirds of European Jews were murdered – 6 million people.

My grandmother survived the Holocaust. She was a German Jew, but Germans considered her a Jew only. Between the ages of 11 and 14, my grandmother was forcibly separated from her family. She was placed in labor camps, and went through periods of hiding to avoid being killed. All the Jewish members of her family were killed. My grandmother didn’t like to talk about her survival. Compared to survivors of Auschwitz and other Nazi camps, she got off light. Many survivors like her felt guilty; why did they get to live and so many others die and suffer?

You may think the stories of my grandparents are remarkable, but they aren’t. In Israel, stories like this are common. The majority of Jews in Israel are refugees of the 20th century, and the entire project of Israel is to ensure the security and future of Jewish people in their historic and spiritual homeland. How quickly we forget.

Returning again to my first name, Eitan. When I was born, my parents just liked the name. They could have called me Michael or Josh or any generic first name. But they chose a Hebrew name. Think about the optimism behind this decision. I was born during the first era in 2500 years where being Jewish was acceptable in an open society, where Jews were allowed to feel optimistic about their existence and security.

That era may have ended on October 7, 2023. On that day, Jews everywhere were shocked at unspeakable barbarism in Southern Israel, but shocked even further at the support that those actions received from the Islamic world. We hoped the secular world would see why Israel needs to exist, but instead we got a lip service condemnation followed by an apology for the Palestinian cause that they don’t actually care about.

Then we got more anti-Semitism.