User:Histoire2020/sandbox

Biography
Mordechai Zaken also Moti Zaken (מוטי/מרדכי זקן; زاكين or مردخاي زاكن), born in 1958, in Jerusalem, is an expert on Middle Eastern minorities, both by training and practice. He is historian of the Jews, the Muslims and the Assyrian Christians in Kurdistan, who wrote a book on the Jews of Kurdistan and their chieftains, or aghas.

Alongside his scholarly activity, he has been serving (1997-1999) as the advisor on Arab Affairs to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his first term in office, and as senior advisor on Israeli Arabs and minorities in successive Israeli governments (from 2001 until now).

Education
He earned his [BA] in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies (2004), and his [MA], Cum Laude (2008), as well as his [PhD] (2003), in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was also given grants to study in the USA in both SUNY Binghamton (1987-1988) and New York University (1989-1990). Among his noted teachers were Moshe Sharon, under whom he studied Islamic history, Benjamin Z. Kedar, expert on comparative history, and the late great semitic linguist Gideon Goldenberg, with whom he published the Book of Ruth in Neo-Aramaic. Another Neo-Aramaic text he published in a book honoring Gideon Goldenberg's jubilee.

Oral History: new records on the Jews and the tribal Kurdish society
The severe dearth of written sources on the Jews and the Kurds, drove Zaken to oral history fieldwork. Between 1985 and 2002, he interviewed more than sixty elderly Kurdish Jews, altogether conducting hundreds of interviews, thus saving their memoires from being lost forever. His study unveils new sources, reports and vivid tales that form a new set of records on the Jews and the tribal Kurdish society. His comparative study of the Jews and the Assyrian Christians and their Muslim rulers and chieftains during the 19th and 20th centuries, was commented by members of the PhD judicial committee,, as was his book (Brill, 2007), reviews on the book which has been widely spread and translated, in full or in part, into several languages, including Arabic, Kurmanji, Sorani, French and Farsi.

Standing up against racism
As the advisor on Arab and minorities affairs to both the prime minister and the ministry of Internal Security, Dr. Zaken has been in close contact with representatives of religious minorities. Two of his activities are noteworthy. First, he has been standing up against racism and acts of hatred directed at religious minorities.

Drafting the cabinet reolution in "Shihab al-Din" dispute
Second, in 2002-2003, Zaken was the de-facto coordinator of the Ministerial Committee designated to resolve the dispute in Nazareth, near the Basilica of the Annunciation, where members of the Islamic movement in Israel turned the main piazza into an outdoor mosque. This dispute is commonly known as "Shihab al-Din." []. The Muslim activists prevented by force to implementate a plan, Nazareth 2000, to built an open plaza for the expected visit of the Pope John Paul II in the year of the Millennium. As an expert who knew the individuals and the particulars, Zaken constructed the final draft for the cabinet resolution, to wreck the new, unlawful attachmnet to the old and small mosque located at the corner of the piazza His draft was approved by the cabinet and was also used by the State Attorney in the Supreme Court to repel the appeal of the Muslims.

Books (including translations)

 * Jewish Subjects and their Tribal Chieftains in Kurdistan: A Study in Survival, (Leiden and Boston): Brill, 2007. ISBN-10: 9004161902  | ISBN-13: 978-9004161900
 * Arabic translation of the book: Yahud Kurdistan wa-ru'as'uhum al-qabaliyun: Dirasa fi fan al-baqa'. Transl., Su'ad M. Khader; Published by the Center for Academic Research, Beirut, 2013; يهود كردستان ورؤساؤهم القبليون : (دراسة في فن البقاء) / تأليف مردخاي زاكن ؛ ترجمة عن الانكليزية سعاد محمد خضر ؛، . زاكن، مردخاي، ١٩٥٨م-;خضر، سعاد محمد; بيروت, 2013  : المركز الأكاديمي للأبحاث.
 * Kurmanji translation of one part of the book: "Jews, Kurds and Arabs, between 1941 and 1952", by Dr. Amr Taher Ahmed Metîn n° 148, October 2006, p. 98-123.
 * French translation of one part of the book: "Juifs, Kurdes et Arabes, entre 1941 et 1952," Errance et Terre promise: Juifs, Kurdes, Assyro-Chaldéens, etudes kurdes, revue semestrielle de recherches, 2005: 7-43, translated by Sandrine Alexie.

Selected articles

 * “The Lost from the Land of Ashur” - the migrations from Kurdistan and the settlement in Eretz-Israel,” in A. Mizrahi and A. Ben-David, eds., The Tribes - Evidence of Israel, Exile, Immigrations, Absorption, Contribution and Integration, 2001: 340-373, Hebrew.
 * “Inventors’ Fate” A Folk-Tale in the Neo-Aramaic of Zakho,” in M. Bar-Asher (ed.), Massorot: Studies in Language Traditions and Jewish Languages, vols. 9, 10, 11 (1997): 383-395, Hebrew.
 * ”The Book of Ruth in Neo-Aramaic,” by Gideon Goldenberg and Mordechai Zaken, in W. Heinrichs (Ed.), Studies in Neo-Aramaic, Cambridge: Harvard Semitic Studies Series (1990): 151-157.

Selected lectures or conference participation

 * The third World Kurdish Scientific Congress, Stockholm, October 11-13, 2013.
 * The Second World Kurdish Scientific Congress, Erbil, Kurdistan, October 11-15, 2012.
 * Keynote Speaker, "Genocide, Minorities and Memories," at the Symposium and Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 22 April 2012.**
 * "Jews, Kurds and Palestinians," at the Parliament in Berlin, 22 October 2010.