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From Sephardi to Mizrahi and Back Again: Changing Meanings

of â€œSephardiâ€• in Its Social Environments

Harvey E. Goldberg

Jewish Social Studies, Volume 15, Number 1, Fall 2008 (New Series),

pp. 165-188 (Article)

Published by Indiana University Press

DOI: 10.1353/jss.0.0029

For additional information about this article

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From Sephardi toMizrahi and Back Again:Changing Meanings of “Sephardi” in Its SocialEnvironments

Harvey E. Goldberg

A bstrAct

This article sketches historical shits in the meanings and associations o the term

“Sephardi.” Post-Iberian migrations and the post-emancipation perception o Euro-

pean Jews potentially made “Sephardi” the main marker o the “Eastern hal” within

binary ethnic discourse reecting the “ingathering” o Jews in Palestine and the State

o Israel. This did not evolve, paralleling a historically based reluctance o old-time Sephardim to be identifed with “Easterners.” Instead, broad ethnic divides were coded

utilizing the lexeme mizrah. “Sephardi” retained some prominence and partially “re-

verted” to its associations with religion. Relevant actors were a dual rabbinate and

the emergent Israeli Shas party combining politics, religion, and “Sephardism.” There

is also evidence that the images and terms “Sephardi” and “Mizrahi” gradually be-

came coeval in valence to “Ashkenazi” within Israeli discourse regarding “religion.”

Key words: Sephardi, ethnic categories, Israeli society, Eastern Jews

It is a perennial dilemma in cultural and historical research how tosort out the strength o inuences rom the past in relation to theimpact o synchronic actors operating in any social situation. This

is particularly true in cases o migration, when people separate them-selves rom a home setting yet carry with them many orientations anddispositions that they express, consciously or unconsciously, within new economic, political, and cultural realities. Social research in Israel, in

Harvey E. Goldberg, “From Sephardi to Mizrahi and Back Again: ChangingMeanings o ‘Sephardi’ in Its Social Environments,” Jewish Social Studies: His-

tory, Culture, Society n.s. 15, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 165–88



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the decades ater the state was established, generally downplayed theimpact o the pasts o the Jewish immigrant groups that altered thehuman landscape o the society.1 With time, however, it became clearthat various cultural actors originating elsewhere continued to reso-nate in Israeli society, whether in terms o cultural content or in theorging o identities that drew selectively on images and memories romthe past in response to the challenges o the new society.

One line o sociological analysis regarding Israel has stressed theability o the more established (European/Ashkenazi derived) groupsto set the terms within which the culture and the past o weaker seg-ments o the society (coming rom Middle Eastern countries) are de-fned and accorded recognition.2 These analyses, while providingimportant insights into the social power entailed in processes o cul-tural construction and identity ormation, overlook the diverse seatso memory throughout a society and the subtle and shiting dynamicsthat shape sel-identifcation even in the ace o powerul orces work-ing to dictate those processes.3

In a collection entitled Charting Memory: Recalling Medieval Spain ,Stacy Beckwith has oered an “interdiscursive picture o how Medi-eval Spain has been remembered.”4 She reers to discourse across dis-ciplines as well as across the religious boundaries defning Christians,Muslims, and Jews, many o whom continue to remember Spain arrom its historic geographic borders. In highlighting the diversity o memories, Beckwith attempts to move past the conventional practiceo treating these chains and traditions o memory as distinct and sep-arate strands, and thus to both capture, and perhaps in a sense recon-stitute, aspects o the medieval convivencia o Muslim, Christian, and Jewish lie. The chapters o her collection illustrate how the content and mode o memories o later eras select among, and rhetorically highlight, images and narrations o the past but always do so in col-lective contexts and processes o interaction.

Jews in that region, who were dubbed Sephardi (Saradi ), thus ex-isted in a range o socio-religious situations. Their sel-cognitionprobably was threaded through categorizations that also includedChristians and Muslims, as exemplifed in terms such as Mozarabs ,Mudéjars , and Moriscos . Some o these labels and their historical de-rivatives can be relatively clearly delineated, whereas others, likeMoors , are notorious in their lack o historical or contemporary speci-fcity. Delineating the trajectory o a term that subsequently emergedas an inclusive reerence to Jews originating rom the Iberian penin-sula—Sephardim—requires attention not only to the medieval Span-ish context but also to the encounter o Sephardim as communities



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and as a social and religious category, with Jews outside o that re-gion, both in relation to Jews rom various parts o Europe (Ashke-nazim) and vis-à-vis coreligionists long residing in the Arab East. Asin all cases o cultural encounter, such contact yielded mutual ex-change and inuence concomitant with dynamics that reassertedand re-ormed social boundaries and identities.

Modern Israel is a site in which Sephardi groups are ound, and where Sephardi traditions receive some expression, alongside Jews(and non-Jews) o varying backgrounds. Several complex felds o cul-tural and social interaction shape the shades o meaning that the term“Sephardi” has carried in the past and continues to acquire in theevolving circumstances o Israeli society. The meaning o Sephardi, orany ethnic category, that one sector within Jewish lie seeks to privilegecannot ignore dierent and competing emphases. A brie account that includes reerence to the impact o the contemporary political party Shas—Sephardi Torah Observers—which lays claim to agship repre-sentation o Sephardi tradition, serves to illustrate the complexities at work in specifc social contexts in contemporary Israel.

It is well known that Shas has attracted voters who do not themselvesollow a strict religious way o lie, and that many have indicated appre-ciation o how the party succeeded in restoring pride to their culturalheritage, even though they do not agree ully with its ideology. Thislack o ull agreement can also reach points o tension. I have, on sev-eral occasions, attended a Jerusalem synagogue established early in thetwentieth century by amilies who mostly came rom Persia, whose de-scendants—in small numbers—continue to pray there on Shabbat andholidays even though they do not consider themselves dati (religious).This synagogue is ound in the Mahaneh Yehudah neighborhood, anarea o contact among a number o Middle Eastern and Sephardigroups in the decades beore the state was established.5 Most o those who attend the synagogue no longer live in its vicinity, and they driveto Mahaneh Yehudah on the Sabbath even though this is prohibited by rabbinic law. Liturgically, these synagogue-goers see themselves asmaintaining a Jerusalem Sephardi tradition with which they are all a-miliar. However, in the matter o reading rom the Torah during thecourse o the service, they now rely on a yeshivah student educated inShas institutions who they pay to read the parashah (weekly portion)each Sabbath. While dependent on his skills, they also resent this stu-dent, or he arrives only shortly beore the Torah-reading service, doeshis “ job,” and then leaves, showing little solidarity with the group’slocal heritage and sense o identity. Their attachment to a very specifcSephardi tradition notwithstanding, amilies connected to this syna-



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gogue eel totally Israeli, and among the Persian ounders o the syna-gogue was the Banai amily that later “produced” prominent fgures,and even icons, within Israeli culture. This synagogue has appeared inthe media, recognizing its “colorul ethnic” background, in particular with reerence to the late Yossi Banai, but this is done without any hint o a connection to the world o Shas.

The traditions and memories that a group holds and nourishes,and the way that these are recognized (or not) and marked, are un-questionably shaped by contemporary social orces that enter into apolitics o identity. A synchronic view alone, however, tends toward areifcation o ethnic defnitions and categories, and toward an inabil-ity to grasp the content and dynamics o historical imprints that at times surace in unexpected ways. With this in mind, my article un-dertakes to sketch some o the historical, social, and semantic settingsthat gave shape to the contemporary uses and understandings o theterm and notion “Sephardi,” with special attention to the complexi-ties in the pre-state Yishuv and its continuation in Israeli society.

Any (ethnic) term takes on its signifcance both rom the social set-ting within which it unctions and the syntactic rames and semanticfelds within which it operates. From a methodological point o view,then, ocusing on a single ethnic category by itsel carries the analyticdanger o isolating and perhaps essentializing it. But by ollowing theterm Sephardi, even cursorily, rom the late Middle Ages throughmore recent periods, and observing how it accrued, discarded, and re-confgured social and cultural meanings, we get a sense o historicalshits as well as actors that give such labels their persuasive sense o “inherent-ness.” My account touches briey on earlier stages, thoughdwelling more on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many o theinterpretations oered are tentative and are intended mainly to spururther research in these directions. Among the phenomena worthy o attention is the way that earlier associations o “Sephardi” reassert themselves, not in any pre-set way but through a conuence o socialorces and modifcations in meaning that become visible in the detailso specifc and evolving interactional felds.

Early History

As is well known, Sepharad is a place name appearing once in the Biblethat was applied by Jews to the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages,and the term came to characterize communities there and their tradi-tions. At one level, and over the course o time, Sephardi became a gen-



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eral category in comparison to Ashkenazi, but it was never ahomogeneous category. Regional dierences existed within it, such asAndalusia or Castilia , traditions that continued to have signifcance orsome time ater the 1492 expulsion rom Spain. The same is true or thecategory Portugesi , ater Jews let Portugal, beginning several years later.

One actor that may have contributed to crystallizing the notion o Sephardi as an enduring ethnic and religious subdivision was the publi-cation and wide circulation o the Shulhan Arukh . Beginning in about 1570, Joseph Karo’s composition was printed repeatedly with glosses by Moshe Isserles integrated into the main text and with distinct typeacesmarking the writings o the two authors. Although the purpose o sucha publication was inclusiveness—to provide a halakhic guidebook that could appeal to a wide audience constituted by many communities—aby-product o this technique o printed transmission, among those withthe requisite literacy skills, may have been to uniy diverse Sephardirealms but at the same time to “inscribe” deeply a notion o enduringdierences between that “world” and the one deemed Ashkenazi (also with internal dierences). It might be ruitul to explore this hypothesisin terms o recent analytical thrusts coming under labels like diérance or “distinction,” and to speculate as to whether this “dierence” embed-ded in the Shulhan Arukh partially contributed to shaping contemporary binary perceptions o world-Jewry.

It is important to remember (or those not specializing in Sepharditopics), that Sephardi traditions developed in Europe (absorbingboth Muslim and Christian inuences) and thence spread eastward(but not only there), in a variety o directions and at dierent peri-ods. It is also important to stress that the growing association between“Sephardi” and “Eastern” was not a tension-ree process. One instruc-tive example is provided by Abraham Yaari’s study o the development o the hilulah (pilgrimage estival) o Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai at Meron in the Galilee on the 18th o Iyar (Lag ba-omer/La-omer).6 Today, the linkage between that place and date and the fgure o Bar Yohai as author o the Zohar appears seamless, but this was not alwaysthe case. Yaari documents a phase o tension between the scholarly,meditative kabbalists rom Spain and the ecstatic popular celebra-tions carried out by Jews rom the region, even beore the identifca-tion o the place as the burial spot o Bar Yohai was widely accepted.

Another indication o the complexity o the process was the preser- vation o terminological and social distinctions between Sephardi Jewscoming rom Europe (not necessarily directly rom Spain or Portugal)and the local Jews. Known examples are the separate communities o the Grana (Livornese, appearing in documents as qahal qodesh portu-



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gesi ) and Twansa (Tunisians) in Tunisia, or the distinction between the Francos (Señores Francos) and the Mustaaravim (those o Arab lan-guage/culture) in the Levant. Aleppo is a well known instance o wherethis distinction was maintained and clear, and Yaron Harel indicatesthat, in Aleppo, the Francos maintained their own distinct Sephardirabbinic tradition in a manner that did not occur everywhere that thetwo populations were in contact.7 Further study o the topic might ben-eft rom comparing the Aleppan situation with the way Yaron Tsur hasdocumented the varying intersecting trajectories o Grana and Twansain Tunisia.8 The general point, or our purposes, is how there was bothgrowing contact between and partial merging o the two groups but also simultaneous processes o distancing that distinguished Sepharditraditions and sel-identifcation, on the one hand, rom local “East-ern” communal orms and traditions, on the other.

Growing European Impact

In the late eighteenth century, the cultural-religious division between“Sephardi” and “Ashkenazi” began to be caught up in the growing eco-nomic, political, and military gaps and tensions between Europe and“the East,”9 and the contrast started to absorb images like those ana-lyzed by Edward Said in his Orientalism . During the nineteenth century in Palestine, the number o Jews migrating there rom Europe led to Ashkenazim equaling and eventually surpassing the number o Se-phardim and “Eastern” Jews (some o whom also arrived in various mi-grations at the time). One curious socio-linguistic development takingplace in this setting was the absorption o the term “Franco” into Yid-dish (becoming renk ), so that a term signiying prestige in the Se-phardi Levant ended up having disparaging connotations in the groupthat was assuming more importance locally. The dynamics o this lin-guistic journey are still not well understood.10 Perhaps, in a situationhypothesized above (comparing the Levant to the Tunisian situation),alongside “pure” Señores Francos and economically weaker Arabic-speaking Jews, there existed both socially mobile Mustaaravim andFrancos who had lost social and economic standing. One can easily imagine how members o the latter category, seeking to hang ontotheir European descent as a lieline o prestige, might become targetso slurs among Yiddish-speaking newcomers.11 Whether or not data areavailable to test this reconstruction, the global political and culturalorces becoming stronger in nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine



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made issues o culture and group-identifcation crucial or economic,legal-political, and social (prestige) reasons.

Even with the growth o these partially parallel international andlocal constellations, there did not emerge rapidly, globally, or withconsistency a simple binary identifcation o “Sephardi” with “theEast.” A thrust toward classifcation schemes like this may have ex-isted, but its expression was not sweeping, and plural systems o cate-gorization o ethnic dierences and traditions coexisted withOrientalist binary perceptions. Without sorting matters into causeand eect, the nonexistence, or perhaps resistance to, such categori-zation may be seen in several realms.

New, small groups that arrived in Ottoman Palestine during thenineteenth century did not automatically or easily link up with exist-ing, larger, and recognized organized communities, whether o Euro-pean provenance—Ashkenazim—or most directly rom outsideEurope, such as Sephardim or Moghrabim. Economic issues werecrucial in these developments, because unds rom abroad (halukah ) were important in all cases. New groups could be benefcial to the es-tablished institutions i tied to a solid fnancial base in the Diaspora,but they could also become an economic burden i this were not thecase. A well-known instance is that o Jews rom Yemen arriving in the1880s and later, but this dilemma may also be seen in the shiting or-tunes o Jews arriving rom some regions in the Caucasus, whichcould be ambivalently included in either Europe or Asia.12

For various reasons, it made sense or the old-time Sephardi com-munity and leadership to continue to highlight their specifc statusand traditions, including language (such as Ladino/Judezmo). They had established ties to the local Arab leadership (largely Muslim, but also some Christians) as well as to Ottoman authorities. An impor-tant aspect o the latter was the status o the chie rabbinic fgure(rishon le-tsiyon ) in the country, even though Ashkenazim began tooutweigh Sephardim in number as the nineteenth century wore on.Some o the latter, both by virtue o Spanish/European culturalmemory and through ongoing commercial and banking activities,had ties throughout the Mediterranean. (In this manner, someMoghrabi amilies arriving in the nineteenth century meshed easily with some old-time Sephardi elites.) One may surmise that the very appearance and growth o Zionist-oriented immigration at the endo the century, including Jews who saw themselves as embodying ad- vanced European ideas and culture, increased the motivation o old-time Sephardim to stress their own traditions and identity in contrast to “Eastern” groups who were viewed as less endowed.



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In this context, it is worth asking whether the positive image that classic Sepharad had attained within learned circles o the “scienceo Judaism” emerging in central Europe in the mid-nineteenth cen-tury had any echoes within the nascent Zionist Yishuv several decadeslater. Yaah Berlovitz has shown that writers within the First Aliyah were ambivalent in regard to the creations o medieval Sephardipoets but that at the time a small group o Jerusalem-born intellectu-als did appear who were knowledgeable about both local Arab lieand Arab literature, and who proposed a model o Zionism rooted inSephardi history and Arab culture as an alternative to the ormula-tions imported by the European newcomers.13 Individual members o this small group had successul academic and/or cultural careers,but their impact on a collective level was minimal. Later, in the twen-tieth century, there appeared a ew European-born champions o thehistorical contribution o Sephardi writers and their potential uturesignifcance to a contemporary Hebrew renaissance, notably in thepersonage o Hayim Nahman Bialik.14 This intellectual thrust hadsome additional implications as time went on, and it is well knownthat a positive image o medieval Sepharad was concretized in the se-lection o street names in the Rehavia neighborhood o Jerusalem, in which many new arrivals rom Germany concentrated in the 1930s.Promoting a positive Sephardi aura was not without its complexities,however. In a 1927 address to a group calling itsel Halutsey Ha-miz-rah, Bialik praised the richness o Sephardi literature in earlier cen-turies and challenged his audience to participate in a Hebrew literary renaissance by drawing on the treasures o their past, but he also de-scribed contemporary Sephardi literary culture in terms o a “dry branch” or being “sterile.”15 Without making it explicit, Bialik appearsto have implied that Sephardim were now at a historical-cultural low point characterizing “the Orient” as a whole.

This ostensibly paradoxical stance constitutes a romantic “doublethink” regarding Sephardim/Orientals as representing a past “goldenage” while persisting on the margins o contemporary Jewish lie. Inter-nally inconsistent perspectives like these have been analyzed by MichaelHerzeld with reerence to European views o Greece and have been ex-plored in connection with Sephardim, defned broadly, by Joëlle Bahl-oul.16 Examples o how the peripheral and exotic “Orient” or Asia hasbeen seized on as inspirational with regard to some valued uture ap-peared early on within Zionism, such as the participation o representa-tives rom the Caucasus in the Fourth Zionist Congress, supposedly illustrating the ideal o Jews working the soil and bearing arms.17 An-other example, in Ottoman Palestine itsel, is the thesis that Jews rom



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Yemen were seen as paragons o ancient Jewish culture but were only employed as low-paid artisans.18 It would be too simple, however, to ig-nore dierences in the content, context, and pragmatic implications o these various ideologized representations and to lump them all into asingle case o the orientalization o non-European Jews.

In the frst hal o the twentieth century, it was still common orgroups coming rom dierent Middle Eastern regions to maintaintheir communal distinctiveness and to be recognized as such by out-siders. At the same time, it is reasonable to assume, the growing Jew-ish population in Mandate Palestine, ed mostly by immigrants romEurope but also rom Middle Eastern locales, increased both contact with and consciousness o internal Jewish diversity. This, combined with heightened nationalist awareness stimulated by opposition to Jewish immigration rom Arab groups, on the one hand, and the elt need to cultivate a coherent national culture, on the other, may havenourished the tendency to sort Jewish categories into an overall bi-nary system in which “the West” was arraigned against “the East.” Insuch an implicit scheme, it has been argued, Jews who were rooted in Arab and/or Muslim milieus were usually not viewed as sources o creativity by the European-based majority and leadership but as prob-lematic instances o “hybrid” categories that needed to be “puri-fed.”19 In postulating such cultural mechanisms, one must becautious about retrospectively assuming that tendencies emerging with orce at a later period were precisely in place in the past.

As stated, ethnic plurality, in contrast to a binary scheme, was stillsalient and publicly institutionalized during the Mandate period.This can be seen in the names o many synagogues, particularly in Jerusalem—or example, Urali (northwestern Syria/southwesternTurkey), Halabi (Aleppo), and Yazdi (southern Persia)—and o someburial societies that continued to stress ormer local identities eventhough, rom a broad religious point o view, they could be placedunder the rubric Sephardi.20 I one wished to search or latent mecha-nisms o handling problematic classifcations, it could be argued that the diversifcation o ethnic categories was an implicit but purposeulcultural ploy aimed at disguising a broad attribution o all Jewish“Orientals” to the same category, thereby maintaining a desiredimage o plurality under a pan-Jewish umbrella. This would parallelthe suggestion that, in the early post-state decades, some o the wide-spread ethnic stereotypes regarding individual Middle Eastern im-migrant groups were a dispersed and thus disguised reection o images that were concentrated together when ocused on local Arabs.21 But such retroactive historical imputations must also take



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into account that later social phenomena were not exact replicas o what existed in the pre-state period. For example, use o the termedah as the prime marker o Middle Eastern Jewish ethnicity was not maniestly univocal in the pre-state period. Then, the term ha-edah ha-haredit reerred to a wing o the ultra-Orthodox world, printedprayer books oten distinguished between Sephardi and Edot Ha-mizrah (communities o the East), and a edgling ethnological journalestablished by Raphael Patai and some colleagues adopted the name Edot and intentionally drew on materials rom both the Europeanand the Middle Eastern worlds. It is also clear that some aspects o the ideological and social actors entering into the conceptually bi-urcated ethnic tensions that grew ater the state was established hadappeared earlier in specifc circumstances.22

With regard to “Sephardim proper” in the pre-state period, a very rough sketch o coordinates might map three broad directions (withno attempt to attach quantitative assessments to them) regardingtheir place as “ethnics” vis-à-vis the developing Zionist Yishuv: those who remained outside the development o national culture and insti-tutions and who, in the extreme orm, identifed with ultra-Orthodoxpoints o view; those who ully accepted the premises and joined theemerging liestyle o Zionists that were orged mainly by Europeanimmigrants and ideologies; and those who were sympathetic to theZionist project but elt that this did not contradict Sephardim main-taining their own identity and utilizing their existing social and cul-tural capital as participants or even leaders in the Zionist cause. Thelast point o view, whose expression was largely rustrated, has beenexemplifed in a book by Elie Eliachar, who criticizes Sephardim whoaccepted the (Zionist/Ashkenazi) ideological position that reused torecognize the role o internal-Jewish ethnic diversity in the national-ist program.23 Eliachar may also represent a position in which old-time Sephardim presented themselves as potential leaders o Oriental Jews, a stance that partakes o both identifcation with them and ac-ceptance o the premise that Oriental newcomers needed guidancein order to integrate into the Yishuv and Israeli society.24

Developments after the State

Ater the establishment o Israel as an independent state, several inter-related developments gave shape to the categories and discourse en-tailing the notion “Sephardi,” a term that must be seen within culturaland semantic felds that included other ethno-religious labels. Among



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these were three salient processes: frst, large-scale immigrations, wherein about hal o the approximately 650,000 Jews arriving aterindependence (May 1948 to the end o 1951) were rom “Eastern” coun-tries, ollowed by the intensive immigrations rom North Arica in1955–56 (and, in the case o Morocco, again in 1963);25 second, exten-sive bureaucratic involvement o the state in shaping the trajectories o immigrant groups;26 and, third, establishment o census categories.This last point is, o course, an aspect o the second process, but it de-serves special attention because o the way that it ed into scholarly dis-course on immigration—in which sociology was prominent—that reected other inuences as well. Some general trends emerging inthese processes are indicated in the ollowing paragraphs. Amongthem, I note two themes. One is the arbitrariness o the categories that emerged, both in the tendency to present the Jewish population in sim-ple binary terms and in more “objective” country-based classifcations.The second is the ideological tendencies surrounding Jewish ethnicity that to a degree were threaded through discourse on the topic, whetherin the orm o downplaying its relevance or, to the contrary, o stressingits persuasive relevance even when un-named. This discussion is neces-sarily only a sketch, with the subject warranting extensive and detailedtreatment. As part o this caution, I also note that oten the languageand terminology used to discuss ethnic phenomena reect the diversecontexts in which they appear.

The large-scale, post-state immigration gave impetus to the ten-dency to conceptualize Israeli society in binary terms rom a Jewishethnic point o view. Anthropologist Dorothy Willner, who was em-ployed in the rural settlement project o the 1950s, observed that “Di-chotomous categories, such as European and Oriental or Ashkenaziand Sephardi, were the common ways o drawing broader distinc-tions within the population.”27 This was not the only process at work,however, and no single set o categories was available to express a bi-narism that did not appear orced somewhat rom a historical-culturalpoint o view, or that did not meet with resistance rom one group oranother. The notion o Sephardi was available, but even the social sci-ence literature o the frst two decades, which typically did not dwellon historical “niceties,” did not mobilize the term. One sociologicalstudy that surveyed immigrants did not mention it at all.28 Another work by a social anthropologist gave an overview o “group relationsin a new society” and explained why it preerred the phrase “MiddleEastern Jews” over “Oriental” (see below) or over the census-drivenrubric o “Arica-Asia” but did not relate explicitly to the term “Se-phardi.”29 A comprehensive demographic study o immigration men-



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tions “Sephardic Jews” once in passing with reerence to thenineteenth century,30 and S. N. Eisenstadt’s The Absorption o Immi- grants , a paradigm-setting work or a generation o social research,gives only brie hints regarding dilemmas attached to the term in achapter entitled “The Oriental Jews in Palestine.”31

Eisenstadt acknowledges that “Oriental” is a category that includes wide diversity, giving a list o close to a dozen groups which begins with “Sephardim.”32 He then explains that the latter term originally applied to those “originating rom Spain” and states that “The Se-phardim orm a category by themselves, and exhibit marked dier-ences rom other Oriental Jews.” Eisenstadt nevertheless generalizes with regard to “Oriental Jews”: “Despite their dierences, most o them ormed a more or less unifed sociological ‘block’ as compared with the rest o the Jewish community in Israel.”33 Only in the broaderpicture given by cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai is some at-tempt made to oer a portrait specifc to Sephardi Jewry separaterom that o “Oriental Jews” as well as to discuss some o the complexinteractions between them and other communities.34 In the samebook, however, Patai reers to the “Sephardic-Oriental Jews in Pales-tine” and, on the ollowing page, mentions “Oriental and semi-Ori-ental (Sephardi) Jewish groups.”35

As indicated, the old-time Sephardi elite only partially acceptedthis global conceptual incorporation, an attitude that might havecontributed to encouraging use o the term Edot Ha-mizrah whenreerring to Middle Eastern Jewry that did not entail descent romIberian Sephardim. This term had existed in the pre-state period,such as in prayer books defned as representing the liturgy o sarad u-vnei edot ha-mizrah , but the expression, as it emerged in general use,now encoded an ethnic (and by implication an ethno-class) meaningand did not reer only to cultural traditions. It should be noted that the term Sephardi was not meaningul to many immigrants romNorth Arica and the Middle East. It played hardly any role in the ev-eryday sel-categorization o villagers rom the Tripolitanian hinter-land whom I frst encountered in a moshav (cooperative agriculturalsettlement) in 1963,36 even though by objective criteria their religiouslie—which was active—strongly reected Sephardi traditions.

Institutionally, the ofcial division o the rabbinate into Ashkenaziand Sephardi sectors continued to exist, expressed not only on thehigher level o the two chie rabbis but also in appointments withinthe bureaucracy o local religious councils throughout the country,so that cities and many small towns had two rabbis. This categorizingpractice only intermittently aected daily aairs, and Willner re-



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marked on the then-new, widespread tendency to categorize immi-grants in terms o their country o origin, such as Tunisians andRomanians.37 This took place even when it was clear that important variation existed within some countries, such as the dierences be-tween newcomers rom the Atlas Mountains and people who had re-ceived elementary or high school education in Casablanca. Willnerattributed this new, simplifed categorization to cognitive overloadgiven the rapidity and diversity o immigration at the time, though not all popular ethnic labels ollowed the country-o-origin principle pre-cisely. Jews rom northern Iraq were called Kurdim , a term that was sa-lient in some pre-state immigration settings (like Jerusalem),38 and new terms arose, such as Anglosaksim , that included English speakers romNorth America, England, Australia, and so orth. When examinedclosely, the classifcation by country-o-origin is rather ironic, in that Jews coming rom some o these geopolitical units, particularly withinthe Middle East, had not viewed themselves as part o the national enti-ties to which the labels pointed. But country-o-origin was the easiest and most “objective” way or the new Central Bureau o Statistics toclassiy immigrants, and it became the basis or the larger groupinginto immigrants rom Asia, Arica, Europe, and America. Both or o-fcial purposes and or social research using these data, the contrast between people rom (or whose athers were rom) Asia/Arica as op-posed to Europe/America soon became the standard binary methodo distinguishing “Easterners” rom “Westerners” when addressing eth-nic dimensions o demography and social mobility, or lack thereo.39 These categories were clearly not perect (or example, Jews rom South Arica were “Anglosaksim”), but or the most part social research pre-erred technical solutions to these issues over introducing historicaland cultural perspectives into their investigations or into policieslinked to their studies. This lack o sensitivity to signifcant cultural variation hidden by census categories has changed only slowly, as illus-trated recently by Jews rom the Caucasus, who frst were included inthe statistics together with all other “Russians” (those rom the ormerSoviet Union) but in 1996 were placed in a category that distinguishedimmigrants rom the Asiatic regions o Russia rom Europeans, andeventually (or some social issues) they were identifed as separate romother groups like Jews rom Bukhara.40

The reliance on seemingly objective terms (like country o origin)and the avoidance o concepts relating to amiliar cultural content (like Sephardi) reected a general reluctance to place ethnicity at the center o social description and analysis in the social researchconducted immediately ater Israeli independence. Although, in an



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early paper, Eisenstadt used the term “Oriental Jews,”41 the mainthrust o his subsequent publications was to ocus on general socialstructural variables and to contextualize ethnicity within these only when observed social trends orced giving it recognition. One possi-ble reason or this (albeit not mentioned by Eisenstadt but explicitly raised and then dismissed by his colleague Joseph Ben-David) wasthat downplaying ethnicity ft into, and reinorced, the nation-build-ing ethos o the time.42 Another reason was that both this ethos andthe crystallizing sociological paradigm, though by no means “Marx-ist” in any strong sense, still carried within them assumptions that ethnic and national expressions constituted “alse consciousness.” A next generation o sociologists would also claim that the hegemoniccategories o the 1950s and 1960s masked the reality o “Ashkenazi”domination (which I discuss below). I believe that all these explana-tions bear relevance, and the adoption o this particular approach to“Oriental Jews” might even be overdetermined, particularly when oneremembers how central nation-building was in sociology and politi-cal science at the time (rom the late 1940s through the early 1960s)in the English-language-dominated research literature. A side noteregarding the title o Eisenstadt’s paper might indicate that, to Amer-icans during that period, the term “Oriental” mostly carried conno-tations o the Far East—Japan and China—and not the Middle East.This incongruence aside, the title points to the rapidly emergingstrength o binary perceptions o Israeli society.

The tendency to minimize ethnicity notwithstanding, it orced itsel on the attention o society and o researchers in various ways. Almost all writers on the subject point to the 1959 riots by Jews rom North A-rica (primarily Morocco)43 that took place in Wadi Salib—a neighbor-hood o Haia—and then spread to some other locales as a signifcant juncture. The political system had to react to these protests, but it man-aged to do so while limiting the extent to which “ethnicity” was ex-pressed in politics.44 On another level, though attempts were made toimpose cultural homogeneity on the immigrants (some early exampleso which are recognized today as outlandish), it quickly became ac-cepted that ethnic traditions would continue in the realms o ood, cel-ebrations o holidays, and synagogue lie. The most common way o reerring to Middle Eastern immigrants, which lumped them togetherbut let room or recognizing some o this variation, became Edot Ha-mizrah; as already mentioned, this was generally distinguished romSephardi (which became restricted in its reerence as descriptive o agroup or o group-belonging). Within 20 years o independence, there were indications (hardly noticed by sociological analysis at frst) that



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not only were Middle Easterners preserving some practices rom thepast but they were also reashioning aspects o their traditions to re-ect their current place in Israeli society.

Subsequent Developments: Sephardi and Mizrahi

By the late 1960s, the ratio o people in Israel who could be labeledMiddle Eastern as compared to European (based on their or theirather’s country o origin) was reaching equilibrium. Just as relevant was the growth o Middle Easterners in the age category in whichthey could serve in the army and vote. By this time, too, Jews o Mo-roccan background were the largest country-o-origin category in Is-raeli society. Ater the 1967 war, explicit expression and awareness o ethnicity in the public sphere grew in intensity, and other salient ex-pressions o ethnicity appeared over the ollowing decades. These in-cluded protests against inequality, dramatized by the appearance o the Israeli “Black Panthers” in the early 1970s; the growth o popularMiddle Eastern ethnic expressions—such as the Mimouna estival (at the end o Passover), which attracted 100,000 people to Jerusalem;governmental response to omission o the history and culture o Mid-dle Eastern Jewries in the educational curriculum, leading to the cre-ation, in 1976, o a special department devoted to that topic; thedevelopment o a “critical sociology” (and other disciplines) that ex-amined biases within social science discourse during Israel’s frst quarter-century and put orth the category o Mizrahim (in contrast to Ashkenazim) as a more relevant model o understanding ethnicrelations in the society; the appearance o the Shas party in 1983 as asuccessul linkage o ethnicity and politics while highlighting Se-phardi tradition placed in a ramework o strict religiosity; and subse-quent dramatic immigrations in the 1980s and 1990s—rom the(ormer) Soviet Union and rom Ethiopia—that did not displaceolder ethnic categorizations and problems but added new dimensionsso that simple binary representations o Israel’s ethnic reality becameless sharp and more rhetorical. In the ollowing paragraphs, I willtouch on some o these developments, with special reerence to thecategories Sephardi and Mizrahi.

In the late 1970s, a combined social and analytic critique o theterm “Edot Ha-mizrah” developed. Sammy Smooha argued that, when “edot” is used in this manner, it typically reers to an “ethno-class” rather than to a strict classifcation by origin. As such, the termallows unexamined assumptions about dierences in class and status



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to remain in place. Both Smooha and Shlomo Swirski, who empha-sized dierentials in power, promoted the term “Mizrahim” (as anoun and name o a group, rather than as an adjective—mizrahi ) toinclude all groups with Eastern origins because it places the issue o social power “up ront” and intimates that this reality stems romshared disadvantaged placement and discrimination within Israelisociety rather than reecting historical cultures and remnants o animmigrant past.45 The term was rapidly accepted within critical socialscience (and some humanities) discourse, among the widening circleo intellectuals o Middle Eastern/Mizrahi background, and eventu-ally by the media. Today it has become a hegemonic expression orrepresenting a perceived binary ethnic split in Israel, gaining clearprominence when compared to the term “Sephardi” in this regard. I would also argue that the emergence o the term went hand in hand with recreating the category “Ashkenazi” as relevant to social analy-sis.46 Less attention was paid to the act that not all groups who do not come under an Ashkenazi label eel connected to the term Mizrahi.This has been reported both with regard to Israelis rom Turkey androm Bulgaria, whose link to a Sephardi identity is straightorward,and with regard to Jews rom Iran.47 These empirical exceptions, how-ever, did little to lessen the widespread appeal o Mizrahi in bothscholarly and popular discourse.

In the context o these developments, to grasp the meanings o Se-phardi in Israeli society is to attend to more than one emphasis and toappreciate contextual variation in its usage. It continued to have the o-cused meaning o one “group” (or several related groups) who had anidentifable cultural-religious tradition and who, in the past, werelargely Ladino speakers. In comparison to the newer inclusive marker—Mizrahi—Sephardi could also be placed side by side with Edot Ha-miz-rah in explicitly constituting a label with cultural-historical implicationsthat let current sociological associations implicit, whereas Mizrahi di-rected attention to the “here and now,” to younger people, to social pro-test, and to politics. The social resonances o Sephardi and Mizrahi were thus dierent. The ormer still bore hints o an elite (dependingon the situation), and the ability to call on global sets o connections, whether expressed organizationally (such as the World Sephardi Feder-ation, which was frst organized in 1925 beore the Zionist Congress in Vienna) or through the image o wealthy personages like Nessim Gaon(who headed the World Sephardi Federation or many years) or the lateLeon Tammam (who set up a rival organization). Mizrahi, by contrast, was clearly rooted in Israeli class experience. Sephardi leaders, whetherlocal or rom abroad, expressed concern and sympathy over the Miz-



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rahi plight, and some had pretenses o leadership in relation to theseissues, but they did not carry with them the tradition o poor and power-less immigrants struggling against an establishment. An instructive fg-ure might be that o Yitzhak Navon, rom an old Jerusalem Sephardiamily, who represented the integration o Sephardism into Israeli soci-ety 48 and, by implication, the integration o Israel into the region. Aspresident o the state (1978–83), he delivered a speech in Arabic to theEgyptian parliament in 1980. Success at this level did translate directly into dramatic progress regarding Israel’s economic and social prob-lems, which were still strongly correlated with ethnicity.

Many social and economic problems interlaced with ethnicity con-tinue to exist today, and they deservedly attract public criticism, but the 1970s may also be seen as a period o opening up possibilities orcountervailing orces working to rectiy inequalities. I suggest not that there was a rapid, tangible attainment o equality at the time but that a “leveling o the playing feld” began that allowed greater ex-pression to a variety o social and cultural orces. Several points are worthy o attention in this regard. First, by the early 1970s, about oneout o our marriages crossed the European–Middle Eastern divide. Although such “intermarriage” is neither an unailing measure o so-cial equality nor a sure mechanism or bringing that about, a trend o more marriages o this type does indicate a loosening o the link be-tween ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Second, the social critiqueemerging in the 1970s was accepted by signifcant elements withinthe Ashkenazi population. This included many people engaged in so-cial welare and education who were sympathetic to the claims o “thePanthers” i not always to the specifc style o this orm o protest. Par-allel to this, the critical social analysis mentioned above was by nomeans restricted to researchers o Mizrahi background. An intellec-tual and social program eventually emerged that reected youngerMizrahi intellectuals, calling itsel the Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow (ha-keshet ha-demokratit ha-mizrahit ), but it never sought to distance it-sel in principle rom Ashkenazi intellectuals, and one could say that its very existence was evidence o a growing Mizrahi “voice” in society generally. As stated, concrete successes in bringing about greaterequality within society were mixed, though it appears that one area in which the “playing feld” opened up signifcantly to non-Ashkenaziinuence was in the intertwined realms o culture and religion. Here,images and content associated with Sephardi appear to have suc-cesses, in comparison to Mizrahi. This will be discussed briey withregard to the Shas party, and also more broadly.

The Shas party ran successully in the Jerusalem municipal elec-



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tions in 1984 and rapidly became signifcant on the national scene, asit continues to be today. Although the short-lived and small Tami (ha- tnuah le-masoret yisrael ) political party that preceded it seemed to con-frm the conventional wisdom that political ethnicity had no uturein Israeli society, Shas’s success has orced a rethinking o that conclu-sion. Most analysts ocus on social, economic, and political reasons inexplaining Shas’s appearance and success rather than on historically based cultural and religious issues.49 One cultural issue worthy o greater attention is how Shas has managed to bring together two very dierent religious emphases: the systematic Sephardi “halakhism” o Baghdad-born Rabbi Ovadiah Yose, who was trained in Jerusalem’sPorat-Yose Sephardi yeshivah, and the more “popular” (“ecstatic,”“mystical”) orientation widespread among Jews rom Morocco.50 Theincorporation o these dierent “Mizrahi” cultural backgroundsunder a single political umbrella was possible, I suggest, because o the presence o the ideological-religious banner o Sephardism that carried with it demonstrable and historically acknowledged content. As a political party claiming to be able to rectiy the results o in-equality and discrimination that characterized Israeli society rom itsormative period, Shas positioned itsel in relation to the social andidentity elements o “Mizrahiyut,” but perhaps its ability to bridge a variety o groups was partially enabled by the more cultural-religiousand historically based set o symbols embodied in the term Sephardithat entered into the party’s ofcial name.51

Beyond politics, the success o Shas may reect an overall trend, to which it has contributed but which may also be in tension with themore strictly religious (dati or haredi ) aspects o the party’s ideology. Ireer to the ading o Sephardi—and to some extent Mizrahi—as“marked” categories and their emergence as ully standard (non-marked) expressions o religious culture in Israel. Indications o such atrend (which I argue is present, without claiming that it has swept throughout the society) may be evident in a number o ways. In recent years, the Ashkenazi chie rabbi has appeared (implying that he elt that he had to appear) at central events in the Mizrahi world such asthe mid-winter hilulah o Morocco-born Baba Sali (Rabbi Yisrael Abu-Hatzira) in the Negev town o Netivot.52 In the same general realm, anostensibly dierent phenomenon points in the same direction: thepublic suggestion that towns and local councils need only one ofcialrabbi (not two—Sephardi and Ashkenazi) has repeatedly been raisedin recent years as a result both o pressure to cut governmental budgetsand o certain political ideologies. Another phenomenon, which may not be widespread but is known in Jerusalem, is the existence o mo-



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hels, who have the ability to conduct a circumcision ceremony accord-ing to Sephardi, Ashkenazi, or Yemenite customs and liturgy,depending on the request o the client. A trend that has received re-search attention is that Mizrahi music (some o which has its origins insynagogue music) is seen by many as one o the mainstream expres-sions o Israeli music.53 Thus, though a sense o “distinction” is main-tained, the situation is ar rom what it was in the frst post-stategeneration, where anything coming rom “the East” was expected togive way to “Israeli” (European-based) cultural preerence or taste.

There is even a sense in which traditions rom “the East” are per-ceived as the most telling or authentic representations o Jewishness inthe Israeli context, and not only with exotic connotations. At least oneritual object o Mizrahi background—the hamsa (hand o Fatma)—has become an inclusive Israeli symbol. Once viewed as a sign o su-perstition, the hamsa (at least within the visual public sphere) is now utilized as a general sign o Israeli-ness, o connection to Jewish tradi-tion, and even to “texts.”54 Several years ago it appeared in the graph-ics o a televised promotion or an annual summer estival, in whichpeople were oered the opportunity to experience a variety o ap-proaches to studying classic sources, whatever their religious back-ground might be. In these examples, there may be some melting o the distinction between Sephardi and Mizrahi, but the general point is that, in the realms o tradition and religion (which partially glideinto one another and partially are in tension), both o these “Eastern”expressions have become mainstream Israeli, particularly within a set o images contrasting them with Ashkenazi as standing or “middleclass,” “secular,” and bearing global-cosmopolitan cultural orienta-tions as opposed to local-national ones.

As a fnal reection, it should be noted that such a process o the frmIsraelization o elements o Sephardi and Mizrahi culture probably en-tails a thinning o the semantic and cultural associations with “classicSepharad”—Spain. This appears poignantly in the halakhic project o Ovadiah Yose. Although the rubric “Sephardi” remains salient, at thecenter o the historical memory mobilized by the leader o Shas standthe texts created by Karo—the Bet Yose and the Shulhan Arukh 55—whichbecome a kind o “portable homeland” now situated in the Land o Is-rael, rather than evocations o Spain itsel. In other cases, too, the pro-cess o Mizrahi and Sephardi traditions becoming one version o standard local culture probably entails some dilution o their historiclinkages as they become inserted into the ux o social lie in Israel. Yet even the partial retention o past orms and traces leaves open possibili-ties o cultural reworking that cannot be predicted in advance.



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Conclusion

The meanings and cultural associations o the notion o Sephardihave obviously shited historically. To say this, however, is not to slipinto the cliché that each generation simply has “(re)invented” theSephardi that best serves its interests. The meaning o this (or any)cultural-ethnic term that one sector within Jewish lie seeks to privi-lege cannot ignore dierent, and sometimes competing, emphases.Group labels and the cultural content linked to them cannot be sepa-rated rom scenes o interaction in which they come up against theideologies, practices, and identities o other groups, nor be separatedrom semantic felds that are at once dynamic and a reservoir o his-torical associations. In the case o Sephardi, this includes both new creations like Mizrahi and re-workings o older terms like Ashkenazi.My own reading is that, despite all the bueting by diverse socialorces and vectors o signifcation, the term Sephardi at this time inIsraeli society largely highlights recognized realms o religion andtradition within a broader matrix o cultural meanings, and only to alesser extent serves as a sharp marker o social boundaries.

Notes

Earlier versions o this article were presented at the Annual Meeting o theIsrael Anthropological Association in Sderot, May 2004, as well as at theStanord University workshop in 2007. It is based partially on research sup-ported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 907/02) and has ben-efted rom discussions with Chen Bram. Noah Gerber provided someimportant reerences and made comments on an earlier drat.

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations rom oreign-language sourcesare mine.

1 Harvey E. Goldberg, “Introduction: Culture and Ethnicity in the Study o Israeli Society,” Ethnic Groups 1 (1978): 163–86; Harvey E. Goldbergand Hagar Salamon, “From Laboratory to Field: Notes on Studying Di- versity in Israeli Society,” Hagar: International Social Science Review 3(2002): 123–37.

2 Gil Eyal, The Disenchantment o the Orient: Expertise in Arab Aairs and the

Israeli State (Stanord, 2006); Yehouda Shenhav,The Arab Jews: A Postcolo-

nial Reading o Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity (Stanord, 2006).3 Harvey E. Goldberg and Chen Bram, “Sephardi/Mizrahi/Arab-Jews:

Reections on Critical Sociology and the Study o Middle Eastern Jew-



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ries within the Context o Israeli Society,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 22 (2007): 227–56.

4 Stacy N. Beckwith, Charting Memory: Recalling Medieval Spain (New York,2000), xiv.

5 For a perspective on the neighborhood, ocusing on one Sephardigroup, see Walter Zenner, A Global Community: The Jews rom Aleppo,

Syria (Detroit, 2000).6 Abraham Yaari, “Toldot ha-hilulah be-Meiron,” Tarbits 31 (1961):

72–101.7 Yaron Harel, “Mahloket ve-haskamah—Saradim u-mustaarabim be-

haleb,” in Ladinar: Mehkarim be-sirut, be-musikah uve-historyah shel dovrei

Ladino , ed. Y. Dishon and Sh. Reael (Tel Aviv, 1998), 119–38.8 Yaron Tsur, “Yahadut Tunisyah be-shilhei ha-tkuah ha-trum koloni-

alit,” Mi-kedem umi-yam 3 (1990): 79–114.

9 Daniel J. Schroeter, The Sultan’s Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World (Stanord, 2002).

10 Thanks to David Bunis or email discussions on this matter.11 The complex feld o interaction that involved Sephardim, old-time

Middle Easterners, and newcomer Ashkenazi Jews innineteenth-century Palestine is sketched by Raphael Patai, who alsoindicates that some o the Ashkenazim sought to intermarry with and join the established elite Sephardi amilies. See Raphael Patai, “OnCulture Contact and Its Working in Modern Palestine,” American An-

thropologist n.s. 49, no. 4, part 2 (Oct. 1947): 20.12 These Jews have variously been called Kavkazim, Tatim, or Yehudei

Ha-har. I am thankul to Chen Bram or a historical perspective re-garding them. See, e.g., Chen Bram, Yehudei kavkaz be -Dagestan: Zehut

kolektivit ve-hisardut kehilatit (Ramat Gan, 2007).13 Yaah Berlovitz, “Reshitah shel ha-sirut be-erets yisrael ve-zikoteha

le-shirat sarad: Hatzaah le-model tarbut yehudi-arvi,” Bikoret u-arsha-

nut 32 (1998): 94–110. Prominent within this group were David Yellin(1864–1941) and Avraham Shalom Yahuda (1877–1951). I am indebtedto Noah Gerber or pointing me to some o the materials discussed in

this and the next ew paragraphs.14 Berlovitz, “Reshitah shel ha-sirut,” 100–101, and Shmuel Avneri “Bia-lik ve-edot ha-mizrah: Anatomiyah shel alilah ve-elbon shav,” Ha-arets:

Tarbut ve-sirut , Jan. 2, 2004. The latter writer, Bialik’s archivist, dis-cusses the by-now inamous quip attributed to Bialik that he “hated Arabs because they were like Sephardim.” In claiming that it is not likely that this remark originated with Bialik, the article gives a pictureo Bialik’s views regarding Sephardi literature and related topics. A more recent discussion by Lital Levy, “From Baghdad to Bialik withLove,” Comparative Literature Studies 42 (2005): 125–53, shows the com-

plexity o Bialik’s position.15 Hayim Nahman Bialik, “Tehiyat ha-saradim,” in Devarim shebe-al peh ,



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vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1935), 110–17. Levy, “From Baghdad to Bialik withLove,” supplies a translation o the passage cited on p. 152, n. 45.

16 Michael Herzeld, Anthropology Through the Looking Glass: Critical Ethnog-

raphy in the Margins o Europe (Cambridge, Engl., 1987); Joëlle Bahloul,

“The Sephardic Jew as Mediterranean: A View rom Kinship and Gen-der,” Journal o Mediterranean Studies 4 (1994): 197–207.

17 Yisrael Kloizner, “Ha-tnuah ha-tsiyonit ba-kavkaz be-reshitah,” Shvut 8(1981): 86–98; Chen Bram, “‘Mitnagdim anu le-hityashvut meyuhedet shel edot mizrahiyot,’ yehudei ha-har mi-kavkaz: Al hakarah, hishtalvut ve-zehut,” in Edot—Edut le-yisrael , ed. A. Mizrahi and Y. Ben-David (Ne-tanya, 2001), 547–71, esp. 569, nn. 1–3. The delegates wore Caucasiandress at the Congress.

18 Eyal, Disenchantment o the Orient , 55–56. The place o Yemenites and Yemenite artisanship in the Bezalel school established in Jerusalem by

Boris Schatz will be discussed in a orthcoming doctoral dissertationby Noah Gerber.

19 Eyal, Disenchantment o the Orient ; Shenhav, Arab Jews .20 See, e.g., the list o communities registered in 1939 in the Jerusalem Dis-

trict Commissioner’s ofce that appears in Raphael Patai, Israel between

East and West: A Study in Human Relations (Philadelphia, 1953), 82–83.21 Harvey E. Goldberg, “Historical and Cultural Dimensions o Ethnic

Phenomena in Israel,” in Studies in Israeli Ethnicity , ed. A. Weingrod(New York, 1985), 179–200, esp. 194–96.

22 Bram, “Mitnagdim anu le-hityashvut meyuhedet shel edot mizrahiyot”;Penina Motzaf-Haller, “Intelektualim mizrahim 1946–5: Ha-zehut ha-etnit u-gvuloteha,” in Mizrahim be-yisrael: Iyun bikorti mehudash , ed.Hanan Hever, Yehouda Shenhav, and Penina Motzaf-Haller ( Jerusalem,2002), 152–90.

23 Elie Eliachar, Living with Jews (London, 1983), chaps. 13–14.24 One discussion o Sephardim within the Zionist feld in the Mandate

period is ound in Eyal, Disenchantment o the Orient , 48–53.25 For an overview o this period, see Judah Matras,Social Change in Israel

(Chicago, 1965).

26 Anat Liebler, “Ha-statistikah ke-arkhitekturah hevratit: Al kinunahshel ha-lishkah ha-merkazit le-statistikah ke-mosad apoliti” (Master’sthesis, Tel Aviv University, 1998).

27 Dorothy Willner, Nation-Building and Community in Israel (Princeton,1969), 200.

28 Judith T. Shuval, Immigrants on the Threshold (New York, 1963).29 Alex Weingrod, Israel: Group Relations in a New Society (New York, 1965), 3.30 Matras, Social Change in Israel , 22.31 S. N. Eisenstadt, The Absorption o Immigrants: A Comparative Study Based

Mainly on the Jewish Community in Palestine and the State o Israel (London,

1954).32 Ibid., 90.33 Ibid., 91.



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34 Patai, Israel between East and West , 22–26, 63–66.35 Ibid., 62, 63.36 Harvey E. Goldberg, Cave-Dwellers and Citrus-Growers: A Jewish Commu-

nity in Libya and Israel (Cambridge, Engl., 1972), 86.

37 Willner, Nation-Building , 200.38 It was probably also common or Jews in Baghdad to reer to those rom

the north o Iraq as “Kurds”; or the most part they did not speak Arabic.39 Some studies distinguished between immigrants rom Asia and those

rom Arica, which showed some signifcant dierences in the early years o large-scale immigration.

40 Chen Bram, “Hakarah, heeder hakarah ve-hakarah shguyah bi-kvutsot be-kerev olei hever ha-amim,” in Rav tarbutiyut bi-rei ha-yisreeliyut , ed. O.Nahtomi (Jerusalem, 2003), 163–92.

41 S. N. Eisenstadt, “The Oriental Jews in Palestine (A Report on a Prelimi-

nary Study in Culture-Contacts),” Jewish Social Studies 12 (1950): 199–222.42 Joseph Ben-David, “Ethnic Dierences or Social Change?” in Integra-

tion and Development in Israel , ed. S. N. Eisenstadt, R. Bar-Yose, and Ch. Adler ( Jerusalem, 1970), 368–87 [originally published in Megamot 3(1952): 171–83].

43 For an exploration o the specifc “place” o Moroccan Jewry in thestudy o Mizrahim, see Henriette Dahan-Kalev, “Heker ha-mizrahimba-sotsyologyah ha-yisreelit: Ha-marokaim ke-mikreh shel ha-mikreh,”Peamim 108 (Summer 2006): 87–126.

44 Hanna Herzog, Adatiyut politit-dimui mul metsiut: Nituah sotsyologi-histori

shel ha-reshimot ha-“adatiyot” le-aseat ha-nivharim vela-kneset (Ramat Eal,1986).

45 Sammy Smooha, “Bikoret al girsah mimsadit adkanit shel ha-gishahha-tarbutit be-sotsyologyah shel yahasei edot be-yisrael,” Megamot 29(1985): 73–92, which relates to Eliezer Ben-Reael, The Emergence o Eth-

nicity: Cultural Groups and Social Conict in Israel (Westport, Conn.,1982). A reply is in E. Ben-Reael, “Adatiyut, teoryah u-mitos,”Megamot 29 (1985): 190–205. See also S. Smooha, Social Research on Jewish Ethnic-

ity in Israel, 1948–1986 (Haia, 1987), and Shlomo Swirski, Israel: The

Oriental Majority (London: 1989 [original Hebrew and longer version,1981]), 1, 60–61.46 Goldberg and Bram, “Sephardi/Mizrahi/Arab-Jews.” For more refned

approaches to the notion o Mizrahi , see Hever, Shenhav, and Motzaf-Haller, Mizrahim be-yisrael .

47 Walter Weiker, The Unseen Israelis: The Jews rom Turkey in Israel (Lan-ham, Md., 1988), 1–2; Guy Haskell, From Sofa to Jaa: The Jews o Bul-

garia and Israel (Detroit, 1994), 140–41; Judith Goldstein, “IranianEthnicity in Israel: The Perormance o Identity,” in Weingrod, Studies

in Israeli Ethnicity , 237–58.

48 In 1997, Navon was named chair o a newly created National Authority or Ladino.

49 There are exceptions to this generalization; see, e.g., Zvi Zohar, “‘Le-



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hahzir atarah le-yoshnah’—Hazono shel ha-rav ovadyah,” inSha”s:

Etgar ha-yisreeliyut , ed. Yoav Peled (Tel Aviv, 2001), 159–209. Also, in2002, Nitzan Hen, Knesset correspondent or Channel 1, organized atelevised panel discussion on Ovadiah Yose’s religious and halakhic

views, in contrast to his political positions.50 For an example o this process not linked directly to Shas, see André

Levy, “Hilulah rabah ve-atseret tshuvah: Nituah mikreh,” in Mehkarim

be-tarbutam shel yehudei tson Arikah , ed. Issachar Ben-Ami ( Jerusalem,1991), 167–79.

51 The original name o Shas is the International World Sephardic Asso-ciation o Torah Keepers (Hitahdut ha-saradim ha-olamit shomrei torah ).

52 Yoram Bilu and Eyal Ben-Ari, “The Making o Modern Saints: Manu-actured Charisma and the Abu-Hatseiras o Israel,”American Ethnolo-

gist 19 (1992): 29–44.

53 Motti Regev and Edwin Seroussi, Popular Music and National Culture in Israel (Berkeley, 2004), 191–247.

54 According to Shalom Sabar (personal communication), the only coun-try that utilizes the hamsa more than Israel, as a public image, is Mo-rocco. See his “‘Yeihud’ ha-khamsa: Motiv ha-yad ha-magit be-hagut uve-olklor shel ha-yehudim be-artsot ha-Islam,” Mahanayim: Bamah

le-mehkar le-hagut ule-tarbut yehudit 14 (2003): 193–203.55 The Bet Yose , echoing the author’s frst name, is the earlier and larger

halakhic compendium, o which the later Shulhan Arukh is a condensa-tion. In terms o promoting his program, the current leader o Shasdoes not shy away rom playing on the resonance o his amily name with the title o that book and with Karo’s frst name.

from sephardi to mizrahi and back again: changing meanings of “sephardi” in its social ...

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