Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry

From the Golden Age of Spain to Modern Times

Zion Zohar

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780814763865
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología judía

Sephardic Jews trace their origins to Spain and Portugal. They enjoyed a renaissance in these lands until their expulsion from Spain in 1492, when they settled in the countries along the Mediterranean, throughout the Ottoman Empire, in the Balkans, and in the lands of North Africa, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, mixing with the Mizrahi, or Oriental, Jews already in these locations. Sephardic Jews have contributed some of the most important Jewish philosophers, poets, biblical commentators, Talmudic and Halachic scholars, and scientists, and have had a significant impact on the development of Jewish mysticism.

Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry brings together original work from the world's leading scholars to present a deep introductory overview of their history and culture over the past 1500 years. The book presents an overarching chronological and thematic survey of topics ranging from the origin of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry and their history to kabbalah, philosophy, and biblical commentary, and Sephardic Jewish life in the modern era. This collection represents the most up-to-date scholarship about Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry available.

Contributors include: Mark R. Cohen, Norman Stillman, David Bunis, Jonathan Decter, Yitzhak Kalimi, Moshe Idel, Annette B. Fromm, Zvi Zohar, Morris Fairstein, Pamela Dorn Sezgin, Mark Kligman, and Henry Abramson.

Part I
Sephardic Jewry in the Middle Ages
Origins, Development, and Flowering

Chapter 1
A Global Perspective on Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry
An Introductory Essay

Zion Zohar

Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry: From the Golden Age of Spain to Modern Times seeks to introduce readers to some of the most important aspects of the history, culture, and thought of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. The significance of Sephardic/Mizrahi studies lies not only internally—for Jews in Israel and the Diaspora—but is also of great value to the world at large, given the contributions of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry throughout history.

The idea for this book was born from a realization by the editor that no published work exists that simultaneously meets all of the following goals: a) including the latest findings by scholars regarding key topics in the study of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry in English; b) being written in language accessible to undergraduate students and lay people, yet presenting material at a superior academic level in the field; and c) exposing the reader to the thinking of many of the most prominent scholars in the field regarding their area of expertise. I hope that this book will become a companion work to the many excellent textbooks of Sephardic Jewish history used by anyone teaching in the field of Sephardic studies or seeking knowledge of this fascinating area of the history of Jewish civilization. Each chapter of this book seeks to summarize the author’s and other scholars’ findings so as to present a wide spectrum of topics in the most comprehensive way.

The history of Sephardic and Mizrahi civilization may be divided into three major parts. The first part covers the period from the origin of Sephardic culture to the expulsion from Spain in 1492. The second part covers the period between 1492 and the beginning of the modern age, a time in which the Sephardic Diaspora became a distinct phenomenon in Jewish history. The third period covers the modern era and contemporary accounts of Sephardic existence in the State of Israel and abroad. This book is structured according to these three historical and chronological stages.

At the outset, we must of course address two key questions: What constitutes Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry? And what differentiates these groups from Ashkenazi Jews?

Oriental Jews, Ashkenazim, and Sephardim

The question of precisely when each of these three groups originated is not entirely clear and is one that I leave to social historians to settle. However, generally speaking, Mizrahi Jewry can trace its origins back the farthest—to the forced exile from the Land of Israel to Babylonia (modern Iraq) in the year 586 BCE.¹ Thus, Iraqi Jewry can claim to be among the oldest Diaspora communities in the Jewish world. With the mass exodus of the majority of Jews from Iraq in the modern era (1950s) and continued emigration thereafter, that community no longer exists apart from a few individuals numbering fewer than a hundred souls.

Around that same time in the sixth century BCE, Jews also fled to Egypt where they established themselves as well.² Following the assassination of the military governor Gedaliah, the Jewish leadership that remained behind after the initial exile fled to Egypt with the prophet Jeremiah, who reports these events in detail. In the ensuing centuries, Egyptian Jewry too would grow, founding communities in such diverse locales as Elephantine, near the modern city of Aswan, and in the multi-ethnic port city of Alexandria. Additionally, during the five centuries preceding the Common Era, other Oriental Jewish communities grew in stature in the Diaspora, such as Greece,³ Syria, Asia Minor (modern Turkey), Cyprus and Crete, among other islands in the Mediterranean, as well as Cyrenaica (modern Libya).⁴

During the period stretching from the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE until the rise of Islam (early seventh century CE), a great many developments took place in Oriental Jewish history. For example, at the start of the period, the majority of Jews lived within the Roman Empire, though a significant minority still resided in Babylonia and its environs under the Parthian regime and its successors. By the end of this era, most of the Jewish population worldwide and all of its important centers had come under Muslim rule.⁵ Culturally, Jews who lived under Rome were naturally shaped by the prevailing Hellenistic-Roman civilization of their surroundings, whereas those dwelling in the area of Babylonia formed their own distinct patterns of life outside the sphere of Hellenistic and Roman influence.⁶ These developments, as will become apparent below, affected the creation of the Ashkenazim and Sephardim as separate Jewish subgroups later on.

Following the Great Revolt (66–70 CE) as well as other subsequent Jewish insurrections, the situation of Jews in the Roman Empire began to decline. Upon Emperor Constantine’s conversion from paganism to Christianity in 313 CE, the decline intensified, such that the community in the Land of Israel soon lost its place of prominence among world Jewry. As a result, from approximately the fourth through the tenth centuries, a new leading center of Jewish life emerged in Babylonia along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. It was here that the Babylonian Talmud—the holiest and most authoritative Jewish text second to the Bible—reached completion by the end of the sixth century, representing the culmination of Babylonian Jewry’s productivity over more than a thousand years.

From the Muslim conquest onward, the vast majority of Oriental Jews lived under Islam, establishing themselves at one time or another in almost all the known Muslim and Arab countries throughout the world. Thus, while the Sephardi and Ashkenazi subgroups originated and lived to a greater or lesser extent under Christian regimes, Oriental Jewry, though older than Islam itself, reached maturity and developed its own particular character under Islam, with the exception of most of the Jews of India and the Far East.⁷

Ashkenazim are the descendants of Jews who first settled in the Rhine River valley (Germany) and northern France during the era of Roman rule and over subsequent centuries.⁸ Many of them later migrated eastward to Poland-Lithuania and other Eastern European areas because of the forced expulsions⁹ decreed by Western European monarchs and the persecutions accompanying the Crusades (eleventh through thirteenth centuries). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Ashkenazim’s inexorable march eastward reversed course as some Ashkenazi Jews returned to Western Europe to escape pogroms and poverty in the East. Despite the twisted path Ashkenazi Jewry took from one country and region to another, their movement always occurred within Christendom. Thus, Ashkenazi Jewry developed and matured solely within the context of Christian majority culture.

Mark R. Cohen, in chapter 2 of this book, following the views of Bernard Lewis,¹⁰ will suggest that world Jewry can be divided into two main groupings—those Jews who lived “under the crescent” (under Islam) and those who lived “under the cross” (under Christianity). Oriental Jewry, as we have pointed out, lived almost exclusively under the crescent. Cohen argues that the Sephardim constitute a third entity, bearing similarities to both Jews under the crescent and Jews under the cross, and suggests that their real origins lie under the crescent in the medieval Arab world.

Sephardim are the descendents of Jews who had at one time lived on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). Jews initially settled in Spain during Roman times and endured life there during Christian rule, though legends tell of Jews living there as early as King Solomon’s time. However, as will be explored at length in several chapters, Sephardic culture reached its full flowering following the Muslim conquest in 711 and for the next several centuries, under Islam. The Christian reconquest of Spain, conducted in earnest during the twelfth century, gradually brought most Jews under Christian rule once again until they were forcibly expelled from the peninsula at the close of the fifteenth century, though some chose the path of remaining and conducting Jewish practice in secret.¹¹ Those who elected to leave migrated to the Ottoman Empire¹² in large numbers as well as to the Maghreb (North Africa), parts of Italy, and the city of Amsterdam in Holland. In time, many secret Jews, known as “Marranos” or crypto-Jews, also journeyed overseas to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in North and South America.

Distinctions between Sephardim and Ashkenazim

One of the main distinctions between Sephardim and Ashkenazim¹³ historically has been the Sephardic exposure to a relatively more tolerant and often welcoming culture under Muslim rule. During the Golden Age of Spain (in the tenth through the twelfth centuries), Muslim rulers encouraged a sophisticated cultural legacy that was distinctive from Islam, thus allowing Jews and other minorities to partake in this cultural legacy without feeling any pressure to convert. Consequently, Sephardim are historically distinguished by several features: a) their desire for and attainment of secular political positions; b) their ability to appreciate and harmonize religion and secular aspects of culture; c) their skill at mastering both religious works (like the study of the Bible and Talmud) and more secular subjects (such as poetry and philosophy); and d) their multicultural proficiency, which enabled them to converse and publish in both Hebrew and Arabic. Because of their acceptance into Muslim society and culture, Sephardim were more open to external influences and more tolerant of differences.

By contrast, Ashkenazi Jewry originated first in a Hellenistic-Roman culture and subsequently under Catholic hegemony, both of which were far less tolerant than either the Babylonian culture that nurtured Oriental Jewry or the Islamic one that gave birth to the Sephardic Golden Age. After centuries of living under oppressive conditions in Catholic countries where the high culture was defined and dictated primarily by the Church, Ashkenazi Jews intentionally closed themselves to any outside cultural and intellectual influences. Instead, they immersed themselves almost solely in internal Jewish sources, ideas, and customs, fearing that a deeper exposure to Christian culture might shake the foundations of their faith. As a result, the average Ashkenazi rabbi’s sphere of interest was generally circumscribed by study of the Bible and Talmud to the nearly total exclusion of other sources of wisdom. In addition, Ashkenazi rabbis were far stricter in matters of “halakha.” For example, Rabbi Asher ben Jehiel, born and educated in Germany, wrote, after settling in Toledo, Spain: “Although I know nothing of their secular wisdom,” referring to those who held rationalistic views among the Sephardic political and rabbinic leadership, “blessed be the Merciful God who spared me from it. For examples and evidences come along for the purpose of diverting man from the fear of God and His Torah.”¹⁴

There were times when Sephardim also turned inward, debating whether the exposure to and assimilation of other cultures was indeed a positive development, especially when exposed to Christian persecution before the expulsion from Spain in 1492. However, once the trauma of Christi...