On Haredi Racism (Column 206)
With God’s help
Several times in the past I have already addressed the subject of racism (see, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). This is a sensitive and emotionally charged subject, and therefore it is hard for people to discuss it in a balanced way. In many cases, people raise substantive arguments and are met with hurt indignation and the label ‘racist’ instead of a substantive response. My impression is that in many cases these reactions arise when those on the defensive have no substantive arguments, and so they prefer to be offended. That is easier, and it exempts you from addressing the arguments and confronting your sorry state.
A few days ago someone posted to the site an article by Rabbi Moshe Yitzhak Farkash that was published in the journal Tzarikh Iyun (as a response to an earlier article by Eliyahu Levi), dealing with the question of the attitude of Ashkenazi Haredim toward Sephardim and also touching directly on the form and character of the discourse on these issues. The article is written in a way that does not pay much heed to political correctness (although he prefaces it with too many introductions, reservations, and apologies), and in that sense I liked it. You can read the comments there, and you probably will not be surprised. Few arguments and much offense-taking and mudslinging (though there are several very good ones). The article gave me quite a bit to think about, and I thought I would lay out some of those thoughts here. Let me say at the outset that this is not racism in its original sense, since the comparison here is made mainly between cultures and less between races. But for the sake of discussion I will adopt the irritating yet accepted term ‘racism’.
Preliminaries
The author actually begins with a routine opening paragraph recounting an incident:
I was riding a bus from Bayit VeGan and wanted to sit in the seats facing opposite the direction of travel. Across from me sat two yeshiva students, with rather refined appearances, their legs stretched out over the seats in front of them. When I sat down, I said to them with a smile that I didn’t know “whom to stick with it” (that is, which of them would have to fold his legs). The Ashkenazi of the two answered me: “Sit opposite him, he’s Sephardi!”, while pointing to his friend. I was appalled by the response and immediately protested. The fellow brushed me off, insisting that it was just a joke. What astonished me even more was seeing that the Sephardi fellow took the remark with complete equanimity and was not offended at all, and even tried to minimize the wrong with platitudes, saying that he was already used to it, and that it was like jokes from his brothers. I told them that this was a shocking story, and that I would write an article about it. And here I am keeping my word.
I told the young passengers that every joke conveys a certain message, and the message of this joke is the dehumanization of the Sephardi. In contrast to the Ashkenazi, the Sephardi is not a human being whose inconvenience matters. More than that, he is so little of a human being that one can say this to his face. I explained to the Sephardi fellow that the reason he was not hurt by the joke was even sadder, since he already sees his dehumanization as something so obvious that he is no longer hurt by it. I added that the fact that he has trained himself not to be hurt by such jokes is a survival mechanism within a society in which jokes of this sort are common.
I must say that what he writes here is very puzzling. True, I did not see the speaker’s body language, but as far as I understand the situation there is not the slightest trace of racism here—no dehumanization and nothing of the sort. Just a bit of humor (and even self-directed humor about the Ashkenazi attitude toward Sephardim). The Sephardi fellow took the remark with equanimity, exactly as a rational person should (yes, there are rational Sephardim too. Not all of them are occupied only with taking offense). Incidentally, excessive solicitude for the honor of Sephardim sometimes points to latent racism (the assumption being that these primitives must not be upset, even in jest). Admittedly, the automatic offense-taking common in such discussions actually justifies this racism (and therefore it is not racism). We have grown accustomed to the fact that one must not say the truth, and certainly not joke, otherwise the other person is offended; and therefore the assumption that he will be offended upon hearing the truth has some basis.[1]
After that Farkash adds two more preliminaries. First, he says that one should not sweep the problem under the rug, and if there is a certain attitude of Ashkenazim toward Sephardim, it is proper to put it on the table and discuss it. By ‘discuss’ I do not mean merely to be offended, denounce, and look for ways to address it, as is customary in our circles, but to examine its roots and ask whether there is anything to it, to what extent, and where it comes from. Second, he prefaces that such a discussion naturally deals in generalizations, but one should not avoid that. When dealing with group characteristics, one essentially must generalize, and that is of course entirely correct. A generalization as such is not racism, so long as one is aware that it is a generalization. A generalization should be evaluated through the prism of truth—whether it is correct or not—and not by asking whether it is insulting and whether it is racism.
The outline
In the body of his article, Farkash states in advance that he intends to make three claims:
- The gap in mentality between Ashkenazim and Sephardim is very large; obviously it arouses emotions and feelings, and there is no reason for surprise—the real surprise would have been had these gaps not produced the prevalent sentiments.
- One must pay attention to two particular issues raised in Levi’s article that did not receive treatment commensurate with their complexity: school admissions and marriage.
- This does not mean that racism is not a problem; it most certainly is a problem, and serious thought is required as to how to eradicate it and promote more egalitarian attitudes and policies.
The first claim is factual, and as such it should be examined in terms of truth or falsehood. The second claim is normative: whether it is proper to derive conclusions from the differences (school admissions and marriage).
At first glance, the question of racism pertains only to the second plane, but that is not precise. Racism can also find expression on the first plane, for example if one presents distinctions between the two groups that have no basis in reality. When a person assumes factual differences between groups despite there being no basis for them, that itself may stem from racism (that is, from the a priori assumption that the other is inferior in one respect or another). However, if there is a reasonable basis for this mistake, then even if it is a mistake, this is not necessarily racism. It is a mistake like any other.
Beyond that, throughout his discussion Farkash assumes that if the factual and mental differences are indeed real, then there is justification for discrimination in school admissions and in matchmaking, since these are done on a substantive basis. But here too I disagree with him, for racism has another common expression: sweeping use of correct characteristics without taking into account that they are only generalizations. For example, even if it is true that television viewing is more common in Sephardi homes, one can still examine this on its own merits before deciding not to admit a Sephardi student to a yeshiva or a cheder (traditional boys’ school). There are, of course, places where it is difficult, costly, or impossible to examine matters case by case, and this is especially so when the generalization is accurate at very high percentages. In such situations, the use of generalizations does not express racism. For example, there is no reason at all to conduct security screening at the airport or in a shopping mall for Jews and Arabs alike. The security danger comes almost exclusively from Arabs (in very high percentages), and the effort and hassle imposed on the general public by equal screening for everyone are unreasonable and disproportionate. Therefore there is no racist dimension whatsoever in the decision to screen only Arabs, and if Arabs are offended, then they have a problem either understanding reality, or not caring about dangers (or perhaps an interest in avoiding the hassle)—so let them deal with it.
To sum up, wherever it is reasonably possible to conduct a substantive inquiry, deciding a particular case by stereotypes—even if the stereotypes are correct—carries a whiff of racism. Sometimes this is mere laziness, because the person in charge cannot be bothered to examine the situation on its own merits and prefers to make assumptions based on general (correct) characteristics. But that very laziness is blameworthy, for the duty to give equal treatment to all populations should lead us not to lapse into laziness in these matters. Therefore laziness too may express latent racism, since the lazy person does not insist on giving equal treatment to every individual and every group.[2]
The factual characteristics
Further on, Farkash courageously puts on the table quite a few factual differences between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Throughout, he twists and turns between evaluative claims and apologies that he has no intention of judging and determining who is right and who is not, who is better and who is worse, but only of describing. In the end, his main concern is to explain why the Ashkenazi attitude toward Sephardim is as it is, and to show that there is no racism here even if the differences are not perceived as evaluative. To that I say that it seems to me that almost all of these characteristics are plainly evaluative, despite his unconvincing denials, though it is true that at least some of them are correct.
Naturally, as is customary in our comments sections, he is met with torrents of abuse that reflect an unwillingness to examine substantively the characteristics he enumerates. I am sure many readers immediately think of counterexamples that would refute his factual claims (‘my modest, intellectual grandmother from Casablanca… and in general, what exactly counts as being intellectual? who appointed you to decide?…’), but counterexamples are irrelevant when one is dealing with generalizations. As for me, I think some of the characteristics he adduces are correct (as generalizations, of course), but there are others that in my view have no real basis. In light of the preliminaries I gave above, you can understand that my criticism is directed at the part that is untrue, and especially at the normative conclusions he draws from those characteristics.
I will give two examples here:
- Intellectual gaps. Farkash claims that there is a marked intellectual gap between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. At first I thought this was a baseless claim unsupported by any data. In his explanation, Farkash brings data—for example, the percentage of Jews from Eastern communities who have won Nobel Prizes,[3] or the number of Mizrahi Supreme Court justices, and the like. He attributes this to an Ashkenazi mentality that aspires to intellectualism and values it, for better or for worse (there are of course other reasons as well). In other words, he does not mean intelligence but rather the cultural attitude toward intellectual achievements. Under that definition I tend to agree with his generalization (at least regarding the Jewish public in Israel. And here too, of course, it has been steadily diminishing over the years, including within Haredi society). I too arrived at this conclusion many years ago, though of course there are other reasons as well. Just to take predictable objections off the table, specific stories neither add nor detract from this point. This is a generalization, and as such, in my view, it has real substance.
But this distinction does not lead where Farkash takes it. Even if it is correct, it does not justify any discrimination, neither in school admissions nor in matters of marriage. If you truly care about improvement, then by all means examine the candidates carefully—for cheder, for yeshiva, or for the court—and screen them by relevant criteria rather than by origin. After all, it is obvious that there are Sephardim with a distinctly intellectual culture, and there are others who, despite the cultural background described, have advanced and achieved. Each of them deserves equal treatment. That is precisely how one advances toward making the best possible use of all our potential.
- Modesty. Farkash claims that Ashkenazi notions of modesty differ greatly from Sephardi notions of modesty (apart from Jewish law). He mentions that the Ben Ish Hai rules that the nursing area is not among the parts of the body considered covered, because all women nurse openly. Likewise, among Sephardi communities abroad it was customary that after the wedding the groom would spreads out the garment (literally, publicly display the sheet), before the parents and witnesses. Both of these behaviors are unthinkable in Ashkenazi Haredi society. He notes that he has no intention of determining which behavior is correct and proper, but only to point out that in Ashkenazi eyes this is considered barbaric, and that it is wrong to ignore that.
Indeed, that is true with respect to a certain percentage of the Sephardi public (it seems to me that most Haredi Sephardim are not like this, and in particular the two customs described above are almost nonexistent today). In any event, this consideration may be relevant to matchmaking. So once again, the groom in question should examine his prospective bride specifically and her habits, but I do not see a reason to disqualify her a priori because of her origin. The question is whether one is willing to make a substantive inquiry. If not, then as I wrote above there may be racism at the base of this approach. Moreover, if there really is here a characteristic regarded as improper, the right thing would be to try to change the situation and raise the bar among Sephardim. And if, as he claims, there is no judgment here of right and wrong, then it would be proper to work specifically to change the Ashkenazi attitude, so that unnecessary barriers are not created between groups in society.
He goes on to discuss several more characteristics that I will not enter into here (folksiness, extroversion, lack of boundaries and hierarchy, initiative and whininess, crime and dropping out, and receptiveness to criticism). Some of these are correct as generalizations, but regarding some of the others (the last one, for example) I am not at all sure. In any case, even if everything is correct, my comments above stand.
Conclusions
As I wrote above, the very description of the differences—some of which I think are incorrect—may already conceal behind it a whiff of racism, and that is already on the factual plane. When you take a few examples and build from them a picture (especially if it is inaccurate) of an entire culture, that itself is a generalization with a whiff of racism. The overwhelming majority of women (especially Haredi women) from Eastern communities do not nurse their babies in public. But to my taste, the discussion of factual characteristics leads us to the less important part of the discussion. That belongs mainly to the genre of taking offense. The more important question is not on the descriptive plane but on the normative one: should these differences, even if they are correct, affect the Ashkenazi attitude toward Sephardim?
In my opinion, certainly not. If it is impossible to examine the specific case individually, or if such examination demands disproportionate effort and cost, perhaps one can see some measure of justification in that. But the unwillingness of an entire society, down to all its particulars, to conduct substantive inquiries and to make blanket decisions about every individual on the basis of stereotype has no justification whatsoever.
Farkash writes:
These differences in mentality, as they are perceived by many Ashkenazim, create an attitude of ‘otherness’ toward the Mizrahi community. This attitude is entirely natural. It is natural that a society that values diligence should feel otherness toward a group that is not diligent; natural that a society that values heroism should feel similar feelings toward a passive group; and natural that the Ashkenazi community, which values traits like intellectualism, initiative, etc., should feel a certain otherness toward the Sephardi community insofar as it does not represent those same values.
Quite apart from the fact that some of the characteristics he listed are incorrect, and apart from his ignoring the fact that he himself emphasizes that these are generalizations while at the same time using them to justify an attitude toward specific individuals, there is in these words a fatalistic justification of the given social and cultural situation (assuming that this indeed is the situation). But are these characteristics and this feeling of otherness a basis that cannot be changed? After all, one can change the Sephardi characteristics or the Ashkenazi attitude toward them. For some reason Farkash ignores the question whether it is legitimate to act on the basis of these things and thus perpetuate them, or whether it would be preferable to try to change them. There is in his words a fatalism, an acceptance of the situation as it is as a decree of fate imposed on all of us, without the all-important trait of initiative (which he attributes to Ashkenazim). So if Ashkenazi Haredim are such good initiators, let them take initiative and work to change the situation. Has he no interest in contributing to a reality in which there are more Sephardim on the Supreme Court or among Nobel Prize winners?
Accepting the situation as a necessary decree of fate is, in my eyes, a very problematic conception. In fact, it too contains a racist element, since it sees all these characteristics as essentialist and therefore unchangeable, and of course there is no logical or empirical basis for that. Later he deals with the problem of those who ‘Ashkenazify’ themselves, who are also rejected both in school admissions and in marriage. The astonishing explanation he offers in this matter is nothing other than the ingrained (essentialist) influences from which one cannot free oneself despite the desire to ‘become Ashkenazi.’ Things stamped into us from the home, from which we will not succeed in escaping. Incidentally, it is true that there are things from which it is hard to free oneself, but his description here is essentialist and fatalistic in a very troubling way.
‘Natural’ is not a sacred word. Slanderous speech is also natural, and so too are the desire for revenge and the bearing of grudges, and still we are supposed to try to overcome these natural tendencies. The desire to rest is also natural, but an athlete who wants to achieve must overcome that desire. One can understand someone who fails in revenge, laziness, or slanderous speech, but it is not right to justify him.
A natural state in which there is nothing bad requires no change, and therefore it can justify a policy of passive omission. But if you regard such a state as problematic, then the fact that it is natural should lead not to justification but to thinking about ways to change it. It is hard for me to accept that Farkash sees nothing problematic in such a situation (especially in light of the fact that I mentioned that most of these differences are indeed evaluative, contrary to what may emerge from his words). And if there is something problematic in the existing situation, why is the fact that it is natural perceived by him as so important and decisive?! I was surprised to see how completely absent from his words is the dimension of public and personal character refinement.
Beyond that, it seems to me that Farkash fails here by not distinguishing between these two planes, that is, between understanding and justification. He declares that his intention is only to explain and describe the situation and not necessarily to justify it, but in practice he completely justifies it, at least de facto. At the root of the matter lies, to my taste, a very problematic approach, and as stated, in my view it is not lacking a racist dimension either.
And finally: humane treatment and dehumanization
Farkash concludes his article by saying that Ashkenazim are obligated to give humane treatment to their Sephardi brothers. Even if one accepts all these differences, he argues, they do not justify dehumanization.
To tell the truth, my feeling on reading these words was somewhere between laughter and tears, because of the tone, which was so condescending. And again, I am speaking about the tune and not the content. One could read all this as a genuine and sincere exhortation to the Ashkenazi public, and I am even inclined to think that this was the writer’s intention. But in the subtext, after he presents a list of characteristics that he describes as not evaluative but merely descriptive, though they are plainly evaluative (are initiative or intellectual aspiration neutral traits? Is whininess a neutral trait?), it is no wonder that what follows—which ostensibly also speaks in neutral language about the duty to give humane treatment—is perceived as condescension as well (after all, one must take the Indians into consideration and treat them like human beings. Otherwise how will they progress?!). Exactly like the leftists who explain to us our duty to treat Palestinians and other disadvantaged people humanely, which contains within it blatant racist condescension.
To sum up, it is specifically Farkash’s candid words, spoken courageously and clearly written with the intention of contributing to the discussion, that bear overwhelming witness to the deep problem of racism in the Haredi world. It seems that life inside a Haredi bubble, cut off from other publics (both the Sephardi-Haredi one and the secular one, where one can see the stereotypes breaking down), does not allow a person to emerge from his shell and see the world with a more balanced eye. This is a positive feedback loop, within which racism builds and entrenches itself.
[1] This is the root of the common left-wing racism, according to which one must make no demands of the Palestinians, or of any other ‘disadvantaged’ group, for they are not human beings possessed of human responsibility as we are. The task of solving the problem is laid only at the door of the enlightened and progressive (= us). Therefore, if Jews hold a demonstration in Umm al-Fahm or on the Temple Mount and Arabs go wild with violence and even murder, the blame is always on the ‘provocateur.’ This, of course, unlike women who dress immodestly or participants in a Pride march, where if they are attacked the blame lies solely with the attacker.
[2] This is an appropriate ethical place to raise questions about the KABA score commonly used in the army. It is determined on the basis of stereotypical characteristics (such as place of residence, parents’ education, their occupations, etc.), and I am not sure there is really any need for it. They perform enough case-specific examinations there, and I see no need to use such generalizations.
[3] See the interesting response there by the commenter ‘Hasidsher’ (which, despite the anger, is written substantively and supported by arguments and data), who brings a very interesting datum according to which the percentage of Mizrahi Nobel Prize winners is similar to that of Ashkenazim (when one looks worldwide, relative to their proportion in the overall Jewish population. People are not aware that Sephardim were less than ten percent of the entire Jewish population). It is also worth seeing there a breakdown of different Mizrahi and Ashkenazi populations, through which he shows that these differences are rooted in overly crude generalizations. Part of this is the phenomenon of secularization, which was more widespread in the West than in the East (Nobel Prize winners were not yeshiva students). See here for an interesting analysis of these phenomena (with which I do not entirely agree).
Discussion
I had already thought there would be a more in-depth article that touched more on the fundamentals. In practice, you mainly caught Farkash on two examples from his list. But it seems to me the point is a bit different. Farkash certainly did not enter into empirical research about what the objective truth is, and he says so himself. He is merely talking about the perceptions in the Ashkenazi public, even though these may be completely mistaken. When we talk about attitudes toward the other, what matters is understanding the perceptions that lead to that attitude, not occupying ourselves with how correct they are. It seems that Farkash thinks it is easier to adopt insights of inclusion and acceptance of the different than to change perceptions that have been so deeply ingrained. He is basically saying: perhaps you are right, but that does not matter at all—you are behaving with racism, and that must be improved and uprooted entirely despite the gaps and the differences.
The point you mentioned at the end, as though the haredi bubble is what drives the racism, is in my humble opinion not the main point. There certainly is a bubble, and it is to blame for countless problems, but not necessarily for this one. With your permission I am copying a passage from a response I wrote to Farkash’s article:
… I think that since today racism among the haredim or the religious is stronger than in the general public, the point is entirely different. Namely: the more liturgy, halakhah, and custom take up a central place, the more the gaps are noticeable. Technically, for a person who clings every moment to customs or to liturgy, it is extremely difficult to live with a spouse who is utterly different from him; it clashes for them at every moment. In miniature this also appears in educational institutions, when the liturgy is different, the customs are very different, and even the mode of learning may be different precisely. There are publics that recognize a uniform liturgy more, or adaptation to customs, or a blessed lightness regarding matters that are not halakhically fundamental, and therefore it is easier for them to bridge gaps. If a person is ready to give his life for every negligible custom, he will also sacrifice, for the sanctification of the “Name,” his bond with another Jew. Among those who erased all spiritual history, the “racism” [I am sticking to the term under discussion, though I do not agree with it] is far less present. [And for lovers of mysticism: it seems to me that the Maharal distinguishes this “after the fact” situation, that until the Messiah comes we are divided into tribes and many differences.] …
Beloved brothers, I regret that I upset you, and this is not a Purim joke. I have been convinced that all the characteristics of the Sephardim that I mentioned exist only in my delusional imagination and have no basis whatsoever in reality. Truly, I am sorry! I openly admit that all the administrators of institutions who do not accept Sephardim do so on purely racist grounds, with no substantive justification at all, and this must be stopped immediately!
Except… .
I am left with one problem and one riddle. I would be glad if the wise readers would help me solve them.
The problem
I have indeed been convinced that everything I thought about Sephardim stems from bizarre and prejudiced opinions that have no grip on reality, but my Ashkenazi brothers for the most part have not been convinced of this, and they still hold these stereotypes more or less. The fact is that discrimination against Sephardim in Ashkenazi institutions is nearly one hundred percent sweeping. The administrators of the institutions also know very well that if they exceed the quota, all the Ashkenazim will flee the institution. That is, the Ashkenazi parents also think this way about Sephardim.
Anyone who knows, knows that this discrimination has backing from the very top of haredi society, and not only from the operatives; of course everything is done quietly and by hints understood by those who understand.
What should be done? How can they be persuaded to stop their fantasies about Sephardim so that they stop the racism?
Do you think that if we quote to Ashkenazi parents from Wikipedia, quotations about ‘what racism is,’ that will help convince them?
If we use postmodern theories about ‘cultural constructions’ and ‘post-colonial’ theories, etc., will that put an end to this terrible story?
If we fight them with all our might through public figures, will they stop the racism entirely?
If Eliyahu Levi writes an article saying that Ashkenazim are racist, will the institution administrators faint from fear and ignore all the profits this discrimination brings them?
Will shouting “Racist! Racist!” help those same administrators who are deeply convinced that admitting Sephardim to their institutions means the ruin of the institution?
Do you know what they say to themselves when they hear all this noise? I’ll tell you: “The dogs bark and the caravan moves on.” Sometimes they lose here and there and take in some Sephardi boy or girl as a result of some pressure, and things keep flowing.
Einstein wrote that insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results.
So what do we do?
The riddle
This riddle is based on the simple and clear assumption that all the Ashkenazi stereotypes about Sephardim are untrue, the mental gap does not exist, and even if it does, it is not significant and does not justify racism and discrimination.
The de facto reality is that racist Ashkenazim have a clear self-image that they are the “superior” ones, and the Sephardim are an “inferior” community possessing characteristics that justify racist and humiliating behavior toward them.
Conclusion: the Ashkenazim are delusional people who hold delusional racist theories with no basis at all in reality.
The reality is that Sephardim fight Ashkenazi discrimination at the price of harming themselves, their children, and the Ashkenazim. All this even though there is no significant mental gap between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, and therefore there is no reason at all to send children to Ashkenazi institutions, because there is absolutely no reason in the world that justifies Ashkenazi institutions being better. More than that: the Ashkenazim have a humiliating image of Sephardim, and their children also suffer humiliation in Ashkenazi institutions, as several writers here have described well—so why are they fighting to send their children to Ashkenazi institutions?
Conclusion: the Sephardim are delusional people who insist on sending their children to the institutions of delusional Ashkenazim who hold delusional theories about Sephardim and humiliate them.
Additional conclusion: everyone is delusional.
So tell me, gentlemen, are they all indeed delusional?
One request I ask of you, dear and beloved brothers, Ashkenazim and Sephardim alike: please answer me in an orderly and clear manner, explicitly stating whether you intend to propose a way to solve the problem or to solve the riddle.
A sharp and interesting analysis. Another point in the context of comparisons between groups that people usually ignore is the relation between the difference in the means and the width of the distribution, or the standard deviation. Suppose it were discovered that people with larger shoe sizes are on average smarter than those with smaller sizes. Would we use this datum for admission to institutions or for marriage? Obviously not. Moreover, if the difference in the average is negligible compared to the distribution, then there is almost nothing novel in finding a difference in favor of the larger size between two random candidates.
To Rabbi Michael Abraham, שלום,
I greatly respect and value your opinion, and therefore I would like to respond to your article, but I do not have the time for that. I am attaching here a response I wrote on the Tzarich Iyun site in which I summarized my arguments logically. I would be glad for your reaction!
I summarize here the arguments of my article in logical form. If anyone would like to respond in an orderly manner to my arguments, please do.
Premise A: There are large differences in mentality between Ashkenazim and Sephardim.
Premise B: In marriage, mental differences have great significance both practically and emotionally.
Therefore, (presumably) Ashkenazim who do not marry Sephardim do so for substantive reasons and not out of racism.
Second argument
Premise A: Institutions whose students are mostly Ashkenazi and whose staff is Ashkenazi are generally more successful than institutions whose students are mostly Sephardi, and many Sephardim also make efforts to study there.
Premise B: Institutions whose students are mostly Ashkenazi want to preserve their success and therefore do not accept many Sephardim.
Therefore, (presumably) the non-acceptance of Sephardi students to institutions is a substantive consideration and not racism.
Third argument
Premise A: Ashkenazim are racist.
Premise B: Sephardim feel discriminated against in many areas.
Therefore, (presumably) racist considerations are involved in discrimination against Sephardim.
Fourth argument
Premise A: Sephardim are racist. (When power is in their hands and when they do not need the Ashkenazim.)
Premise B: Most centers of power are in Ashkenazi hands (only thus can they discriminate against Sephardim).
Therefore, (necessarily) the Sephardim’s claim of racism is a political claim that seeks to achieve gains (justified and unjustified), and not a moral claim.
Fifth argument
Premise A: Racism is a severe emotional problem.
Premise B: Emotional problems must not be repressed.
Therefore one must surface the feelings, lay them on the table, and thus deal with them.
1. The question really does arise: how is it that in the world of education and relationships among the religious-Zionist and the secular, things work out not badly without racism? I am sure that if they just catch on to this brilliant idea, the quality of those two sectors will rise higher and higher and they will merit this world and the next. Or perhaps “The Lord protects the simple,” and it is better not to reveal it to them.
2. There is one and only one solution: Sephardim need to get a grip on themselves and stop eating scraps. Marry within their own community, study in their own yeshivot, etc. Another generation or two and this whole business will be a joke.
That is a clearly inaccurate generalization. In any case, the discussion here was about an article that dealt with this. No one said there is no condescension and racism elsewhere.
I explained in my remarks why I do not agree. He justified the treatment of Sephardim in the matter of acceptance to institutions and marriage.
There is a fundamental mistake in what you write. You are referring to the racism of the individual and attributing it to the racism of the public. Therefore you write that there is nothing the individual can do. But the claims are directed at the public as a whole that creates such a situation.
Beyond that, a public problem depends on individuals, and they cannot evade their responsibility. See Maharal on Simeon and Levi and the men of Shechem, and also my remarks in column 67:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%9C%D7%A7%D7%97%D7%99-%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%90%D7%94-%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%93%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%98%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%96%D7%9D-%D7%96%D7%95%D7%95%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%95%D7%90/
Amichai,
The question is what the width of the distributions is and what the difference in the mean is. Maybe people ignore it because here these are insignificant effects. Are you claiming they are? On what basis?
Greetings.
I did not find here any new points in your remarks that I had not already addressed in the column itself. If in your view there is a problematic point in what I wrote, I would be glad to hear it.
You wrote that the individual cannot absolve himself of responsibility, etc., because you interpreted my words as if there is nothing to be done—but I meant the exact opposite, that there is something to be done. That is what I wrote in the ordered arguments: emotions cannot be repressed, and therefore if there is no possibility of putting the racist feelings and emotions on the table and discussing them openly, then since the issue is public there is no solution to them.
And in practice, anyone who puts those feelings on the table is denounced as a first-degree racist, and so there is no way to solve the problem either at the individual level or at the public level. That is also the answer to your accusation of condescension at the end of my remarks. There is no other way to reach human beings, who are full of feelings in every domain, and tell them “stop feeling this way, it is forbidden”; one must deal with the emotion in a sophisticated way. No racist who wants to get rid of his racism will be helped if you tell him bluntly that everything he feels is nonsense. Surely you know the story of Rabbi Nachman and the child who said he was a turkey.
Second, what in your opinion is the solution to my riddle?
Did I say not to raise the claims? I praised you for raising them, and I joined your claim against the automatic hurt feelings and accusations of racism that prevent discourse.
But here you write that the raising was for the sake of discussion. That really did not convince me. It is evident from your words that you raised this as a justification, and that you yourself agree with the claims, and not in order to discuss them. On the contrary, you explained why it makes sense to discriminate on the basis of those characteristics. Moreover, if it was for the sake of discussion, where did you discuss them? Not in this article. Here you presented them and assumed they were true, and you did not discuss them. By the way, you also did not deal with ways to get rid of those feelings. On the contrary, you used them to justify the existing situation by claiming that it is not racism. I saw here no treatment of the emotion, sophisticated or otherwise. There is no hint of any of this in your article (on the contrary, from it it is clear that this was not your goal at all). On the contrary, write a follow-up article and explain there how you yourself relate to these things and what should be done.
Your “riddle” is irrelevant demagoguery, and I do not intend to enter this ridiculous discussion. After all, our dispute is not about the stereotypes themselves, with some of which, as I wrote, I agree (as a generalization). My claim is on an entirely different plane, and it is written plainly in my remarks in the post. Take it from there. You keep showing a lack of understanding of the essence of the discussion and an unwillingness to read and address what I write. I suggest you read my remarks again carefully and try to listen to what I am writing, not to entrench yourself and not to fight claims you are used to hearing. I am writing somewhat different things. It seems to me that if you do so, there is a chance you will see that I am right.
I read the new column on your site, and also skimmed the article to which you referred. Unfortunately, I know from my haredi sister the kind of claims he makes in his article, and sometimes I am seized by nausea when I hear them (“They are very ‘family-oriented’ and therefore very ‘warm,’ and they open their home to their relatives, even those who are not ‘on our path.’ But with us it isn’t like that).
A few comments:
A. What stood out to me by its absence was any reference to history and sociology—the much-maligned humanities and social sciences, God save us. These things have been researched to exhaustion, especially the subject of immigration to the Land, Ashkenazi condescension and its consequences and costs; see Sallah, Here Is the Land of Israel and The Transit Camps, etc.
B. What was also very lacking—in both of you—was any talk about the advantages of the other side, less intellectual perhaps, but possessing other qualities. Who said that only the elitist Ashkenazi model (some would say—the radish-like one) is worthy and esteemed? Is there nothing to learn from “them”?
C. And in general, talking about difference as something enriching. Who said there has to be uniformity?
D. Also a deep analysis of the haredi approach, and the exaggerated deification of values of Torah study (of the specifically intellectual sort) and of modesty (yes, so women nurse, including secular women, openly. So what? There are even expressions of this in halakhah) in a draconian and excessive way.
In short, the clash of East and West did not begin in Bnei Brak. And the lessons drawn from it are utterly different from the point of view of the bleary-eyed dwarfs called haredim.
I do not see why I was supposed to address all of that. Who wants uniformity?! But I was not dealing here with the advantages and disadvantages of Sephardim, rather with analyzing his article and the question of racism.
It is a deep flaw in his argument. That is all.
It is not a deep flaw in his argument but the addition of other aspects that in my opinion do not touch the discussion. After all, his claim is that there are differences, and the question whether they are disadvantages or advantages is, according to him (explicitly), unimportant. So why does it matter that there are also advantages to difference, etc.? To the best of my judgment, the essential points in the discussion of racism and of his arguments are the ones I addressed.
By the way, I have now seen that he himself is responding on the site to this post.
In my humble opinion, behind Farkash’s position stands the implicit assumption that cultural separatism is a worthy thing.
I think one can definitely identify with his move if one understands it as a defense of cultural separatism.
A large part of the criticism you direct at him falls away if one looks at his argument from that angle. For example: obviously, if cultural separatism is a desirable state, then there is nothing wrong with striving to preserve the mental differences that may exist between cultures. And obviously, at the same time, the need to preserve differences that justify differential treatment does not permit dehumanization.
The main disagreement between you and Farkash, if I understand correctly, is on this point. In your eyes, cultural separatism is an incorrect way of life and perhaps even morally unworthy. Farkash claims, on the basis of the classic haredi position, that this is right and worthy, and from there comes his striving (fully justified in his view) to defend what opponents of separatism see as unjustified discrimination.
Correct, classic haredi society is interested in conservative cultural separation, and not דווקא regarding Sephardim but in every matter, and therefore preserving Lithuanian Ashkenazi culture is not racist but conservative. One may disagree with this path, and I personally do not like it either, but it is not racism.
Blessed is He who directed me to the point!
I did not read all of what he wrote, but as I understand it he did not come to say that this is how things should be and that one should not aspire to fix the current situation, but rather that there is a justified reason why today Sephardim are treated differently. Still, his words seemed to me completely detached from reality. After all, if an Ashkenazi woman had these traits (of modesty and the like), it is highly doubtful—and very likely not—that she would be treated in the same way. For some reason, when the culture is group-based, people relate to it differently—what is called racism.
Rabbi Michael, precisely because I value your opinion, it is important to me to understand your position.
You wrote:
The astonishing explanation he offers for the matter is nothing but the ingrained (essentialist) influences from which one cannot free oneself despite the desire to “become Ashkenazi.” Things ingrained in us from home that we will not succeed in escaping. By the way, it is true that there are things that are hard to free oneself from, but his description here is essentialist and fatalistic in a very troubling way.
First, I wrote only on the subject of marriage and not in general, and I wrote that in couplehood one cannot become Ashkenazi because the one trying to become Ashkenazi has no model before him that can serve as an example of an Ashkenazi marriage, which in my opinion is very different from a Sephardi marriage. There is no principled essentialism here, and indeed I did not write that a Sephardi cannot become Ashkenazi. Personally I advise such people, when I see them becoming Ashkenazi, to go all the way with it (I tell them: on the road, be wise and not right), and in my opinion they do not suffer any discrimination. It seems to me there is no dispute that the relationship between the parents greatly affects the children, and it is accepted that parental patterns have a very large influence on children. So when there is another model, certainly one can change, but when there is no model as an example, it is very hard to create it out of nothing.
Second, among the Lithuanians, matches are made within a framework of prior inquiries, and matches are rejected מראש for things far slighter than ethnic differences, so to claim that this is racism is simply unfair. One may disagree with this form of matchmaking, but one cannot claim it is racist. The work of inquiry before entering a match is extremely demanding (simply maddening), and therefore one gives up מראש on something that does not have a high chance. You can pity us that this is our matchmaking system, but not come with claims of racism.
Third, I do not have an essentialist attitude toward Sephardim but an intuitive one, and it is clear to me that to make an essentialist claim that Sephardim are different in essence would require serious research that I have no means of carrying out. But regarding the very idea of an essentialist distinction—not necessarily in connection with Sephardim and Ashkenazim—why is it so objectionable in your eyes? There are more talented families and less talented ones; there are families with an irritable temperament and families with a bad temperament. Why should it not be possible in principle that in ethnic communities there are such differences? I attach here the story of a biology professor (Dr. Chaim Navon recently wrote about this on Arutz 7) who claimed there are differences between women and men in brain structure and had to walk around with security. Just as there are groups in which certain genetic diseases are more common than in others, and other different traits, it may also be that the distribution of talents is not equal in all ethnic communities.
In general, is there any necessity that the evolutionary development of the human species did not discriminate from group to group? Suppose that in one place obtaining food depended on exerting a lot of strength, so those who had a lot of strength survived, and in another place obtaining food depended on applying various techniques, so those who were smarter survived. I am only asking; in these matters my little finger is thicker than my waist.
The objectionable racism in my view is discrimination and dehumanization of the different, and even a feeling of contempt for someone different from you is something that contradicts our duty as Jews and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” .
As an aside, I would note that saying that Sephardim have better character traits is a lovely statement that warms the heart, but saying that Ashkenazim are smarter is racism.
Rabbi Farkash, perhaps there are differences between men and women, but one cannot infer from sex differences to differences of origin and nationality. For that matter, Yuval Noah Harari claims there is no difference at all in brain structure between blacks and whites. I find it hard to believe that דווקא within the small Jewish group such substantial essential differences would be discovered between ethnic communities.
No one here inferred from differences between the sexes to differences of origin and nationality. Such an inference is not needed in order to justify the claim. If you take a pair of identical twins and change one tiny gene in them while they are infants (which will not affect their external appearance at all), you will discover that this difference may cause very significant differences over the course of their lives. It has nothing to do with differences in brain structure, but with differences in genes that cause the brain (and the rest of the body as well) to behave in a certain way. Therefore, all the more so when it comes to genetic differences between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, where one can already see a difference in external appearance—certainly these will affect other traits as well. In my humble opinion, racism is the statement “one race is (essentially) less good than another race,” and therefore the attitude toward it may be contemptuous or humiliating. To suggest, “perhaps one race has a trait that another race does not have,” is not racism (unless, of course, the suggestion also stems from the assumption that one of the races is essentially less good); it is a proposal for describing reality. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (https://www.cbs.gov.il/he/mediarelease/DocLib/2016/365/11_16_365b.doc), the rate of matriculation eligibility among students of Ethiopian origin is much lower than the rate of eligibility in Hebrew education as a whole. If a person of Ethiopian origin and a person of another origin (Ashkenazi, for the sake of argument) stand before me, and I have to accept one of them for a job, and people who have matriculation eligibility will do that job more efficiently—then of course I will choose the Ashkenazi. For purely statistical reasons. But if I go into the details and it becomes clear that דווקא the person of Ethiopian origin has a matriculation certificate and the Ashkenazi does not—then of course I will choose the Ethiopian. But the fact that I am too lazy to clarify this is not racism but a way of conducting oneself. Every person conducts his life according to statistics in various areas in which he is also too lazy to go into the details (because a person does not have the time and ability to go into every tiny detail in every case he encounters during the day). So here too it does not seem terrible to me at all. But in haredi society it happens not infrequently that an outstanding Sephardi student shows the school principal his good grades and still is not accepted—that can already verge on racism. And to say, “the principal acts for economic reasons, parents will not send students to the school if there are too many Sephardim in it,” is absolutely unacceptable. That is like saying, “because society is racist, I act, for economic reasons, as a racist”—but that is the root of the problem! Schools should not be judged by the percentage of Sephardi students but by the quality of the students and the level of instruction. As it was said: “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
I did not understand. You say that no one inferred from the sexes (that is, you come to disagree with me), and a moment later you say there are no differences in brain cells, only in environmental conditions (agreeing with me). Make up your mind.
I did not mention environmental conditions at all. I am saying that even if there are no differences between the brain cells, that says nothing, because the differences are created by the genes that cause the brain to behave in a certain way.
To the honorable Rabbi and Gaon, Rabbi Michael Abraham, may he live long, amen
To the honorable Rabbi and Gaon, Rabbi Moshe Farkash, may he live long, amen
I am a Sephardi Aleppan from Argentina, and Sephardi with all my heart, and I would like to add an important point that I have still not seen in any article or response connected to your honored article (not in Tzarich Iyun, and not in Kikar HaShabbat either).
In my humble opinion, the fact that the Lithuanians do not accept Sephardim to their institutions and also do not marry them does not necessarily stem from a feeling of superiority, Heaven forbid, but simply from a desire to preserve their own distinctive character and way of life. A yeshiva is not only a place of study like a university, but a place uniquely devoted to transmitting a certain life tradition that came from Lithuania, and this tradition is not limited to talmudic analysis, but is also connected to character, way of life, outlook on things, dress, speech, celebrations, and so on—not necessarily superior, but distinctive and different from Sephardi culture.
Every culture wants its continuity in purity, and if they accept all the Sephardim into their institutions, then perhaps there will be very good and successful yeshivot, but there will no longer be Lithuanian yeshivot. (For example, in not wanting the State of Israel to consist mostly of the nations of the world—English gentiles, say—are we racist or do we feel superior??? Not at all. Rather, we want a Jewish state, and to preserve that we need at least a Jewish majority.) The Lithuanians want to remain Lithuanian, just as we Aleppans want to preserve our Aleppan heritage within the family and the community. Every culture is unique, with its own distinctive advantages, but in practice it is different from its fellow, and each one wants to continue what it truly is, regardless of which culture is better and more elevated.
The problem in Israeli haredi society is that apparently the Sephardim lost part of their identity and independent culture (apparently not through their own fault but for historical reasons—sudden mass immigration, transit camps, etc.) and want to be accepted into Ashkenazi culture, but Ashkenazi culture is concerned for its continuity in its purity and therefore does not accept everyone totally.
Abroad we do not have these problems, because, thank God, every Sephardi generally, naturally, joyfully, and proudly goes to his own community, and likewise among the Ashkenazim. And if some Ashkenazim come to study with us Sephardim and vice versa, the numbers do not reach the point of threatening the character and culture of the community itself.
In my humble opinion, that is the point, regardless of feelings of superiority, although there may be some individuals who do feel that.
What does the honorable rabbi say about this?
Happy Purim!
Genes not as in “kindergartens,” but as in gene—the things that make up DNA.
As for the essentialist difference between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, it is not hard to see that there is no such thing. One can check among Sephardim in other countries or in other publics. If in Israel there are such differences, then apparently the matter stems from social and historical reasons (lack of opportunities, etc.).
For some reason, in Argentina (at least), even among the haredim (including the distinguished families), there are no such differences in analytical study between Sephardim and Ashkenazim.
According to what the honorable rabbi wrote as proof of differences from Nobel Prizes (and it seems to me that in that remark lies all the hurt feelings of the Sephardim who responded—including me—because it was written unseriously, like antisemites who write about Jews in general), one could also say that haredim are less intelligent because they have no Nobel Prize. The same for Sephardim who lived in Islamic lands—what Nobel Prize could they receive if there was no academic or research framework there for them? (And they invested all their genius in the Bible, the Gemara, halakhah, Kabbalah, grammar, and poetry.) And it cannot be denied that there were geniuses in Islamic lands in the last two hundred years as well, except that they are not recognized even among Sephardim today. And nowadays, thank God, once the gates of wisdom and science have opened to us and we have entered the Western world, there are Sephardi professors of the highest rank in all professions as well.
All this proves that we are not dealing with an essential difference; if there is a difference in Israel in some parts of the public, then it is a circumstantial social difference.
By the way, see in this link the (well-known) halakhic creativity of Sephardi sages in Islamic lands over the last two hundred years.
https://www.ybz.org.il/?CategoryID=287&ArticleID=2239#.XJKLlCgzb6Q
Happy Purim!
I am at an age when many of my friends have married off children. It is common and widespread among us that Ashkenazi in-laws go out of their way to help the children buy an apartment, and if they have difficulty, they will be very frugal with wedding expenses and the like, whereas Mizrahi in-laws did not save and hardly help, or do not help at all, financially, the young couple, but insist firmly on a showy wedding and expenses for expensive clothing and the like. This phenomenon is completely common and well known.
To Yehudi Halabi
“it is not hard to see that there is no such thing”? It is very hard indeed. In light of the fact that the genetic differences between Ashkenazim and Sephardim are so significant that they can be distinguished by appearance—there is a very high chance that these differences affect brain functioning. And the fact that you can point to smart Sephardim says nothing, because we are talking here about statistics.
“One can check among Sephardim in other countries”? Check what? That there are no problems between the communities? Are there genetic differences between the communities in Argentina? The fact that in the haredi public Sephardim marry Sephardi women and Ashkenazim marry Ashkenazi women is precisely what prevents the mixing of genes and causes the perpetuation of the current situation in which there are two different gene groups. But clearly there is an essential difference between the gene groups.
So in the final analysis, does the rabbi think there is haredi racism or not? The rabbi gives all kinds of tests, like if they do A, B, C then there is racism, whereas if they do D, E, F then there is not. But the rabbi does not say whether in his opinion there is racism or not.
The Sephardim hold like Resh Lakish, about whom the Gemara says that all his days, whatever he earned he would not stint and save for the morrow, and at his death he left only a kav of saffron for his heirs (Gittin 47a). Once at work two haredi Sephardi women argued between themselves. One, a single woman, claimed that parents should help their children. The other, married to a baal teshuvah who had studied in yeshiva, insisted emphatically that she was not going to help her children and that they should fend for themselves. Economically, I am not sure which approach is more correct.
These are empty words. What you call “cultural separatism” is what is usually called racism. So yes, someone who believes in racism will naturally behave in a racist way.
The problem of Ashkenazi haredim is not the other culture but fear of certain phenomena that do not exist among everyone, and a sweeping attitude that does not examine the individual person specifically is tainted by racism. For some reason, all the problematic and troubling phenomena exist precisely in that one specific culture. I do not buy it.
See my response to the previous message.
Then read it. I explained in my remarks why that reason, even if it is correct, is not justified.
Of course there is haredi racism (in the borrowed sense used here, of course), and I wrote that too. How can one dispute it?
To Rabbi Michi
Why in your opinion, if one does not examine each case on its own merits, is this racism? After all, every day we do a variety of things on statistical grounds. Why is it suddenly not okay here?
To Rabbi Farkash,
As I wrote, no one disputes that the home and the parents influence the behavioral patterns of the children. But to see the group as a homogeneous whole instead of judging each individual on his own is a problematic pattern that perpetuates existing distortions and does not open a possibility for different parts of society to advance and change. Especially if someone sees those patterns as problematic, it is incumbent on him to contribute to changing them. Therefore I do not accept this argument even with respect to marriage.
I wrote that you constantly move between two poles: on the one hand you write that you are only describing and not judging, and that the characteristics are just different without any judgment as to whether this is good or not. But the descriptions themselves leave no room for doubt that there is indeed judgment, and rightly so (after all, whining is not a neutral characteristic. Neither is indifference to intellectual advancement). Had we been dealing with neutral differences, perhaps there would have been room for such separatism. But precisely because these characteristics are problematic, there is more reason not to generalize and to allow mobility and change—in other words, to look at each person on his own and not to assume stereotypes where that is not necessary.
I am well aware of the social constraints, especially in matchmaking, but on that too I already wrote that my remarks are directed at haredi society and not necessarily at individuals. A society that creates constraints that cause its members to behave in a racist way is a problematic society. I also wrote that individuals bear responsibility for the society of which they are part. It cannot be that all the members of that society escape responsibility because the society to which they belong dictates their behavior.
A conceptual clarification. I have no problem at all with correct distinctions. I wrote that generalizations should be examined in terms of truth or falsehood, not in judgmental terms like racism. But when you make incorrect generalizations, and especially when you apply generalizations, even correct ones, to individuals indiscriminately and without specific consideration, there is a racist odor to that. I explained all this in the post. The characteristics you attribute to Sephardim, even if some of them are grounded, certainly do not characterize them absolutely. In my opinion this is a minority, even if a noticeable one. Therefore there is no justification for a sweeping attitude. Such an attitude usually reflects racism.
And in closing I will return again to what you wrote at the end of your message here, where you asked what is wrong with distinguishing between populations (evolution, etc.), and raised claims of political correctness (such as “Ashkenazim are smarter” versus “Sephardim have better character traits”). You keep returning again and again to trivial arguments that do not touch my remarks or the dispute between us. My reasons are substantive. There are things I agreed with and things I did not (including characteristics you proposed regarding Sephardim. I did not claim anywhere that there are no differences, so why keep arguing about that all the time). Everything I claimed I reasoned. Therefore I do not see the point of hurling accusations—though indeed justified toward many who deal with these matters—at me. I myself have often written against the slogans of political correctness. Moreover, even in my remarks here I wrote that there are differences between the groups, so I do not understand what the evolution arguments are doing here. You can make such complaints against those who raise sloganistic claims, but in my opinion you did not see any such thing in me. Raising such claims in this discussion is just demagoguery, and you keep repeating it. About this our sages already said (ibid., ibid.): just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not after you. So too, just because one speaks about racism does not mean one suffers from political correctness. Sometimes it really is racism.
In closing, I repeat and say that if it is indeed important to you to understand my position (as you wrote at the beginning of your remarks here), then you have no choice but to read what I wrote in the post. It seems to me you did not do so with the attention it deserves. All your claims have already been answered there.
I explained this in the post itself. A sweeping attitude is not necessarily racism. But there are parameters that need to be met. When one does not examine because there is justification not to examine (the cost is high, it is complicated, the proportion in the population is decisive, etc.), then indeed there is no racism here. But here those parameters are not met.
An extremely important linguistic clarification… much appreciated. You still contradicted yourself.
Saidler, my brother,
Obviously there can be differences, except that not every difference falls under the reductionism of more or less good, but rather under different tendencies (like the differences between a woman and a man, where the woman is generally better than the man in some things and vice versa). And by the way, not all Sephardi communities are dark-skinned. For example, among us Aleppans most are completely fair-skinned (so much so that a Lithuanian rosh yeshivah I had in Jerusalem asked us how it is that we Aleppans are all fair-skinned; and likewise I think most Moroccans are fair-skinned, and there are also some Ashkenazim who are not fair-skinned). (Sorry about my Hebrew; I have been out of Israel for a long time.)
I too am speaking about statistics. In practice, abroad (and I think in Israel as well among non-haredi Sephardim of the middle class), you see that a high percentage go to university and succeed, and they are among the first rank, and there is no difference between Ashkenazim and Sephardim in this respect—certainly abroad. (And if one takes into account that Sephardim are far fewer in number than Ashkenazim, that also adds to the statistical picture.)
And if we are talking about haredi society, among Sephardim too there are very flourishing batei midrash in terms of Torah creativity (the beit midrash of Rabbi Meir Mazuz, the beit midrash of Rabbi Ovadia, the beit midrash of “Marbitzei,” the Sephardi beit midrash in the path of the Ben Ish Hai—Rabbi Chaim Sofer, Rabbi Yaakov Hillel, and others). Although their style differs from the Ashkenazim (except for “Marbitzei”), this is intellectual flourishing in Torah terms. Every year books and compositions come out in high percentages (and here too one has to take into account the percentage of Sephardim in the population).
It is interesting how it is among the Hasidim in terms of their intellectual Torah flourishing—what exactly is their flourishing, and whether here too it is a matter of genes or culture.
By the way, for us Sephardim from abroad, when we studied in a certain prestigious Lithuanian yeshiva in Jerusalem, the Israeli Lithuanians looked down on us in terms of Western culture, both intellectually and in terms of manners and courtesy. (They did not even know the Latin alphabet, and we almost all spoke three languages, besides having knowledge of general culture, history, philosophy, literature, geography, science, economics, etc., of which the Israeli haredim knew nothing serious.) That says something about where the main issue lies—whether in natural matters or sociological ones.
Saidler, my brother,
I want to clarify three things about what I wrote.
When I wrote that obviously there are no differences, I meant that there is no such thing as saying there is no Sephardi intellectuality in Sephardi society. There is Sephardi intellectuality, and there always was (once they were sages in Torah; today they are sages in all fields of wisdom), and we are speaking of significant and important percentages.
When I wrote that there are differences from the Ashkenazim, I meant that there may be different talents for different kinds of intellectual matters, each culture with its own style of wisdom.
And when I wrote about fair and dark skin, I did not mean, Heaven forbid, that I concede any intellectual advantage of fair-skinned people; it was only a specific remark about what Saidler wrote, that Sephardim are very different in their skin from Ashkenazim.
Rabbi Michael, let me begin with thanks. It is a pleasure to read your substantive and truthful treatment, clean of the slightest trace of outside influence. A true Litvak! Unlike some truly delusional responses that this is not the place to address (by the way, I am not sure how many of the commenters really grasped the end of your position… I hope I did). There really is no problem with generalizations; I argue that the problem begins when one derives action from the generalization. I do not have much to add to the illuminating response (in fact, almost nothing), but I will add a few thoughts that occurred to me (at the moment) on the margins.
– The schema. In this part you wrote: “In such situations, the use of generalizations does not express racism.” It may very well be that there is no real racism in the classical sense in the cases you mentioned, but there is a certain feeling of superiority here that stems from pride. I am good, and only the good are accepted to my institution. (In the army, etc., this is indeed justified, but in an educational institution it is very puzzling in my humble opinion.) There is no reason not to accept so-and-so because he is of a certain origin, or (if they claim the racist element is absent) because he probably has a television at home and may spoil the other boys, etc. This stems from pride. (It reminded me of Rabbi Shteinman in the well-known video where he cries “pride” at teachers who did not want to accept a student because he was not suitable to the spirit of the cheder, for example*.) If you think that is not okay, then on the contrary—educate him and show him the right path. The problem is more fundamental: there are no serious educators in the Ashkenazi haredi public (and not only there). As you wrote, “there is in his words a fatalism and an acceptance of the situation as it is as a decree of fate imposed on us all.” It is not only in his words—unfortunately this is the haredi approach to the matter. And as you wrote, “where it is reasonably possible to make a substantive examination, relying on stereotypes in deciding a particular case, even if the stereotypes are correct, carries a racist odor.”
– Regarding the intellectual gaps: indeed there is a gap in intellectual achievements, as you said. (By the way, I do not think that is what Farkash meant; see his comments in the aforementioned column. Farkash truly thinks that the Ashkenazi mind is more intelligent from an evolutionary standpoint.) But I will say very briefly that one needs to read a bit of history in order to deeply understand the said cultures and what they went through up to the meeting point in Israel. One must remember that the Enlightenment developed in Europe, and the Jews, with all the conservatism that prevailed at the time, were affected very seriously by it, even unconsciously (and not only by the Enlightenment movement, but by the European atmosphere in general). Thus it turns out that Ashkenazi Jews have a kind of “head start” over Jews of the Eastern and North African communities with respect to intellectual achievements. (I qualify this by saying I am not sure how much that is the point. Most of the haredi public does not know what enlightenment is at all—there, another generalization.) It takes a few generations to close such a gap, and today we really see in less conservative publics the change in the gap that once existed, as though it had never existed. By the way, if you look at French Jewry, the thing changed in an instant once immigrants from North Africa arrived in European France.
– Another point I would like to add is the confrontation of European Orthodoxy with Western developments that arose in Europe, such as Reform, the Enlightenment, and the like. These were phenomena of which the Sephardi and Eastern communities were not at all aware. So they did not have the tools to deal with these phenomena when they quickly reached Israel as well (which is a Western country), all while adapting to a new place, and I have not even entered the issue of the transit camps, and enough said. So instead of the Lithuanian public leveraging this for learning, it takes it into realms of baseless hatred, literally so.
– In closing, I will speak about the point many touched on. The “discrimination” indeed exists in many parts of the people dwelling in Zion, and even within parts of our own camp, but one can see that it is on a clear trajectory of change—see the percentage of Hasidim who study in Lithuanian institutions, something that did not exist in the past. And I think that in the not-so-distant future it will dissolve on its own (assuming we live in the same state). In a more conservative public, ideas that are now in fashion always arrive late, and enough said.
To Mushik.
Farkash’s claim: evolutionary differences may cause differences between ethnic communities just as there are differences between women’s and men’s brains.
Your claim: it is wrong to compare the differences between female and male brains to differences between ethnic communities, because it is very unlikely that there are differences between the brains of the different communities, and therefore it is unlikely that there are differences between the communities. (“I find it hard to believe that דווקא within the small Jewish group such substantial essential differences would be discovered between ethnic communities.”) According to the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
My claim: Farkash’s evolutionary claim does not stem דווקא from an analogy to the difference between women and men, but stands on its own and is explained by genetics. (“No one here inferred from differences between the sexes to differences of origin and nationality. Such an inference is not needed in order to justify the claim.”)
What is the problem? Where is the contradiction?
And in general, the claim that there is an essential difference between the structure of the female brain and that of the male brain has long been disproved. In most MRI scans the structural form of women’s and men’s brains is identical, and in the scans where this is not so, that proves nothing, since such differences can be found within the same sex as well. But the size of the male brain is indeed on average 10 percent larger than that of the female brain. What causes women and men to behave differently, however, is the different DNA, which causes the brain to behave differently. So if we scan brain activity, we will indeed get clearer differences (even if not absolute ones) between male and female brain activity.
To Yehudi Halabi
“Each culture with its own style of wisdom” is a horrifyingly politically correct sentence. If you take tribes from the Amazon, there too you could say there is a “different style of wisdom” of the chief who is very expert in “the doctrine of wet fire.” But if you give him an IQ test, it is not at all certain that he will score above 80. What I call wisdom has a measure; what I call intelligence has a measure. And it depends on two things and two things only:
1) ability to analyze and draw conclusions
2) ability to remember
The higher these two things are, the more intelligent you are defined as being (in my humble opinion). The lower they are, the less intelligent. That is all. There is no “Sephardi intellectuality” or “Ashkenazi intellectuality” or “Czechoslovak intellectuality.” There is intellectuality.
The whole point is that it is certainly possible that one gene group (henceforth: yellow genes) dictates a higher probability of developing higher intelligence. The blue gene group, by contrast, dictates a higher probability of developing anger and violence. And so that means there will be more genius Nobel Prize winners in the group of people carrying the yellow genes, and more people in prison in the group carrying the blue genes. (Because the differences in distribution at the statistical extremes will be much higher than the differences in the mean itself. Jordan Peterson there, there.)
In light of the fact that clear genetic differences exist between Ashkenazim and Sephardim (so clear that they affect external appearance), in all likelihood—almost certainly—they dictate a probability for a different level of intelligence. There need not be a significant gap, but there will certainly be some gap. It may be that Sephardim are slightly more intelligent, and it may be that Ashkenazim are slightly more intelligent. A thorough study really should be done on the subject in order to give exact numbers. And obviously there are many genius Sephardim, since genes do not determine entirely how a person will develop but only give certain probabilities for different things.
But given this information, which of the two gene groups would you guess has higher intelligence? I personally bet on the gene group that produced more Nobel Prize winners and has very little representation in prisons. But if it turns out I am wrong—I will gladly embrace the truth.
Saidler
Very good.
Regarding the Nobel Prize, environmental factors must be taken into account as more decisive: high technology and science did not develop in Islamic lands.
Still, it is important to know that Moroccan Jewry already has three Nobel Prizes, which proportionally relative to Ashkenazim is far more (and all in one generation after they moved to France!).
One more thing for Saidler, may he live long
Your words are truly enlightening, and I very much loved your definition of intelligence in such short and precise terms.
On the subject of prison, since most of those there in Israel are Sephardim, I will tell you honestly that I am not well versed in the situation of Sephardim in Israel, but from what I know of Sephardim abroad, these things sound very strange. Here I do not hear of any Sephardi going to prison; on the contrary, most of them advance and succeed in their studies and their work, go to university, to yeshiva, open businesses, etc., and everything is very good. One must know that Sephardim are not just the fruit sellers in Mahane Yehuda market.
The simple reality of Sephardim in Argentina is that they too (with no difference from the Ashkenazim) occupy the higher places in society, both economically and educationally, in medicine and law, etc. Likewise, the Torah sages here write good books, have yeshivot, etc., and there are no inferior things like prison, etc. (perhaps a tiny minority I do not know about, but not particularly connected to Sephardim). This is such a simple reality that I am astonished by what is written about Sephardim in Israel. And accordingly, it is no wonder that here in Argentina, even among the haredim, people marry Sephardim as a normal thing.
So apparently the genes of Sephardim abroad are different from the Sephardim in the Land.
One more thing regarding intelligence. You summarized intelligence/genius in terms of memory and the ability to analyze and draw conclusions. Still, it seems that in the concept of wisdom in a given culture there enter additional realms, such as emotional intelligence and intuitiveness (which relates greatly to relationships, politics, rhetoric, poetry, art), as well as creative talent (which is connected both to the intelligence you wrote about and to the other intelligence just mentioned), operating in poetry, thought, literature, architecture, and more.
For example, in the business world, besides the classical intelligence you wrote about, the two other intelligences mentioned are also greatly needed, and in this Sephardim around the world are indeed very successful. From the Aleppan community I know great wealthy men—owners of banks, companies, hotels, land, factories—who started from nothing and reached unimaginable levels. (And regarding what Rabbi Farkash wrote in Tzarich Iyun, I also know some of them personally, and they are very modest and dress like ordinary people.)
So according to all the above, I am sadly becoming convinced that life in exile is better for Sephardim than life in our beloved state. For some reason, in exile we have advanced and continue to advance more in all areas.
You wrote:
The overwhelming majority of women (especially haredi women) from the Eastern communities do not nurse their babies in public
Is this based on a study or on private cases extrapolated to the general public?
To Rabbi Farkash, may he live long
To Saidler, may he live long
I retract what I wrote before, that it is obvious there is no essential difference between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. On the contrary, it is very plausible—as Rabbi Farkash and Saidler say—that there are essential genetic differences, and at least in the essence of culture as well, and abroad too there are differences. It is just that we are not dealing with coarse differences of more or less good (as I mistakenly understood), but with different tendencies and different distinctive things.
By the way, in this whole affair it seems that the greatest racists are the Sephardim against themselves, because why do they want to marry דווקא an Ashkenazi woman?? Are there no Sephardi women in the Land??? And likewise, why do they want to educate their sons and daughters as Ashkenazim??? Is not their resentment itself an admission of the very thing they complain about???
In my humble opinion, it seems that in Israel a large part of haredi Sephardim in the first generation of their haredi identity were educated in Ashkenazi institutions that wanted to save them from secular Zionism (and then they were cut off from their natural Sephardiness). But over time these haredi Sephardim multiplied greatly, and the Lithuanians, in order to preserve the purity of their identity, began not to accept all of them (and in my opinion there is nothing wrong with that, as I wrote in my first response). So those Sephardim were left somehow in the middle: they do not really connect to the natural Sephardiness of their grandfathers, and they did not build themselves out of that Sephardiness; but they also are not really Ashkenazi in every respect, and therefore they are not really Lithuanian either. And so the situation emerged that they value and aspire to Lithuanian education, but not all of them can be accepted there.
Abroad, thank God, this did not happen to us, because we developed out of ourselves (our own institutions, our own sages). So even though we changed somewhat from our grandfathers, those changes came from within ourselves as internal and natural changes of the Aleppan community itself, and we were never cut off from our natural educational tradition. Therefore, thank God, what happened to the Sephardim in Israel did not happen to us.
With much love and a happy Purim to everyone!!!
To Yehudi Halabi—happy Purim
First, your suggestion that there is a genetic difference between the Sephardim who immigrated to Israel and the Sephardim who remained in exile is very interesting. I can certainly imagine the following situation:
The smart and successful Sephardim did not feel a need to immigrate to Israel because they were doing well where they were (like, for example, Jews in America).
The less intelligent Sephardim, who did not have it good in exile because they were not so successful, immigrated to Israel in hopes of change.
As a result, two gene groups were formed. The one carrying the probability of higher intelligence stayed abroad, and the other one immigrated to Israel.
The Ashkenazim, by contrast—everyone (both the smart and the less so) immigrated from Europe because of antisemitism and the Holocaust, and so the situation was created that Ashkenazi genes encourage more intelligence than Sephardi genes. It is certainly possible that this is one of the reasons the phenomenon of the gaps exists more in Israel than abroad.
Additionally, by all means—bring many examples of Moroccans who won the Nobel Prize, and I may indeed conclude that Moroccan genes encourage intelligence more than all the other gene groups. But the main point does not change—necessarily there is one gene group that gives a higher probability of high intelligence than all the other groups. And I do not have the tools to investigate that. (It requires further inquiry whether the Nobel Prize is even a criterion… Arafat got the Nobel Peace Prize, and I do not think that says anything about his intelligence. It seems to me that strong ability in mathematics and physics would be a criterion, chess, psychometric tests, and IQ tests… and this requires much further inquiry, etc.)
Second, you are certainly right that there are many other talents—social talents, emotional understanding of situations, good intuition, developed business sense, and more. But I would not call them “wisdom”; I would call them “talents,” because I defined wisdom in a very specific way. Someone who expands the concept of wisdom to “every trait that helps a person succeed in life is called wisdom” can certainly include all the talents you listed, but that changes nothing… it is simply a matter of terminology.
To Saidler, may he live long—happy Purim!
I very much loved your enlightening words!
Regarding the genetic difference between Sephardim abroad and Sephardim in Israel, I wrote that ironically, because in practice, in the very same families in Morocco or Syria, some immigrated to Israel and some to the American continent (Aleppans) or to France (Moroccans). And by the way, among the Syrians in America there is almost no immigration to Israel, and all the Syrians in Israel are those who came directly from Syria.
Regarding the Moroccan Nobel Prizes, I quote to you what “Hasidisher” wrote on the Tzarich Iyun site in response to Rabbi Farkash’s article:
“As for Nobel Prize winners, here are excerpts from an article by Prof. Amos Noy (yes, an Ashkenazi): In total, 165 Jews have won the Nobel Prize (including the Peace Prizes won jointly by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres with Arafat, and Begin with Sadat). Indeed, you will be pleased to know that Ashkenazim won fifteen times as many prizes as Sephardi Jews, but you will at the same time be disappointed to understand that the difference is exactly what was reflected in the population gap: in 1938 there were 16.5 million Jews in the world, of whom no more than a million and a half were Sephardim. Jews of Eastern European origin numbered more than 12 million, among them four million Jews in the United States alone (which, in any case, won the largest number of prizes of any country in the world, because of the most developed scientific infrastructure in the world). It follows that Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews won Nobel Prizes in exactly the same ratio as their numbers in the population. An example of success despite the population gap can be seen in three Nobel Prize winners from Morocco: Serge Haroche (Physics), Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (Physics), and Baruj Benacerraf (Physiology or Medicine). Considering that the Jewish community of Morocco did not exceed 200,000 in the mid-twentieth century, the achievements of this community in terms of Nobel Prizes per capita exceed those of any other Jewish community.”
As for the definition of wisdom, I very much liked your remark, except that perhaps one can propose an intermediate definition of wisdom in cultural terms—one not defined as whatever causes success in life, but also not as the wisdom of analysis and memory, rather one that also contains the flexible world of the spirit, such as the wisdom of poetry (both in melody and in words), literature, and thought, which are not necessarily connected to precise analysis. For example, the books of the sage Rabbi Chaim Sabato, as a son of that culture (the Aleppan culture), stirred in me messages and subtle and deep emotions that no book had ever touched in me, and it seems that people of other cultures, too, were not touched at the same depth as I was. In my humble opinion, this literature too is included in the definition of the wisdom of a certain culture, and there too there is genius. Likewise in Arabic music: one who was born into it feels depth and subtlety that one does not feel in Western music. (The theory of maqamat is an entire world, and one of its distinctive features is that unlike Western music, Arabic music has quarter tones in addition to the semitones found in Western music as well. And through those quarter tones Arabic music reaches subtle and deep regions that Western music will never reach.) All this wisdom is not so connected to analysis and inference, but certainly it is cultural wisdom with many deep and subtle messages.
And finally I have a question for you. I acknowledge that there can be genetic differences, but do you acknowledge that there are also non-genetic causes, namely sociological ones, that produce the differences?
For example, the fact that some Yemenite children left religion was not due to genetic causes but to the wickedness of the ruling government that stole the children from their parents.
So why not say that in Israel there were also central sociological causes that produced the differences between Ashkenazim and Sephardim? Why immediately decide that we are dealing only with genetic differences? Especially in light of the situation of Sephardim abroad?
Maybe—if you do not know them—you would like to see the following series, which present part of the situation of Sephardim in Israel and the style of their immigration:
“Tsarfokaim”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FbyVQPKkWcQ
“Sallah, Here Is the Land of Israel”
https://13tv.co.il/item/vod/sallah/episodes/sallah_ep_01-602791/
With much love and with the blessing of a happy and joyful Purim!
To Yehudi Halabi
Of course sociological reasons can also cause differences. The culture and society in which you grew up greatly affect the way you develop—that is, which genes are strongly expressed and which genes are weakly expressed. That is what I meant when I said that genes do not completely determine how a person develops.
But the culture of the society in which you grow up was itself originally created out of the genes of the population. A population with “violent” genes will develop a violent culture, which will enable those violent genes to express themselves well. True, there may be in that society a family with completely nonviolent genes, and it is the culture that will cause them to become violent, but that culture was originally created from the character of the genes of the majority of the population. The “society that raises you” is also made up of individual human beings with a certain genetic character.
But indeed, in the end both genes and environment significantly affect human development, and it is difficult to determine which has greater influence. (One can see Rabbi Michi’s post on the film Three Identical Strangers in column 198.) And indeed one could do an experiment and have people of different ethnic communities adopt each other’s children (switching babies, etc.) and see how they function.
All in all, I only raised the point that an essential difference between ethnic communities certainly exists and is explained by genes, and people need to stop being shocked by this possibility and calling it “racist.” It is certainly possible that in regard to intelligence the gap caused by genes is much less significant than the gap caused by society. But society cannot be the only reason.
Saidler, with all due respect, I am far too small for this, but again you are arguing exactly like me, and you are saying that environmental conditions (like a pair of twins in different kindergartens, not “genes” in the DNA sense…) are what matter, not brain structure.
To Saidler, may he live long
Your summary of your deep opinion on the matter is wonderful and very clear!!! Thank you very much!!!
By the way, I thought to note something very interesting. In Argentina the overwhelming majority of Jews are Ashkenazim and the Sephardim are a minority, but on the other hand the majority of the religious are Sephardim. (This has resulted in many Ashkenazim becoming Sephardim within the community, but almost none in the opposite direction.)
And it should be noted that most Ashkenazim here came to Argentina from Eastern Europe about a hundred years ago, and a large part of them, or perhaps most of them, were religious (the immigrants who came to Argentina). They also had rabbis and great Torah scholars. Almost every Ashkenazi from Eastern Europe whom you meet here and ask about his grandfather tells you, “Yes! He kept Shabbat, ate kosher, went to synagogue, etc.” But most of them assimilated, and the synagogues that were once Orthodox now belong to the Reform. On the other hand, the Sephardim continued in traditionalism and within Judaism.
That is the reality, without judgment. Some will interpret the Ashkenazim favorably (that they are not stuck in the old past, that they integrate into general society and advance), and some will interpret them negatively (they abandoned Torah and Judaism). And similarly regarding the Sephardim: some will interpret them negatively (they remained in an old world), and some will interpret them favorably (how they preserved their identity and culture within a different country).
It should also be noted that the most important Jewish neighborhood in Argentina (Once) is the main neighborhood both for Ashkenazim and for Sephardim, and yet within that very same neighborhood (!) the above differences persisted. Here certainly we are dealing with a cultural difference that causes different reactions (and according to Saidler, apparently rightly—I am not knowledgeable in genetics—it depends on the different genes).
With much love and much enjoyment in conversing and learning from this wonderful forum around the wonderful site of Rabbi Michael Abraham, may he live long, amen!
Happy Purim!
Regarding nursing in public: Ashkenazi and Sephardi haredi women do not nurse in public in any way. My intention, as I wrote in my article, was to give examples of a change in mentality. I explicitly wrote that I do not want to give concrete examples of modesty, but rather examples from the past that have implications for concepts of modesty today.
Rabbi Michael,
At long last I hope I have understood at least one of the points of criticism you raised about my article. I will put it in simple words.
Your claim is this: Farkash, according to your position, if there are indeed significant mental gaps in favor of the Ashkenazim, what are you doing, as a person and as part of a society, to minimize those gaps? The models you propose, even if they are not racist, still do not minimize the gaps and leave one group more backward.
It seems to me that I have a fitting answer to this claim, but I would prefer not to write it before I am sure I understood you correctly.
That is one of my claims (with emphasis on the fact that the differences are usually to the advantage of the Ashkenazim, and therefore one ought to act to eliminate them). Reasonings of the kind you raised (there are no “models” there, as you put it, but justifications for perpetuating the existing situation) contribute to perpetuating them, and thereby also to perpetuating the separation.
Rabbi Michael,
I thought about this claim, and here is my response.
In haredi society there is a very well-oiled system of rabbis and activists who constantly deal with cultivating Sephardi identity. Take Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who did everything in his power to introduce and shape Sephardi culture; there are the Abuhatzeira rebbes, the phenomenon of the “babas”; Rabbi Meir Mazuz, who proudly and conspicuously cultivates Tunisian culture and not infrequently speaks against Ashkenazim. And many more rabbis like these who consciously cultivate Sephardi culture, and many who, even if not consciously, nevertheless everything about their presence screams Sephardiness. There is Shas, which engages greatly in cultivating Sephardi identity. Therefore in haredi society, in my opinion, integration will not be possible in the coming generations. By contrast, in the religious-Zionist public, from which people like to take an example, there are no influential, tone-setting rabbis who are Sephardi (not in connection with halakhic rulings), as far as I know. Also the overwhelming majority of those heading the yeshivot and institutions are Ashkenazi (are there Sephardi roshei yeshivah in Merkaz HaRav and Har HaMor? Correct me if I am wrong), so they set the mental tone, and the Sephardim who came there tried to adapt themselves to the general mentality (not necessarily Ashkenazi, but also national-religious, with all the characteristics of that sector). One influential Sephardi rabbi in the religious-Zionist world is Rabbi Uri Sherki (he is French, and that is a big difference), and what are his contents? Sephardi heritage, or the heritage of Rabbi Kook? In the religious-Zionist public there are no influential people whose chief concern is to instill Sephardi culture, and therefore integration is much easier.
Also on the issue of marriage, I have no doubt that if in haredi society people got to know girls directly, there would be many interethnic marriages. Even if today in the religious-Zionist public there are parts that are also particular in these matters, interethnic marriages began in that public many years ago when almost all matches were based on friendship and personal acquaintance.
An incidental remark: it is interesting why, despite the integration in the religious-Zionist public, there are almost no leaders—such as heads of yeshivot, institutions, and activists—who are Sephardi? By all means, perhaps you have an answer.
Hitler did to the concept of racism what Stephen King did to clowns. From watching a sprint or long-distance race one can immediately see that genetic differences (and not cultural ones) are responsible for the excellence of East Africans in long-distance running and of West Africans in sprinting. There are even peoples who excel in middle-distance running. Every student of biology knows the environmental influence in Central Africa that caused the development of sickle-cell anemia in a significant percentage of the population. Would the rabbi morally disqualify a person who chose his spouse also on the basis of her ethnic origin because of that people’s resistance to a deadly disease? There are studies pointing to a significant difference between the distribution of intelligence among Ashkenazi Jews and the Western world. Every ethnic community is unique in its history, and every such history drew the population to a uniqueness some of which is probably also genetic. Now, I understand that the rabbi does not dispute everything I have said, but it seems from his words that racism is wrong, period. In my humble opinion, racism is wrong only when the separation stems from fantasies or from violent actions resulting from those differences (whether they exist or not). My remark is about the terminology of the concept of racism, which was lost because of that vile oppressor.
You sharpened one of my claims specifically in order to answer it. Even before that you noted that you had an answer. Now you wrote that you thought about my remarks and are writing your response. And yet, after all these warnings and preliminaries, I do not see any answer here. Instead, you continue with irrelevant sharpenings and riddles, interwoven with quite a few factual errors. But it seems to me there is no point in this discussion. If you are not addressing the claims, then both our time is wasted.
All the best.
Indeed, I thought a great deal about your remarks before I sharpened your claim, and I only wanted to be sure I understood you correctly. Then I wrote what I had thought about your remarks before sharpening your claim.
I would be very interested to know what the factual errors are in what I wrote, especially since I am not knowledgeable about what goes on in the religious-Zionist public.
I also do not understand why I did not answer your claim. If your claim is why the Lithuanian public does not act to bridge the gaps, my simple answer is that there are mighty forces that oppose this and oppose integrating the Sephardim, and therefore there is no possibility of doing so despite all the good will.
I would be glad for clarifications from you.
Thank you.
R. Moshe Yitzhak, in your comments I feel that you are confusing many concepts. What is that Sephardi identity/mentality/culture/heritage? Is eating with cutlery considered part of Ashkenazi culture? In halakhah there is an obligation to keep ancestral custom, and no more. Is a Sephardi, because his ancestors wore a galabiyya, obligated to do so? Is lack of education considered “Sephardi culture”? It seems the Ashkenazi public takes ownership of Western culture.
Regarding “Sephardim” as leaders in the religious-Zionist public, I will note generally. First, I will say that I did not understand the argument you raised regarding interethnic matches that happened thanks to personal acquaintance and friendship (whose accuracy I am not at all sure of). What is it meant to say?
Second, I do not know whether one can define the religious-Zionist public under one canopy as in the past. In practice, just as there are different factions in the haredi world, so too in the religious-Zionist public. I would say that I am not at all sure to what extent you understood who the religious-Zionist public is, with all these distinctions you are making.
Third, as I noted in my previous response: the Sephardi and Eastern public that arrived in Israel encountered a new, Western world in which they had not previously been involved, and therefore they did not know how to digest within such a short time all the characteristics that the Zionists brought with the establishment of the state. I will point out that there were many Jews who were simply “uprooted” from their lands in order to bring them here; as far as I know, most of them did not immigrate in an orderly fashion, not to mention communities that immigrated in an orderly fashion. So in effect the entire Sephardi and Eastern world arrived into chaos. Therefore, an orderly ideological doctrine against the winds that prevailed at the time did not exist (unlike Europe, yes?).
I will also add that the pattern of study and communal life that suited non-Western countries did not suit the Western style of life that developed in the Land of Israel.
In light of these things, the public in question looked for how to rebuild itself, and for this purpose various factions arose and continue to arise within that public (which in fact to this day not all know how to cope with this situation… but I believe that in another generation or two things will change) that do not know how to act. There are many who court the favor of their Ashkenazi brothers, and others who open their own institutions on the basis of pure “Sephardiness” as a counterreaction. Instead of the Ashkenazi public taking initiative and trying to take patronage over those who are lost, it is occupied with baseless hatred in the plain sense (I say this broadly and generally, and therefore forgive me).
You brought a collection of facts but did not explain how this answers my question. And indeed it does not answer it.
The rabbis you mentioned also do not insist on preserving immodest customs or watching television. They speak about halakhic customs. Do you think they insist on preserving whining and lack of intellectual ambition and the rest of the vegetables you listed?
Beyond that, if in your opinion the situation is not good, it is incumbent on you and others to act to change it, even if there are rabbis who think otherwise and act otherwise. Is there no mutual responsibility? Rebuke? Concern for the other? “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself”? [Beyond that, just an incidental note: part of the activity of those rabbis is the result of the discriminatory policy long practiced by Ashkenazim.]
And finally, two comments about the form of the discussion:
It is a bit hard for me to accept that after saying you have answers, you continue to sharpen my question to be sure, and then again say you will answer, all this in order to say that it is simply hard to change the situation because Sephardi rabbis oppose it. That could have been written in one line without all the preparations and preliminary declarations. Especially since this was missing from the original article (the main point was absent from the book: the unwillingness to change, influence, and care for Sephardim is because they and their rabbis keep themselves stuck in their problematic condition).
As for your comparisons to the religious-Zionists, they are inaccurate (there are Sephardi rabbis on staff) and also irrelevant to the discussion, although you very much enjoy returning to them again and again. Even if it were true, what would that prove? That the Sephardim are hopeless idiots? That even in the religious-Zionist public, where there is no activity perpetuating Sephardiness, it still does no good to advance them? (That would of course be self-defeating.) Or perhaps it is meant to prove that the religious-Zionists are wicked too and not only the haredim?
In short, it seems to me that we have completely exhausted the discussion.
Moshe, you could simply have copied my column again. Why bother writing the same things again in your own words?
To Rabbi Michael,
An underlying assumption in your responses, regarding the comparisons I enjoy returning to again and again together with my questions and riddles, is that I am trying by means of those questions and riddles to prove from them the claims in my article or in my debate with you. I have already clarified more than once that absolutely not. I ask because I am seeking an answer to those questions, which people generally avoid asking, and the more I engage with the topic, the more these questions loom before me.
To Ron!
The point of view of all my claims is not sociological-research but human-normative, and therefore I do not distinguish between identity/mentality, etc., but make do with the image of the Sephardi as he appears in Ashkenazi eyes.
Let me clarify my intention regarding matches in the religious-Zionist public. The overwhelming majority of matches in the religious-Zionist public thirty, forty, and fifty years ago were not made through the matchmaking institution. The boys and girls knew one another through direct contact, in youth movements that were usually mixed, or through some other form of direct relationship. Clearly, if an Ashkenazi young man met a Sephardi young woman, or vice versa, and they found favor in one another’s eyes, they would marry regardless of stereotypes between the ethnic groups—just as among us there are good friends and study partners among Ashkenazim and Sephardim, and there is no discrimination in that. There is nothing like direct contact for breaking down barriers. Therefore, as long as in the religious-Zionist public, and to a large extent even today, matches are made through direct encounter, such ties continue to form. I also wrote that even if in some parts of the religious-Zionist public, like the hardalim, matches are made more or less in a planned way and less through random encounter, the taboo on interethnic marriage had already been broken in previous generations.
I will note that what you wrote about the Ashkenazi public (Lithuanian haredi) spreading baseless hatred is a cheap slander and not a generalization. We do not have secret protocols for spreading hatred against Sephardim, nor is there normative discourse about it. At most, institution administrators coordinate among themselves not to accept more Sephardim than the quota. Regardless of the discussion whether that is right or not, and even if we do not take patronage over the lost (as you put it), there is no one who is busy spreading hatred.
Whoever constantly accuses the Ashkenazim of racism is the one who is engaged in spreading hatred. In my article, instead of either denying the racism on the one hand or shouting “the Ashkenazim are racist” on the other, I tried to put it on the table and discuss it—its characteristics, its causes, and its prevention—without fear. Unfortunately, instead of a substantive discussion (apart from Rabbi Michael Abraham), the main reaction toward me was that I am a racist.
With hope for understanding.
It seems to me he is saying that at least since the Shas revolution, haredi Sephardim want to have their cake and eat it too. That is, they want to preserve their culture (which in Ashkenazi eyes is primitive—not halakhic customs on the one hand, and not whining on the other) with the characteristic haredi piety (while haredism itself is an Ashkenazi invention), meaning they do not want to “become Ashkenazi.” And on the other hand they want the Ashkenazim to accept them as they are. Do not forget that they do accept 30% into the institutions. One may estimate that these are all those willing to “become Ashkenazi.”
For my part, I estimate that this racism is built into haredi society, and it is impossible for it to disappear from them without their haredism being taken from them. Haredi society is primitive because it adopts, יחד with the Torah, the ancient way of life (the biblical period, Hazal) in which the Torah was written. (If it were still possible to ride donkeys, they would do so.) It is a class society, and in principle people of different classes within it will not aspire to equality. A significant part of the motivation for maintaining the haredi lifestyle is a feeling of elite pride vis-à-vis the rest of the wicked Jews or the non-serious ones (the lax religious-Zionists). Even those from the very lowest class there, who absorb the most humiliations, are willing to continue remaining haredi just for that feeling. If you take the classes away from them, you take away a significant part of the taste of life. Consequently, even within the haredi public, where social class is part of the lifestyle (in matchmaking, not people but families are matched up) like the castes in India, people of the higher class will not want to relinquish the sense of superiority. I do not see how the rabbi can come with complaints against individuals in this society that this is bad in their eyes, except by telling them to leave it.
And if we are already dealing with sociology and not justice, I will add that haredism itself really does not suit the character of the Sephardi public. Nor does secularism (there is such a claim, that the irreligion among Sephardim led them to crime at higher rates than among Ashkenazim), nor religious Zionism suit them. This is the reason why there are no Sephardi rabbis on staff who deal with Rabbi Kook or Rabbi Soloveitchik, and therefore why they do not reach senior levels in the leadership of the religious-Zionist public. What all three of these publics have in common is ideology (which Sephardim would call extreme). Historically, compared to the Europeans among whom the Ashkenazim grew up and with whom they went through the ideological revolutions of the last five hundred years, the Arabs had no ideology at all. They lived simple lives. Consequently, the Jews among them resembled them in character. Many of the Sephardim’s claims of racism toward religious Zionism are that they love Sephardim but not Sephardiness. Here I truly have no idea what the rabbi thinks should be done. Does the rabbi think that someone who loves classical music, and therefore, because of the development of his musical taste, necessarily detests Mizrahi music, must forcibly love Mizrahi music because otherwise it is not nice?
Ailon! In general, at the beginning of your words you reflected my words correctly. Regarding your description of haredi society as primitive, along with the rest of the unflattering labels, I will not argue with you. I will only ask you, and all who think like you, the same question Rabbi Michael asked me. And this is his wording:
Beyond that, if in your opinion the situation is not good, it is incumbent on you and others to act to change it, even if there are rabbis who think otherwise and act otherwise. Is there no mutual responsibility? Rebuke? Concern for the other? “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself”? End quote.
Ailon! Could one see in your response anything at all of those fine values?
I do not think I said what you said. I argue that racism (the negative kind, that attitude based on fantasies, which in my opinion should not be called racism) is found only in one claim. The claim that examines reality is the only one that should lead to moral criticism of a certain person who behaves in a certain way toward an ethnic group/race. Your choice to behave in a certain way as a result of that difference should not determine whether it is racism (every person chooses his scale of preferences, and even if in your opinion this is an exaggerated consequence drawn from some difference, it is still a legitimate choice). In addition, I object to using the concept of racism as a concept that is inherently negative. What does the rabbi call a person who filters his choice of beloved one by ethnic group because of genetic diseases common in that group?
If so, then it is better not to mix them into another discussion. One thing at a time.
To Moshe Farkash
I cannot say about myself that I love Israel (would that I did—but in this matter my heart is in the hand of the Holy One, blessed be He), but in this case, despite my personal sense of rejection, I truly do not come with complaints against the haredim (nor against the Sephardim). Both Ashkenazi haredim and Sephardim as a whole are indeed brothers of the educated Ashkenazi public (the non-hardal religious-Zionist and the secular), but they are like younger brothers, children, whereas the educated Ashkenazim are like brothers in adolescence. Not mature either, but no longer children. And in a situation where there are no mature brothers and no father (the Holy One, blessed be He—who indeed exists, but does not intervene in relations between the children), you know how it is between siblings when one is a child and the other is a teenager. The latter does not want to be in the company of the former—he already sees himself as grown up. But in our case there is no choice, because it is as though the father has died and the second must take responsibility for the first. When I say primitivity, I mean childishness, naivete. There is no point in coming with complaints against a child for being a child. He needs to grow up, but one cannot force that maturity by force, because it is a stage of life necessary for human development, which a person must pass through as quickly and as well as possible. You asked what should be done, so I will tell you: either a brother will arise from among the adolescents and become an adult (Messiah), or somehow the educated Ashkenazi public will learn to respect what its younger brothers do have and to love them and know how to lead them according to their spirit despite their difference from it. (By hint I will add that this wisdom is apparently the wisdom of Kabbalah.)
Still, I do not think that the haredim (as long as they do not see themselves as part of the state but as a Jewish minority living within a gentile state—another essential characteristic of haredism: one cannot do without exile and a nobleman) can be part of the government in Israel. (One should allow them autonomous existence without interference—no core curriculum and no conscription into the IDF, but also no budgets for yeshivot, etc., and perhaps no child allowances either.) A teenager has to be very, very wise in order to lead a child, because this is supposed to be the work of an adult who understands the spirit of a child; but it is impossible in any way for a child to be able to lead and manage a teenager. This is also why the great leaders of the haredi public cannot lead the rest of the Ashkenazi public. Their rulings on matters of modern life (culture, education, technology, government, relations between the sexes) are simply not relevant to that public (not even mistaken), because they do not understand at all its way of life and aspirations. From their perspective they are “wicked heretics, cursed [stress on the second syllable],” and that is all. And every rabbi who did grow up in that public and rules halakhah according to his understanding of Torah and the reality of life of the modern public is “a reformist heretic, enemy of Judaism.” And I understand them (I understand their point of view) and am not angry. But clearly they are not fit to lead the non-haredi public.
I would be glad if you would explain to Rabbi Abraham that your explanation of why you do not act to bring the haredim out of their primitiveness is also valid for why Ashkenazi haredim do not act regarding Sephardim. How did you write? One cannot force it.
And also your interesting excuse that your heart is in the hand of the Holy One, blessed be He—the hearts of the haredim are also in the hand of the Holy One, so what do you want from them?
It is hard to understand what the second part of your remarks about the haredim has to do with anything here.
To Moshe Farkash
My first response was indeed directed to the rabbi. I said I have no complaints against the haredim. My second section was a response to what you wrote about what we nevertheless can and should do in this reality until the maturation of both sides is completed. I believe that one has to allow the haredim to choose whether they are part of the people dwelling in Zion or not. Any choice they make should be respected: if they choose separation, then it should be implemented as much as possible within the framework of justice (that is, they will not pay military taxes or National Insurance—abolish compulsory conscription for haredim entirely and not only for yeshiva students—but they also will not receive yeshiva budgets, child allowances, etc.); and if they choose unity, then create military units on a wholly haredi basis (leave 20% outstanding and diligent yeshiva students unconscripted, like artists and athletes, etc.) adapted to their way of life. It seems to me that the whole story of not conscripting yeshiva students has nothing to do with Torah, but simply because the haredim do not perceive the State of Israel as their state, but like Tsarist Russia, and from their point of view to enlist here is like enlisting in the Russian army. The refusal of conscription is not connected to the claim that Torah protects, and not even to fear that the boys will become secular in the army. It is simply emotional detachment. (I believe arising from a childish worldview and not necessarily from malice.) They do not even say a prayer for the welfare of IDF soldiers (not even in a wording they themselves would compose, and certainly not for the welfare of the State of Israel).
You spoke about “love your neighbor as yourself,” but there is no love without respect, and my second section suggested how that mutual respect might be achieved.
I too would be happy if Ailon would explain this oxymoron to me. When Sephardim come and want you to save them (that you accept them to institutions or as a match), you answer them that they themselves do not want to emerge from their messed-up mentality, and therefore you cannot help them. Especially if you can explain to me the fact that you do this on the basis of a generalization without an individual examination. I would really be happy if someone managed to explain that to me.
The rabbi could have addressed me directly (“will explain” rather than “please explain”).
This is my general assessment of reality. But I am not especially attached to it. (My sources are my familiarity with the general haredi world and the Sephardi haredi world, and with haredi news websites online.) The discussion is general—about the phenomenon of non-acceptance to institutions. It itself is based on the assessment that, in general, Sephardim want to come to the institutions but not accept the character of the institutions. If there is someone willing to become fully Ashkenazi (to move over to European culture) wholeheartedly and willingly, and he meets the educational demands of the institution, then of course it is not just not to accept him only because of his origin. As for matchmaking, it is much harder, because that is already a matter of upbringing from the home and will cause quarrels, etc., and one pair of tongs is made by another. If there is a girl (or a man) who is Sephardi but with a European mentality in practice, she will have no problem finding a groom. She will not care at all if someone disqualifies her, because she has enough self-confidence to know what she is worth, and if she does not find a haredi she will leave this public and that is it, without hard feelings. The whole institution of matchmaking and institutions (it is too short here to explain why) is primitive. It is as though the rabbi says: regarding a primitive matter (matchmaking and status), I want them not to be primitive (but substantive and particular). In any case, I wrote at such length (and beautifully, and wisely—really, is this all the rabbi understood from everything I wrote? What a waste of time) why it is not possible in haredi society to have an individual discussion about each person, but rather precisely generalization. The rabbi should take it from there. The rabbi has to decide whether we are dealing with sociology or justice, because the two do not go together. That is, sociology deals with understanding (and I very much love understanding), and in every understanding there is a kind of justification. Justice, by contrast, goes with free choice. In general, society and truth are not something that goes together. Truth goes with individuality. The whole notion of building a just society is false. Every society, no matter how you transform it from one form to another, will be false. The rabbi can come with a complaint against a particular individual at a particular time for a particular act, but not against any society as such with respect to its behavior within itself. (You can do so with respect to its relation to other societies, but then it is like with individuals.) Only the Holy One, blessed be He, can do that (Sodom, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah).
I do not know how I did not think of this earlier, but it seems to me that the rabbi’s demand of the haredim not to be racist is like the left-wing attempt to educate the haredim regarding the exclusion of women. Among the haredim there is no exclusion of women, because this is the way of life they (and their women) chose of their own free will. The status hierarchies among the haredim too are by their free will, and they want (it seems to me) to preserve those statuses. (Everyone there sees himself as belonging to the higher class.) The (haredi) Sephardim are not interested in being in the status that is considered low among the haredim, so let them be honored and either not be haredi, or live among themselves. The institutions are part of these status arrangements (it seems to me, like every public organization among them).
The state, of course, does not have to fund them, but it still seems that coming to them with moral complaints does not apply. If someone does not want your company, then as long as he is not exploiting or cheating you, it does not apply for someone to force your company on him (or even come with complaints). What about “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself”? It seems ridiculous to me to come with such a complaint to the haredim when we ourselves do not observe it (at least I do not, but it seems to me I am not alone in this story).
To Rabbi Michael,
I am turning to you here unrelated to the article about racism against Sephardim, and the following words contain no justification for any sort of racism.
But since I observe terrible hatred among parts of the religious-Zionist public toward the haredim—for example, one of the female commenters here, who reacts with disgust against racism, writes about the haredim “bleary-eyed dwarfs”; Ailon, for example, vents his hatred of haredim through this article, with ideas amounting to terrible abuse of hundreds of thousands of people (cutting child allowances, etc.); and we still remember the “brothers’ alliance” of Bennett and Lapid, who cruelly abused hundreds of thousands of people—it seems to me that expressions of hatred heard toward haredim in many parts of the religious-Zionist society are met with excessive understanding and do not encounter a reaction similar to what someone meets if he dares express himself against Sephardim. Let us not forget that Ashkenazi Lithuanians, with all their condescension toward Sephardim, did for them over the years things of real self-sacrifice (activists, Lev L’Achim, Chinuch Atzmai, mesivtot), and it never occurred to them to destroy the Sephardim’s livelihood as the brothers Bennett (along with all of the Jewish Home party) and Lapid did. Clearly there are excellent reasons to hate the haredim, but what about “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself”? Mutual responsibility? Helping a primitive society?
Therefore I ask you, if possible, to write a separate column on this subject and make your opinion heard.
And I will already say in advance: if in your opinion this is indeed how one should behave toward the haredim, then fine. But if not, how do you, as an individual and as part
of a society with this face, think one should deal with this phenomenon?
This appeal is not connected to this article; I just found this way to address you.
To Moshe
I do not hate the haredim. I proposed something that seems just to me. Since, in my humble opinion, the haredim do not see themselves as part of the state (and for some reason here there is no “mutual responsibility”), it seems just to me, among other things, that they should not pay National Insurance and should not receive allowances. If possible, their taxes should go to services for them. Simply separation as much as possible. I am not interested in the haredim not being part of the state, but they are the ones who want that. It seems deceitful to me that mutual responsibility works only for the benefit of the haredim and not vice versa. If the haredim are right, then the Holy One, blessed be He, will help them and no staff of bread will be broken. I have no interest in harming haredim, acting out of spite, or rejoicing at their fall. Only in making sure that the state (the other parts of society) is not deceived by a false presentation of mutual responsibility.
I am not interested in discussing the haredi issue with you here, since that is not the subject under discussion here. God willing, in column 207 Rabbi Michael will write about this subject, and there we can discuss it in light of his enlightening remarks.
To Moshe
Continued: Does it seem just to you that the state should support the birthrate of a public that educates its children to see the state as a “nobleman” and to despise it? (What I am saying applies all the more so, and with even greater force, to the Arabs of course, though clearly haredim cannot be compared to Arabs.) You speak about hatred (you mean revulsion; hatred is something else) in the religious-Zionist public. Do you not know the society in which you live? The attitude of the religious-Zionists is much better than the attitude of the haredim toward the religious-Zionists. From their perspective (not consciously, and therefore I am neither angry nor hateful), they are gentiles—that is, they do not exist. I am not angry about this because it stems from a childish mentality and I understand why it is so, but in practice it does not make sense for the public to ignore it as though nothing happened. I offer this suggestion in a good spirit, from a feeling that you can see the justice of what I am saying. Again, if the haredim believe in separation, it ought to be separation all the way, as much as possible.
R. Moshe Yitzhak, a few points in response to your comment.
– At the opening of your reply you said that your point of view is not “social-scientific but human-normative” (it was not clear what you meant, but hoping I understood your intention, I will say): that is exactly the problem. I tried to explain why these mental gaps exist in order to say that they are not essentialist (contrary to you). And again I will try to explain it a bit differently: exile caused, through the dispersion of the Jewish communities in Christian lands or in Islamic lands, the emergence of Ashkenazim and Sephardim. There is no value in preserving this culture. And the sages already said, “You shall not cut yourselves into factions”—do not make separate groups (Yevamot 13b), and see the Rishonim there. And “the elder of Minsk” wrote: “Expound, speak, rule, teach, that such-and-such is proper to do in this or that detail, but do not combine all these details into general rules, to establish names, create systems, and make sects” (The Elder of Minsk, p. 180). And there are enough sources on the matter.
– A cheap slander? Is that not the truth? When one does not relate to a person according to who he is, but according to his ethnic origin, that is precisely baseless hatred! And it is forbidden to whitewash it!
– “Among us”? How do you know I am not Lithuanian? I will say briefly that I know and live the Lithuanian public very closely.
– Of course there is no such discourse! That is exactly the problem—the silence! And I will elaborate on this later in my comment. By the way, I am not the one who accused you of racism without explanations. More than that, I wrote a response to your article in which you raised the issue.
– Excellent that you put it on the table and discussed this problem. So did I in my comments; I explained to you its characteristics and its causes. (Even though it does not seem that you really tried to solve the problem in your article, as Rabbi Michael wrote to you: “Here you write that the raising was for the sake of discussion. That really did not convince me. It is evident from your words that you raised this as a justification, and that you yourself agree with the claims, and not in order to discuss them. On the contrary, you explained why it makes sense to discriminate on the basis of those characteristics. Moreover, if it was for the sake of discussion, where did you discuss them? Not in this article. Here you presented them and assumed they were true, and you did not discuss them. By the way, you also did not deal with ways to get rid of those feelings. On the contrary, you used them to justify the existing situation by claiming that it is not racism. I saw here no treatment of the emotion, sophisticated or otherwise. There is no hint of any of this in your article (on the contrary, from it it is clear that this was not your goal at all).”) I do not understand why you think I am not answering you substantively. To point to racism (and, by the way, Rabbi Michael also claims there is racism) and accompany the claim with explanations and reasons—is that not a substantive discussion? As Rabbi Michael said to you: “…just because one speaks about racism does not mean one suffers from political correctness. Sometimes it really is racism.” Forgive me, but it seems that here you are the one suffering from political correctness.
– I will say parenthetically regarding the solution you seek and have such difficulty finding. It is actually very simple. As a first stage, the leading rabbis of the generation need to come out sharply against this thing, and against the institution administrators and the “tops” of haredi society. The first stage is first of all to acknowledge the ethnic discrimination that exists (as is known, the first step of repentance is to confess the sin). Many in the public try to whitewash this. Once this enters the discourse of the leading rabbis of the generation, only then will people begin trying to find realistic solutions, and no one will evade the discussion. As long as the leading rabbis ignore it, so does the public, and more than that—it also finds all kinds of rational explanations for it (I have even heard “hashkafic” explanations for this reason); unfortunately that is how the haredi public works. I will cautiously note one fact (which is already an educational consideration): in the Lithuanian public, the idea of Messiah and bringing redemption (Heaven forfend) is almost absent from the discourse (perhaps except for Zilberman; Rabbi Moshe Shapira zt”l a bit too) (and there are many advantages to that as well, and enough said). In my humble opinion, this is a serious deficiency—that the desire for redemption (to do as much good as possible now, to advance the world morally as well) is not set before their eyes. See, for example, the religious-Zionist and Hasidic publics. (The latter tries to be one that brings everyone together, though not with great success. Perhaps Chabad really succeeds in this.)
I will conclude by saying that I, a very small person, think we need to lift our gaze a bit (not too much) beyond what is happening in our private courtyard with our own camp, and think in a “Klal Yisrael” way. In the end we are one people.
Ron,
First of all, sorry—your response too is entirely substantive.
I absolutely deny that I claimed the differences are essentialist. I argue that the Ashkenazi public senses mental differences today very strongly and behaves like a normative person who feels aversion to characteristics foreign to him. The Ashkenazi public does not relate to the Sephardi public this way because of events of the past; it relates to them this way because of the here and now, and I have already written about this several times. Read also my comments on Tzarich Iyun.
Dealing with an emotion in a sophisticated way first of all means putting it on the table, and only after several sessions with the psychologist and a feeling that someone understands the emotion and contains it can one treat it. I did not come to treat the emotion of the Sephardim but that of the Ashkenazim. It would not hurt the Sephardim to take a look at the treatment and understand what bothers the Ashkenazim. Besides, I already explained the sophistication, and I got attacked for it everywhere.
The cruel term in which we all refer to Ashkenazi discrimination as racism delegitimizes Lithuanian Ashkenazi society. We live together with Sephardim, pray together, help one another, and maintain fairly nice relations of neighborliness and friendship. Everything except in one area, namely discrimination in admission to institutions. Even if this is not okay, and even if people deny it, to say that we are engaged in spreading baseless hatred is very far from the truth. (There are thousands of Lithuanian kollel men who go out every week to the peripheral towns to spread Torah through Lev L’Achim and more.)
In short, not every problem turns us into people engaged in baseless hatred. It seems to me that you should beat your breast over having slandered hundreds of thousands of Jews who have never harmed the tip of a Sephardi’s fingernail. No one relates to a Sephardi by his ethnic origin, and to say so is a cheap slander. Except in admission to institutions—that is our subject here.
In general, you are repeating Rabbi Michael’s claims, and he has already issued his verdict that the discussion is exhausted.
There is childishness and naivete in your solution of calling on the leading rabbis of the generation……..
After all, in my view there are also substantive considerations, so the leading rabbis will say that only substantive considerations should be taken into account—and that is exactly what I argued. Then the world will rage over the racism of the leading rabbis… come on…
This issue should not be burdened with all the criticism you have of Lithuanian society. (If you think the Hasidic public is trying to unite everyone, then you live on a different planet from mine.) If in your opinion haredi racism stems from haredism itself, then one has to treat haredism itself and change it, and that has nothing to do with my article, which analyzes the situation from a haredi point of view and not מתוך a desire to change it. One deals with emotion in a sophisticated way, does one not?!
A few comments on everything said thus far:
1. I very much loved the wonderful and instructive description by Rabbi Michael Abraham, may he live long, amen, of the condition of Sephardim in Israel. And here are the words of Prof. Shlomo Deshen, may he live long, in his article “The Religiosity of Immigrants from the Eastern Communities in the Crisis of Immigration”:
“For immigrants from the Eastern lands, immigration involved a sudden transition from traditional life to modern life in the new country. The immigrants had no ready-made answers to the problems involved in this situation, and unfortunately they were not given time to develop solutions to these problems. In practice, a series of solutions was imposed on them that immigrants from Europe had cultivated long beforehand, which were foreign to Eastern Jews and did not fit their special needs. The very existence of these solutions undermined the creative capacity of the immigrants from the East, who, had they been given time, might have formulated responses of their own to the new situation.”
2. I understand why Lithuanian haredim do not want to accept Sephardim totally into their institutions because of preserving their distinctive culture (perhaps they have something to fear). But precisely with Lithuanian haredim there is a grave moral question: the Lithuanians themselves—as I understand it, after the Holocaust—were the very ones who took a large part of the Sephardi children from Sephardi parents in order to educate them in their institutions (and these are the major part of the haredi Sephardim today), and in doing so cut them off from their Sephardi tradition (Aryeh Deri was one of them). And after succeeding in educating them in the tradition of Lithuanian yeshivot, they threw them out and tell them, “You do not belong here.” But they can no longer return to the original Sephardiness of their parents, because they are no longer there; their heart is with the Gaon of Vilna, Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, and Rabbi Shach, and not with Rabbi Yosef Messas or the sage Mordechai Abbadi and Rabbi Abdallah Somekh.
Secular Zionism too took the Sephardi children and cut them off from their tradition (and that too involves a moral transgression), except that at least they did not throw them out and, as I understand it, they accepted them into their society. Not so in the Lithuanian haredi world, which caused these new Sephardi-Lithuanians to come away shorn on both sides, and now they are in great social and educational pain and crisis.
So if Lithuanian haredim “saved” the Sephardim, then whoever starts something must finish it, and one cannot throw them away like that. In a certain sense they are responsible for their condition. They caused those Sephardim to feel they are second-class within the society into which they were inserted, and from which now, educationally and emotionally, they cannot leave. But the original Sephardim do not feel this, because they have no connection at all with the Lithuanian world; they are happy and proud with their own sages and heritage.
3. In light of all the above (1,2), the differences between Sephardiness abroad and Israeli haredi Sephardiness become understandable. We Sephardim abroad developed out of ourselves, and thank God we are (for the most part) happy and not looking elsewhere. On the contrary, many Ashkenazim come to study in our institutions and also marry us (even among the haredim). But haredi Sephardim do not have the possibility of living their Sephardiness fully and proudly, because the Lithuanians cut them off from their tradition and then threw them out, so they can only feel that they are second-class.
4. I also very much liked what the commenter Ron wrote, that sometimes it sounds a bit as though Lithuanian haredim feel themselves to be the owners of “Western culture” in relation to Sephardim, as though if you eat with cutlery then you have become Ashkenazi. Truly very funny. Please, all you Lithuanian haredim in Israel, come abroad and see who is more “Western”—the Israeli Lithuanian haredim or the Sephardim abroad.
When I studied in a prestigious Lithuanian yeshiva in Israel, I saw that in addition to intellectual ignorance regarding general culture and closed-mindedness, I was surprised to see there basic things of lack of common decency among many of the students (and also the rabbis), such as bad body odor and bad breath, clothes that were not clean and orderly, etc. One of the students (the Israeli Ashkenazim) told me, as a simple matter, that he showers only on Friday in honor of Shabbat, and the mashgiach once said that in winter there is no need to shower every day. Things like these were terrible surprises for me, a Sephardi from abroad.
5. I do not know the religious-Zionist world, but from a distance here in Argentina, via the internet, I became acquainted with two senior rabbis of the religious-Zionist world who are truly identified with their Sephardiness and teach their Sephardiness to the broader public. I mean Rabbi Uri Sherki, may he live long, amen (North African Sephardiness), and Rabbi Chaim Sabato, head of Yeshivat Maale Adumim (Syrian Sephardiness). They are first-rank rabbis in the religious-Zionist world, roshei yeshivah, and yet purely Sephardi and well versed in the Torah of the Sephardi sages and teaching it. Being a Sephardi sage does not mean that you cannot love or admire Ashkenazi rabbinic figures; such a thing would be madness. Rather, being a Sephardi sage means that you identify with your Sephardi culture and also study and know the Sephardi sages. (And therefore Rabbi Sherki is purely Sephardi even if he is a student of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook.)
6. There is a Sephardi school of thought of recent generations that is not so well known: the educated Sephardi sages (Rabbi Sherki is one of them). I am not speaking of the Sephardim in Western Europe known as intellectuals (the Sephardi communities of England, Greece, Holland, and Italy), but of Sephardim from Islamic lands. For example, Rabbi Solomon David Sassoon from the Babylonian community in England (who wrote many books of research and philosophy), the sage Yosef Faur, may he live long, from the Damascene community in Argentina (who wrote many wonderful books), Rabbi Moshe Shamah, may he live long, from the Aleppan community in America, Rabbi Yosef Bitton, may he live long, from the Moroccan community in Argentina (now living in America; he also wrote several books), Rabbi Yitzhak Antarbi Sacca, may he live long, from the Syrian community in Argentina (a great leader and activist), and others. They are a natural part of Sephardi Jewry and are Sephardi with all their heart. (And because of Lithuanian yeshiva heads in Israel, Rabbi Faur, may he live long, does not serve in the Aleppan communities in America.) They are educated and great sages who are deeply engaged with the Western world while retaining their Sephardiness.
Here are a few links about the above rabbis in order:
Rabbi Solomon Sassoon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_David_Sassoon
His books:
https://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n87-893057/
Rabbi Yosef Faur, may he live long:
https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%99%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%A3_%D7%A4%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A8
His book Studies in the Mishneh Torah of the Rambam is wonderful, both from the standpoint of yeshiva-style learning, from the scholarly standpoint, and from the standpoint of mastery of the literature of Sephardi halakhic decisors. It is worth studying. Here it is:
https://tablet.otzar.org/he/book/book.php?book=103629&width=0&scroll=0&udid=0
Rabbi Moshe Shamah, may he live long:
Rabbi Yosef Bitton, may he live long:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosef_Bitt%C3%B3n#cite_note-11
http://halakhaoftheday.org/rabbi-bitton/
He wrote a powerful book on the interpretation of the first three verses of the Torah, here:
https://www.amazon.in/Awesome-Creation-Yosef-Bitton-ebook/dp/B00BQJAEHI
Rabbi Yitzhak Antarbi Sacca, may he live long:
https://www.isaacsacca.com/en/
All the above are educated rabbis, but of course there are also many educated people who are not rabbis, each in his own field.
7. As for Rabbi Moshe Farkash’s claim that in Sephardi culture there are no sharp boundaries, which Lithuanian haredism does not like—I agree.
In our communities, in the same synagogue and the same beit midrash, there are sages with intellectual tendencies like the sages mentioned above, and sages with kabbalistic and more traditional tendencies, and no separate movements developed; rather, they live in peace from the standpoint of Jewish identity. (There is no haredism or religious Zionism, but everyone together—except for those who became Ashkenazi, who broke away from the official Sephardi communities and went in the Ashkenazi way, opening truly haredi communities. Still, in the Sephardi communities abroad there are within them haredim with hats and jackets, and also supporters of the State of Israel who celebrate Independence Day, etc., and they are in the same synagogue and even the same family.)
Also in our Sephardi communities there are no boundaries between those who keep the commandments and those who do not; each at his own level, and all are in the same community and even the same family.
As I understand it, such things are not accepted in Lithuanian haredism.
With love and great esteem, all blessings!
Yehudi Halabi
Ailon, you did not understand the sarcasm. I was referring to Rabbi Farkash’s words asking you for an explanation. I added and asked that he “explain” (= meaning that he should explain) his own remarks to me.
Rabbi Farkash, it has been a long time since I read such a detached text (and it also does not belong here).
“Bleary-eyed dwarfs” is an expression of Rabbi Kook, and there is no special disparagement in it. The contempt, disdain, and dismissal that haredim direct at the religious-Zionists (without any justification) throws into deep shade every expression of hatred toward them (which does have justification, since they use the state and the other publics to support them and are not willing to cooperate or show gratitude, but only to whine that they are being discriminated against—apropos Sephardi whining. By the way, you yourself do this here with regard to Bennett and Lapid without a shred of justification).
And yet, no one calls for boycotting haredim or for not accepting them into institutions. On the contrary, people are trying to open academies for them and some ridiculous kind of military service just to help them extricate themselves from the pit into which they got themselves. And certainly no one judges a person only by his affiliation, but at most people relate to the sector as a whole. (And, as said, there is nothing wrong with generalizations as such. We already agreed on that.) And after all that, you still lament and complain. Truly unbelievable. I am beginning to suspect that perhaps you have Sephardi genes… 🙂
Rabbi Michael!
Thank you for expressing your opinion on the matter.
And as I wrote, if in your opinion this is indeed how one should behave toward the haredim, then fine. (You surely forgot an article I once sent you called “The Furniture Factory,” which describes the haredi attitude toward the state.)
Let us return to our subject.
In connection with your claim against me regarding the justification of a generalizing attitude toward Sephardim,
I looked a bit through your interesting columns and found there the following passage:
If sentimentality was indeed the reason to disqualify a woman from testimony, the obvious solution would be to examine in each woman how to question her, and how necessary her testimony is, and to make decisions in each case on its own merits. By the way, there are areas in halakhah where the requirement of examination and interrogation was abolished (such as monetary law; see Sanhedrin 3a and elsewhere). Moreover, all this is true also with respect to a man. If there is a sensitive man, he too should be questioned with caution and gentleness accordingly.
In general I would say that to establish a general policy regarding an entire sector because of a generalization is a very problematic approach. Thus, in my opinion it is not right to determine that women are exempt from Torah study because “their mind is light,” or because they have such-and-such a character. Every woman, just like every man, deserves treatment appropriate to her, not by way of generalizations. The same applies regarding fitness for testimony.
I see a connecting line between your positions here and your positions there, as you are using almost the same argument against generalization.
It seems to me that you would surely agree with me that a classic haredi would not agree with your positions regarding women’s testimony (perhaps in practice he would find some redeeming excuse, but not in principle), and in general with the basic assumptions that look at halakhah this way.
Of course, there is no halakhah commanding one to be racist, so there is no halakhic obstacle to your demand not to make generalizations regarding racism. But I wonder aloud whether there is here a habituation to certain patterns of thought. That is, the haredi is more accustomed to accepting generalizing patterns of thought, and therefore he behaves that way even when there is no halakhic necessity for it. By contrast, you—who also object to generalizing thought in halakhah—certainly object to such a thought pattern in a subject where there is no halakhic necessity for it.
I wrote these things only for the sake of understanding the sides, and not as a proof for or against any claim.
I completely agree that my remarks are said in accordance with my general position.
The fact that haredim are not used to thinking this way is no argument relevant to the matter. That is precisely what I am talking about. By the same logic, you could write against any criticism of racism that racists are used to thinking this way, and therefore they are not racist.
Note, however, that the world has nevertheless changed, and people are more aware of differences between people and between periods, and therefore one who continues today to hold such generalizing views and approaches is more blameworthy than one who held them in the past.
This reminds me of what I only now saw in Tosafot, s.v. “hava sayyem,” Bava Kamma 59b, where they asked:
“Hava sayyem masanei ukhmei” — this implies that they were not accustomed to black shoes. And so too it implies in that סדר תעניות אלו (Ta’anit 22a and there), where it says: “meanwhile a certain man came who was wearing black shoes and was not placing ritual fringes,” so that they would not recognize that he was a Jew. This is astonishing, for in the first chapter of Beitzah (15a) we learned: “One may not send a white shoe on Yom Tov, because it needs chalk of lime to blacken it,” implying that they wore only black shoes.
Unbelievable.
To my shame, I do not remember the article you mentioned, though the title sounds familiar. But the haredi attitude toward the state is known to me firsthand, so I do not feel any need for further information in order to make my claims.
I am copying here what I wanted to post on the Tzarich Iyun site in response to Rabbi Farkash, may he live long, but for some reason they are not posting my comment there:
To the honorable Rabbi Moshe Farkash, may he live long
Many thanks for your reply, which gladdens the heart!
I truly loved very much the fact that you opened an open and honest discussion on these matters, and that is a very positive and necessary thing, as you wrote. As for your essential goal in this matter, I am with you and admire you for entering such a heavy and complicated issue. Be strong and courageous; do not be afraid or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go!
I also liked what you wrote about what Ashkenazim generally think about Sephardim. And even if we say those things are mistaken, it is still important to present them, because that way of thinking is a reality in their heads, even though it is not necessarily a reality in empirical reality itself.
However, I entered into the side issue you wrote about, namely the supposed intellectual gap between Sephardim and Ashkenazim that you personally hold. Truly, this is a side issue, but it hurt me to hear it (because I am Sephardi…). Perhaps here, both for utilitarian reasons and for moral reasons, it was not worthwhile to write what you personally think about Sephardim; it would have been enough to write what a large part of the Ashkenazim think about Sephardim. Because in what you wrote about your own personal opinion, you hurt thousands of Sephardim (myself included), and in this way reduced the objective discussion.
Your words imply that your personal feeling is that the most successful and talented Sephardim in the Israeli haredi world are significantly inferior intellectually to their Ashkenazi counterparts. In my opinion this is a great wonder. From what I know of both Sephardim and Ashkenazim from all over the world, I do not see a gap in intelligence as such, but only cultural differences. It seems that one can explain your view in several different ways (all the following reasons may coexist in different proportions):
A. Since you are accustomed to the style of Lithuanian intelligence, you usually see the Sephardim who enter into discourse with you as less intelligent. This may be because those Sephardim in Israel entered this particular discourse only a few generations ago. It is like a huge Lithuanian talmudic scholar arriving at the gates of the university’s Talmud department, where the academics would see him as less intelligent—but that stems from the fact that the Lithuanian scholar is not in the same discourse as they are (and in their opinion he too is fundamentally mistaken). This also touches the outlook on life, society, family, etc.—each with his own assumptions, his own modes of perception, his own values. Usually fine differences in these matters cause each side not to fully understand the other, and sometimes to think the other lacks understanding. So in my humble opinion everything depends on different habits and modes of thought, except that naturally each person sees his own mode of thought as more correct and deeper.
B. It may also be connected to socio-intellectual development: for some reason, in the haredi society around you the Sephardim remained stuck in their place, unlike in other places where Sephardim succeeded and rose to the highest peaks of society (such as the three Nobel Prizes in France).
C. Perhaps you (like everyone) have prejudices about Sephardi society and therefore see them with a certain bias, just as—mutatis mutandis—educated antisemites (top-level intellectuals in the world) thought and think about us Jews through prejudices, and whenever they meet us they see those same deficiencies.
And by the way, from the standpoint of a Western outlook, I prefer Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s halakhic path to the Lithuanian mode of learning. In Rabbi Ovadia’s path there is a historical view of halakhah and its development; he presents all the positions stated by the Rishonim and Acharonim in an orderly and understandable way, presents the matters in their plain sense, and from the spectrum of methods and halakhic sides expressed throughout halakhic history, he clarifies a clear and decisive halakhah by means of clear halakhic tools (the Babylonian Talmud versus the Jerusalem Talmud, accepting Maran, custom, double doubt, etc.). This mode of learning seems more serious and closer to the world of Western academia than the Talmudic flashes of brilliance of the Lithuanian world, which are generally only a certain “move” and individual approach in the sugya and no more, without taking into account the process of halakhah’s development throughout the generations in different places. Still, Rabbi Ovadia’s way—which in my humble opinion is closer to academia—in the Lithuanian yeshiva world is seen as less intelligent because it lacks the flashes of brilliance of the Lithuanian world, which in many cases may have no serious basis in the primary halakhic sources.
With esteem and many thanks for all this discourse, thanks to you!
Yehudi Halabi from Argentina
Yehudi Halabi!
First of all, thank you very much for the encouragement.
Second, I would have been very happy had you posted the response on Tzarich Iyun so that there would be attention to the discourse I want to develop. If your response was sent properly and they just have not posted it yet, that is a matter of time; if you had a technical problem, I can post it under your name.
Third, you were not precise. I wrote only that statistically Ashkenazim are more talented and intellectual, not that the best among the Sephardim are below the Ashkenazim. It is very hard for me to answer these questions because I have already invested time in this matter far beyond what I should have, and I am willing to devote time only to creating beneficial discourse and not to purely intellectual debates, even though the issues you raised are very interesting and I really love discussing them. I would be very, very happy to meet you personally and talk. (Perhaps you are in Israel for Passover? And if not, then come.) It seems to me we could find common interest in many areas.
Fourth, of course a riddle, and I hope Rabbi Michael will scold me only gently for it. Personally it does not bother me in the least (and I think many Ashkenazim feel the same) if someone writes—however wise he may be—that Sephardim are more intelligent and wiser, etc. It may be so; why should that hurt me at all? After all, this is no measure of my own intelligence, which does not change whether that diagnosis is correct or not. (Personally I think that among our sages, those whose way of learning and reasoning we [I at any rate] are closest to are Ramban, Rashba, Ritva, and Ran—and I have much to say about Ashkenazi halakhah, Sephardi halakhah, and neutral halakhah, and the development of ethnicity-dependent halakhah. In the end I could not restrain myself.) So why did it hurt you and many of your brothers? Does this stem from my specific personality and yours, or is there something deeper here, more collective? Sorry for the question, but here again I return to my claim that one has to put things on the table.
To Rabbi Farkash, may he live long
Thank you very much for your reply!
I am in Argentina this year (5779); God willing, I intend to go to Israel next year, and I would be very glad to meet you.
I very much liked your question to me. Usually statements like “Sephardim are less intelligent” hurt me a great deal when they are said in important venues by important scholars, because I am deeply connected to my Sephardiness, to my community, and it is precious in my eyes. As someone who knows a little of its heritage and takes pride in its tradition, it is hard for me to hear such things said about us. It is simply so. If an important newspaper (Tzarich Iyun is important to me) were to say that the Jewish mind is inferior to that of general society, and you thought the claim false and had arguments against it, would you not want to answer that claim in the newspaper? Does it not hurt you that the world speaks that way about Jews? Or if they publicly say false things about someone’s father and everyone thinks it is true, would he not be hurt? Of course among us (Sephardim) there are also indifferent people who do not care what the world says—certainly there are—but I do care.
In addition to that, I am already burdened (from before your article in Tzarich Iyun) with great sorrow over present-day Sephardi Torah Judaism, which has almost forgotten where it came from and who its sages were, etc. (I mean the sages of the last 500 years.) In the yeshivot we study the sages of Lithuania, admire the sages of Lithuania, and have adopted the way of serving God of the sages of Lithuania. So now most Sephardi yeshiva boys know more about the sages of Lithuania than about their own original sages. Therefore if a sage like yourself comes and writes that Sephardim do not have the same aspiration for intellectuality as Ashkenazim, those boys will accept it, because they know nothing of intellectual aspiration from their own sages. And over that I am very distressed, because we did have sages, yes, we had a certain intellectual culture, and I had the merit to know it—but most Sephardi boys today do not know it. In practice, besides the error of this idea, it is a great educational and emotional danger, because an entire public then feels itself second-class. And with what feeling and confidence will a son of that group grow up? (I must admit that this affects the Torah public in Argentina, because our best boys go to study in the haredi yeshivot in Israel, as I did.) Therefore it is very important to know that we have a Torah tradition—not only customs and halakhot, but a culture of sages. One only needs to know it, study it, and apprentice oneself to its sages, who, thank God, still exist in the world.
What I love very much about Rabbi Ovadia is that he brought into halakhic discourse the forgotten Torah of the Eastern sages of the last 500 years. For example, there is no other famous decisor who discusses the words of the Aleppan sages Shlomo Laniado, Yitzhak Atiya, Avraham Antarbi, Mordechai Abbadi, Yosef Yedid HaLevi, and others of blessed memory. If he had not discussed their words with great respect, no one would know them or discuss their words. But this whole Torah still has to be transmitted to the educational institutions, to the yeshivot—not only the content of their books, but also their mode of learning and of life, as we in Argentina had the merit, for example, to learn from our teacher and rabbi, the great giant who established Torah anew, the sage Yitzhak Moshe Shhiv, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing.
I only want us to reach proud and joyful independent Torah culture, and no longer need the approval of our respected and beloved Lithuanian brothers (who in practice do not accept Sephardim in Israel totally).
So with all that baggage, I read your words.
So in essence I am seeking the very same thing that the Lithuanians who do not accept the Sephardim want.
With much love and esteem,
Avraham
Again, I admire how you entered into the thickness of this beam, and I am also sorry for all the inappropriate things that were said to you and that you suffered. I am with you. In my opinion, the remedy lies in becoming closely acquainted with the great world around us, in Israel and abroad, in books and writers. This, in my humble opinion, is the main thing we need to care about for both Ashkenazim and Sephardim: that people should learn and come to know more things, more Torah cultures, more sages, more batei midrash, more communities, and more and more—and especially their own culture (this especially for Sephardim). Then we will all learn from one another, respect one another (and ourselves) more, and be closer to the Creator of the world and to His creatures.
I did not answer the body of the question precisely. If there were really proof that Sephardim are less intelligent, I would have no problem with that. But if in my opinion it is false, then yes, I have a problem if the world thinks that way, because it changes the world’s attitude toward us erroneously, and likewise the attitude of our Sephardim toward their own Sephardiness, as above.
You wrote: “that is how the world thinks,” “the attitude of the world.”
Here are my questions:
Who is “the world”? Ashkenazim?
This answer explains why it bothers you, not why it insults you.
It is still hard to understand why it does not bother an Ashkenazi that the world relates to him mistakenly.
You wrote: “the Sephardim’s attitude toward Sephardiness.”
Here are my questions:
What is Sephardiness?
What will happen if a Sephardi admires his Sephardiness less?
Why is the Sephardi so connected to his identity as a Sephardi?
Why does the Ashkenazi not care about the attitude toward his Ashkenaziness?
Why does this sentence—“the attitude of our Ashkenazim toward their Ashkenaziness”—sound strange to me?
What is Ashkenaziness?
The world means both the Sephardi world and the Ashkenazi world, that is, every reader who is not knowledgeable in these matters and innocently accepts what is written about Sephardim.
So if so, it does not insult, but rather disturbs. We fight for the truth—the historical truth and the truth of present reality—especially when people say things about us that are incorrect or incomplete.
If an Ashkenazi is not bothered by hearing falsehoods about his society, then that is indifference, a lack of honor for his community, or on the contrary, a lack of importance attached to the critic and to those hearing the criticism. But it is hard for me to understand, for example, that it would not bother a haredi Ashkenazi if people spoke about Ashkenazi society as though they were all parasites who contribute nothing to the state and only take from it, and are defective and mindless, and they bring all kinds of “data” for this, and it is written by scholars in an important newspaper whose readers you respect.
By “Sephardiness” I meant the Sephardi tradition, the Sephardi sages, and the Sephardi community.
If a Sephardi esteems his Sephardiness less, and conversely admires Ashkenaziness more, then what is happening now in Israeli haredi Sephardi society happens: they want to enter among the Ashkenazim, but do not really fit there, and then begin to feel second-class, and that is not so healthy. It is healthier to feel that you belong to an honored tradition, to an important community, that you have a heritage, etc. (and in fact this is how we preserved our Jewish heritage in exile—we belong to an honored people). So in our present condition there is either a need to become Ashkenazi one hundred percent, which probably is not practically feasible at present, or a need to return to Sephardi identity and culture fully, to return to know it anew and to live by it. But that too does not look very practical. So perhaps what remains is to feel that in the country we are second-class… This situation is not healthy for us, nor, Heaven forfend, for our children. (Unless we all start mixing together, like the religious-Zionists, and then there will no longer be differences of tribes, etc.)
What the Ashkenazim do not have is these identity problems, because they live their identity and culture fully and naturally. They are not forced into the dilemma between Lithuanian identity and Sephardi identity, as haredi Sephardim do indeed live in a certain tension. (Haredi Sephardim talk more about the Hazon Ish than about their own sages, but no Ashkenazi tells stories every day about Rabbi Avraham Palagi.) The Sephardim are in an identity dilemma, a cultural dilemma, in tension. Sephardiness among the haredim is in a state of immaturity; it has not yet adapted itself independently and fully to the Israeli situation, and that is the core of the problem—not the Lithuanians.
Perhaps the remedy will begin with strengthening Sephardi tradition and culture among the Sephardim (and perhaps also among the Lithuanians)? I do not know.
It now seems that, thank God, things have become clearer, and thus a description of the situation of the Sephardim in Israel—the “Sephardi problem”:
On the one hand, within Israeli haredi society there is an Ashkenazi society that constitutes most of haredism. It is mature, its identity is clear, and its culture complete. Alongside it is a minority society, the Sephardim, who are not mature and independent culturally. They are half Sephardi and half Lithuanian; their parents are Sephardi but their teachers are Lithuanian, so they are stuck there—not fully accepted in the Lithuanian society into which they aspire to enter, but they also have no independent cultural place of their own. They are always under Lithuanian yeshiva culture, even from the standpoint of the Sephardim themselves.
Conclusion: between the Sephardim and the Lithuanians there is a barrier that the Sephardim want to cross with dignity, bringing along the Sephardiness they have (or that remains to them), and the Lithuanians do not want to authorize them to enter as they are.
So the solutions may be three:
A. That the Sephardim should not want or need to cross the barrier at all. Full and proud cultural independence (as among Sephardim abroad).
B. To cross the barrier entirely and leave behind all the Sephardiness. To become fully Ashkenazi.
C. To break the barrier so that everyone mixes with everyone. Fusion. (As, apparently, in the religious-Zionist world in Israel.)
Or to live as second-class among the Lithuanians for generations.
In my humble opinion, all the solutions are very difficult, but with much work perhaps the first solution can lead to something better.
The main point for our discussion is what I wrote just above, and that is what I would mainly like responses to (and also according to Rabbi Farkash’s wish).
However, I would like to add regarding the Sephardi Torah world in Israel in relation to the Lithuanian haredi world in Israel, though this is not the main issue:
I forgot to mention a prominent Sephardi Torah figure in the religious-Zionist world: Rabbi Eliyahu Rahamim Zini, may he live long, head of Yeshivat Or Vishua—a very original rabbi and purely Sephardi.
So we have three important and original Sephardi sages in the religious-Zionist world: Rabbi Sherki, Rabbi Sabato, and Rabbi Zini. And all are purely Sephardi, influential figures.
As for the Lithuanian Torah world, I would like to ask what its level of fertility is. Are the important rabbis of the Lithuanian yeshiva world today fertile and original, or only transmitters of received tradition? Of course there are some Lithuanian haredi rabbis today who are fertile and original, but the question is how many there are (of the first rank, like Rabbi Moshe Shapira zt”l, and not merely students who know only how to criticize productive people because they learned a few sugyot in depth).
And behold, in the Sephardi haredi world in Israel today there are a number of fertile and original rabbis, both in terms of their books and their batei midrash (meaning not a physical beit midrash, but a school). Here are some of them who come to mind now, whom I know from Argentina:
In the kabbalistic world:
Rabbi Yaakov Hillel, his books in and about Kabbalah, and his huge beit midrash
Rabbi Yaakov Ades, his books and his many lectures
Rabbi Benayahu Shmueli
In the revealed Torah world:
Rabbi Meir Mazuz and his books (Darkhei Ha-Iyun, a book on the history of sages, grammar, prayerbooks, responsa, novellae), and his original and productive beit midrash. Here are some books from there that I know: HaKetav VeHaMikhtav on the art of Torah writing, the series Hora’ah Berurah in the format of the Mishnah Berurah for Yoreh De’ah, dozens of responsa.
Rabbi David Yosef and his huge project Halakhah Berurah, which is not a copy of his father’s work but a wonderful independent work (he disagrees with his father a number of times) on every single סעיף of the Shulchan Aruch and on contemporary innovations, with scope, mastery, depth, and clarity.
Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and his books Ein Yitzhak on the principles of the Talmud and the decisors (despite all the criticism of the book, it is very useful, organized, and contains important and original sources and discussions), as well as the Yalkut Yosef series.
Rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer and his books, full of wonderful erudition.
Rabbi Yehudah Ades, head of Yeshivat Kol Yaakov, his books and his beit midrash. His books in halakhah are very original in their manner of presenting the issues, and his students too follow his path. He is the greatest of the Lithuanian-style Sephardim.
Popular rabbis:
Rabbi Meir Eliyahu (he has an interesting responsa work; I do not mean the responsa on his website)
Rabbi Ben Zion Mutzafi and his interesting series of books, very similar to the Ben Ish Hai (a combination of the Ben Ish Hai and Hazon Ovadia)
Rabbi Zamir Cohen of Hidabroot
Rabbi Arush of Breslov
No other famous, influential, productive, and original Sephardi rabbis in the haredi world come to mind at the moment. Perhaps there are others. But I also do not know whether in the Lithuanian world there are still more groundbreaking, productive, and original rabbis with major influence (like Rabbi Moshe Shapira zt”l and Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel zt”l).
Also among the Sephardim in Israel, no prominent haredi Sephardim come to mind in the world of thought. (Abroad there are, such as Rabbi Faur, Rabbi Solomon Sassoon, Rabbi Bitton, Rabbi Manitou, and others.) But among the Ashkenazim too I do not know many. There are always profound people, but not those who create an intellectual storm like Rabbi Moshe Shapira and Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel, or the sage Faur and the sage Manitou.
And of course one always has to take percentages into account, because we are talking about statistics. And even if there are differences in Israel, they do not seem to be very great in terms of the aspiration to intellectuality, but mainly in the character of that intellectuality. (For example, most Lithuanians have no interest in grammar, textual variants, writing, and clarifying customs the way Rabbi Mazuz’s beit midrash does, or in arranging and clarifying all the methods of the Rishonim and Acharonim and clarifying the rules of halakhic decision the way Rabbi Ovadia’s beit midrash does.)
I forgot to note one more important thing regarding Sephardim in the religious-Zionist public, namely that, as I understand it, an important part of the religious-Zionist public regarded Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu as their leading rabbi. Such a thing is almost impossible in Lithuanian haredism today.
I also remember that during my years of study in Israel I went several times to study in Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav, and I saw there in the library (which is in fact a beit midrash in itself) many students examining volumes of Yabia Omer. I saw this many times. Such a thing I did not see in my Lithuanian yeshiva. Though on a few rare occasions I did speak with the maggid shiur about what Rabbi Ovadia says on the sugya. (Once it was about the sugya in Yevamot concerning one who does not intend for the sake of the mitzvah of levirate marriage, where according to one of the Tannaim levirate marriage is forbidden, and Rabbi Ovadia discusses a case where the person intends both for the sake of the mitzvah and for beauty. The Lithuanian maggid shiur, whom I esteem with all my heart, very much liked Rabbi Ovadia’s words and referred to him in the shiur as “a certain great one,” without mentioning his name publicly, but in practice he engaged with his words, and I loved that very much. Then, not in the shiur, he told me lofty things about Rabbi Ovadia in the name of Rabbi Wosner zt”l. And once I also learned with that rabbi, may he live long, part of Rabbi Ovadia’s responsum on shaving with a machine.)
My dear Avraham!
You are truly overflowing!
We could discuss your words endlessly. There are things with which I agree, things with which I disagree, things that need clarification, and things I need to think about.
In any case, my time is up. I would be very glad to meet a refined and interesting personality like you. I have one request of you! I beseech you! When you come to the Land of Israel, devote at least one whole week just to discussing these matters with me—and presumably we still will not finish.
With love and anticipation of seeing you,
Moshe Yitzhak
To the honorable Rabbi Moshe Yitzhak Farkash, may he live long
Thank you very much for the beautiful things you wrote to me. I too very much want and would be very glad to get to know you face to face (that is best) and to learn from you. I am embarrassed by what you ask of me as a request. Certainly I will meet with you with all my joy, but I am a young man and also do not know how much I have to contribute to this sugya. I am only an outside observer, a foreigner who studied a few years in Israel.
Of course, the main sugya is the “problem of the haredi Sephardim,” who still have not found their place in the country, and not the latter issue of who is supposedly more fertile and original. And of course I, as a Sephardi, am biased in the matter and instinctively look for and see the good in the Sephardim. Also, discussing who is greater seems a bit childish and perhaps of no serious fruit at all. The main thing is to find the way that Sephardim in the Torah world may grow—primarily in their own eyes—in a healthy and joyful way, and not be ashamed of themselves or feel inferior, which is very difficult psychologically, educationally, familiarly, and socially.
If they were completely swallowed up within the Lithuanian community, there would not be such a problem, because “a convert is like a newborn child,” and they would be truly Ashkenazi. The question is whether such a thing is possible or realistic, and whether it is even the best solution. In my eyes it would be a pity for an entire Torah culture to disappear and remain only in Otzar HaChochma. (Perhaps all three of the above solutions will be realized to a certain degree: some Sephardim will achieve independence, some will be absorbed into Lithuanianness, and some will gradually merge [through not-so-meticulous matches in the modern haredi public?] with one another, as in the religious-Zionist world.)
The Musta‘ribim in the Eastern lands came over time to feel themselves “Sephardi,” even though biologically they were not descendants of the Sephardim, except that they adopted the Torah of the Sephardim for themselves. Likewise, in Argentina there are several Ashkenazim biologically who are thoroughly Aleppan in every respect, truly! For example, the deputy chief rabbi of the Aleppan community is Ashkenazi by origin, but in practice he is fully Aleppan in his whole personality. Likewise, the head of all kashrut affairs in the Aleppan community—his father is from Poland, but he was educated in the Aleppan community, and he is Aleppan with all his heart. The sons of both these figures all studied in Yeshivat Porat Yosef in Israel, and they themselves did as well. And there are many more like this, and of course there are Damascenes, Jerusalemites, people from Bukhara, from Turkey, etc., who because they were educated among us (among the Aleppans), feel themselves to be fully Aleppan, and we too relate to them that way.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for corresponding with me so openly, and for opening this issue with such wonderful courage (it was the article with the most responses!), and surely everything will be for the benefit of all the people of Israel, each by his camp and each by his banner.
With much esteem and love,
All joyful blessings and success!!
Avraham
Just one small thought (and apparently a final one) on the Lithuanians and the Sephardim in Israel.
It seems to me that the period of the Lithuanian renaissance (from the standpoint of thought and the mode of learning) was in the decades before the Second World War and slightly after it, among the rabbis educated in that period in Lithuania. In that period, even within Volozhin Yeshiva, enlightened discourse was very elevated, and Western education entered deeply into the world of the yeshivot. Besides the famous maskilim who emerged from Volozhin Yeshiva (Bialik, Berdyczewski) and the yeshiva world, even those who remained within the yeshiva world show in their writings that they were deeply influenced by the spirit of enlightenment—not by its ideas, but by its way of thinking and writing, even if they used it as a reaction against the Enlightenment itself. By “education/enlightenment” below I do not mean the Enlightenment movement in its narrow sense, but rather non-traditional writing and thinking, writing and thinking different from what had existed before the age of modernity.
The enlightened style of discourse and writing is manifest openly and explicitly in Rabbi Kook, and covertly in the Hazon Ish. (From his letters and from Faith and Trust it is clearly evident that he studied, or was in dialogue with, the world of enlightenment. He does not write like a classic traditional rabbi such as the Mishnah Berurah [who was still Sephardi…], but in Hebrew and in a distinctly enlightened manner. There is a wonderful letter of the Hazon Ish to a Russian governor on murder in Judaism that leaves us no doubt about this.) The enlightened style is also evident in Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky in some of his books and articles, likewise among the rabbis of the Bloch line, among the heads of Telz Yeshiva, Rabbi Hutner (who also studied at university), Rabbi Zevin of the Talmudic Encyclopedia, Rabbi Amiel, Rabbi Shmuel Alexandrov (a very interesting anarchistic Lithuanian rabbi), and of course Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe (who studied at university in Germany), and Rabbi Chaim Friedlander, author of Siftei Chaim (who was born in Western Germany and entered Ponovezh in his twenties).
It truly seems that the entire flourishing of the Mussar movement and its various schools (Novardok, Slabodka, Kelm), and the great mashgichim (Rabbi Yerucham of Mir, Rabbi Dessler, and others), as well as the wonderful new analytical currents that spread enormously in Lithuania (the method of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk and that of Rabbi Shimon Shkop), blossomed and took hold massively in Lithuanian society of learners as a response to, and part of, the enlightened and intellectual spirit that seized Lithuania. Wonderful things like these had not existed before the crisis of enlightenment in such a high and intellectually cultivated form (perhaps a little so at the time of the polemic with the Hasidim, but not in such a wonderful and massive way as in the time of the Enlightenment, and certainly not in its Western style).
Conclusion of the discussion up to here: the spirit of Western enlightenment had a great hold on the Lithuanian world before the Second World War, and there we see tremendous flourishing as a response to the crisis caused by enlightenment (and with it Zionism and secularism).
Afterward, those Lithuanians—after all the wonderful abundance and flourishing thanks to the penetration of the Western spirit—came to Israel and adopted the method of haredi seclusion: no secular studies, no language learning, no involvement with general society. Since then, in my humble opinion, Lithuanian haredism has remained in the same place and we do not again see significant flourishing like that which we saw in the years before the world wars and slightly after them. The product of the policy of haredi seclusion did not yield many giant fruits like those that flourished in prewar Europe. Today the greats are merely transmitters of received tradition. But at least they remained with all the wonderful abundance that had been created in those prewar years.
And here lies my sorrow. For the observant Sephardim who suddenly immigrated to Israel still had not themselves experienced the crisis of enlightenment and the wonderful flourishing that resulted from it, but were only in the first years of modernity and suddenly came to Israel. And those Sephardim who entered the Ashkenazi haredi world immediately entered the Lithuanian haredi method of seclusion, which resulted in the fact that they never actually tasted the spirit of intellectual and Western enlightenment, because together with the Lithuanians they were already enclosed within the four cubits of haredism. (Unlike the Sephardim in other countries and publics, for whom the gates of wisdom and Western culture did open.)
For both publics, the Lithuanian method of seclusion kept them stuck in place and prevented flourishing. That seclusion kept the Lithuanians themselves stuck, except that whereas among the Lithuanians some enlightened spirit had entered their yeshivot and sages in the past (though afterward they halted its influence), among the haredi Sephardim in Israel strong enlightenment never entered at all. (From Morocco or from Islamic Syria they went directly into today’s closed Lithuanian high schools and yeshivot, shut off from the culture of the world.) Among the Lithuanians there remained, as an inheritance, part of the spirit of enlightenment that had once entered them (through their rabbis, families, books), though today they remain stuck in the same place (or perhaps a bit behind where they were in earlier times), whereas the haredi Sephardim have nothing from which to receive that Western enlightened spirit—not through their families and not through books—but only second- and third-hand from the Lithuanians themselves, who today are closed to the culture of the world and retain only some remnant of Western enlightened fruit from the past.
Conclusion: cultural seclusion causes a lack of significant flourishing and stagnation. This seclusion kept the Lithuanians stuck in place, and the haredi policy adopted by the Lithuanian greats was even harsher for the Sephardim (in terms of cultural flourishing), for it kept them stuck in a pre-Western and pre-enlightenment culture. And the most Western thing they can learn is a letter from the Hazon Ish, or an essay from Rabbi Dessler, or a lecture from Rabbi Shimon Shkop—but never directly and naturally from within their own society, which was closed to the entire Western world because of that Lithuanian policy of seclusion.
It seems this explains a little why the Lithuanians in Israel view the Sephardim in a certain way. But that is because of the very policy of seclusion that the Lithuanians themselves taught to their Sephardi students, and that the Lithuanian greats instructed with their authority for the entire Torah world. Therefore abroad things are very, very different.
To all the above is added what I wrote earlier, that the haredi Sephardim today have no cultural independence and all they aspire to is entry into the Lithuanian world (because there it is the most Western/intellectual place that the greats permit one to enter).
By the way, and importantly, nowadays haredism is flourishing anew, thank God, thanks to the age of the internet, which has reopened the gates of wisdom to the entire haredi public. This creates crisis, but every crisis creates new flourishing, as in prewar Lithuania. And a fine example of this is the site “Tzarich Iyun.”
A few more small reflections:
There is a Lithuanian world that did continue to remain open to the general cultural world, and there one does indeed see significant flourishing even within its Torah and analytical thought. I mean Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, son-in-law of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. He is a pure Brisker analyst, but unlike the Lithuanian haredi analytical world, which has remained somehow stuck in the same place (before the internet age), Rabbi Lichtenstein developed and refined Brisker analysis and the Brisker-Lithuanian religious outlook to mighty and wonderful regions. Why? Because in my opinion he is part of a school that is open to dialogue with the world, just as the Lithuanians were before the wars, unlike the seclusionist method of the Israeli Lithuanian world.
So much for my reflections, and heartfelt thanks to Rabbi Michael Abraham, may he live long, amen, for his website that gave me the opportunity to write here on his wonderful site. And likewise heartfelt thanks to Rabbi Moshe Farkash, may he live long, for the openness to correspond with me.
Avraham! I knew I would have many common subjects with you. I agree with you very much about the analysis of Lithuanianness before and after the war. For a long time I have wanted to write an article about the haredi consciousness of seclusion that developed mainly in Israel, and about the Mussar movement, whose basis was far more openness than today’s Lithuanianness, but the vision is still for the appointed time…
Thank you for the compliments. Perhaps you could advance your coming to Israel?
See you
Heartfelt thanks for your gladdening and encouraging reply!! (I truly have a smile of joy on my face.)
Would that I were in Israel today—may it be so, with God’s help. (Thanks to the internet I can remain connected to the Torah of the Land of Israel and to the sages of the Land of Israel like yourself, and one has to thank the Creator of the world every day in the morning blessings for this!! My body is in the West, but my computer is in the East!)
Just to complete the picture, I will bring a few names of Sephardi sages in the modern era who were also in dialogue with the modernity that was beginning to develop in their time. Only first I would like to share one more reflection on the Sephardim in Israel:
Perhaps part of the fertility of the various batei midrash of haredi Sephardiness in the Land of Israel, which I mentioned in the previous responses (Rabbi Mazuz and his beit midrash, Rabbi Ovadia and his sons, Rabbi Yaakov Hillel), is also connected to the phenomenon of crisis. The Sephardim in Israel are in a cultural crisis, unlike the Lithuanians. Therefore this crisis produces reactions of flourishing, just as the Enlightenment did for traditional Judaism in Lithuania. Crisis, cultural threat, creates a flourishing and rich counterreaction. And among the Sephardim in Israel, this is a development and flourishing within haredism itself (without connection to the general world, to which they are not so connected and from which they do not feel such a threat as they do abroad, for example).
In the next response I will bring a list of some Sephardi sages who engaged in thought and research while being open to the Western world. I will mention only those who died after 1900 and onward, because if we write of those before that who lived in Holland, Italy, England, and America, the time would be consumed and they would not be exhausted.
Such an overdone topic, but if we’re already at it, then let’s go all the way: there’s no public that isn’t condescending. Mizrahim are condescending among themselves too—ask an Aleppan about a Yemeni… and everyone is condescending toward Ethiopians to one degree or another. So why have you picked on one particular public?