Mimouna Night for Palestine

Mimouna for Palestine

Tuesday April 30th

at El Rio, 3158 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110

Organized by the Bay Area collective of SWANA and Arab Jews for Palestine

What is Mimouna?

During Passover, North African Jews have a tradition of leaving their flour and bread products (chametz) at Muslim neighbors’ homes. When Passover ends, Jewish families retrieve their chametz and invite their neighbors to a big party, called Mimouna. The party lasts all night, people sing and dance in the streets and share blessings of good luck. During the day before the party, Jews from Marrakech would pay a visit to the most ancient olive trees to wish them to prosper, and on the day after, people would rest and clean their feet in a water spring that was also sacred to the Muslim, who saw the entire celebration as a source of blessings. Mimouna is a centuries old celebration of our coexistence as Muslims and Jews, cohabitating in the same lands.

Why does the Bay Area need a Mimouna?

Our newly formed collective of SWANA and Arab Jews for Palestine view a Mimouna in the Bay Area as a beautiful symbol of coexistence with our Muslim siblings. Mimouna is the perfect time for our first public event, bringing together Arab, Jewish, and SWANA community for a permanent ceasefire and a liberated Palestine.

How is this event in solidarity with Palestine?

We believe that Arab/SWANA Jewish organizing has to happen through reclaiming our own culture — we see this Mimouna as a powerful direct action we can offer the community to embody the sense of kinship we hope to birth in the world, and our Jewish-Muslim society at large. Not only can we stand united in multiple communities at once, but also reclaim our Jewish culture in spaces that are not simultaneously co-opted or steeped in Zionism. Through this concert and event, we hope to leverage our dual/plural identities in the struggle for Palestinian liberation and shift the narrative away from the normative Arab vs. Jewish binary. We see this as a federating event and we hope to gift the movement a moment of communion through music where we can embody the world and the sense of kinship that we are fighting for.

This will also be an opportunity to foster SWANA and Arab Jewish leadership in what’s otherwise a largely White/Ashkenazi-dominated Jewish movement for Palestine. And to build community as Arab and Mizrahi Jews supporting each other against rampant Zionism in our families.

Proceeds to this event after paying the artists will go to Arab Resource and Organizing Center.