The Loyalties of the Sephardim

Jewish Ideas Weekly www.jewishideasdaily.com July 22-29, 2011 Friday, July 22 and more interesting than Levy’s simplistic gave before the Knesset. The occasion was a anti-Zionist polemic. Knesset-sponsored celebration of 100 years The Loyalties of the Sephardim The roots of that reality go back to the of Yemenite immigration to Israel, but Ka- By Aryeh Tepper Sephardi Jews who helped pioneer the Zi- pach began by making it clear that Yemenite onist idea, such as poet Emma Lazarus, aliyah was much more than a century old. In a recent Haaretz column, Gideon Levy, Rabbi Henry Mendes, and Sarajevo-born He even noted that the term “Zionism” was the radical leftist polemicist, sounded the Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai (1798–1878), a pro- unknown in Yemen, because “the Zionist warning that Israel’s religious Zionists— to-Zionist whose book, Minhat Yehuda movement was created as a remedy against “the knitted skullcaps”—have joined hands (The Offering of Judah) interpreted the the hostility [among European Jews] to ali- with the ultra-Orthodox and the Sephardim traditional vision of redemption in earthly yah, but without a sickness there’s no need to form “a united tribe of zealots.” Why have terms. Decidedly ahead of his for a remedy.” the ultra-Orthodox and the Sephardim time, Alkalai called for reviv- As Kapach’s autarchic spir- formed this coalition? In Levy’s telling, both ing Hebrew as a spoken lan- it makes clear, no left-wing groups are responding to the history of dis- guage and for the election of discrimination was or is nec- crimination they’ve suffered at the hands of a Jewish constituent assembly essary to fuel the Zionist de- the Zionist Left. in the land of Israel, where he sires of Yemenite Jews. Like every piece of demagoguery, Levy’s himself moved at the end of Kapach’s forceful reclama- is built on a kernel of truth: Sephardi and his life. tion of this deeply-rooted ultra-Orthodox Jews have, at various times While there’s no denying Zionist identity has recently and for various reasons, been discriminated that European and Russian been echoed in the attack against, both by the state and by what is con- Jews constituted the early en- launched by rebel Shas ventionally called in Israel “the left-wing, gine of the modern Zionist MK Rabbi Haim Amsalem Ashkenazi, secular elite.” This generaliza- movement, equally undeniable against the ultra-Orthodox tion is itself a little silly, but it’s a sufficient is the tremendous appeal that leadership of the Shas party. basis for Levy’s attack. The moral of Levy’s Zionism held to masses of Jews Yemenite Jews. According to Amsalem, fanciful story is that as the Israeli Right is in North Africa and the Middle Shas, by aping Ashkenazi becoming “a united tribe of zealots” thanks East. ultra-Orthodox norms, is turning Israeli to the discrimination of the Israeli Left, then Consider the case of Yemenite Jewry. We Sephardim, natural nationalists, into anti- across the board, from right to left, Israel know from documents in the Cairo Genizah Zionists. So much for Levy’s “united tribe of has become—hold on to your hats—a racist, that Yemenite Jews had ties with the Jews in zealots.” bigoted society! the land of Israel during the medieval pe- Perhaps the most interesting polemic Alas, collectively smearing Israeli so- riod, while Rabbi Ovadia Bartinoro, a lead- against the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox ciety isn’t Levy’s only game. By reducing ing 15th-century jurist, also mentioned the establishment was launched by the late the nationalism of Israeli Sephardim to a aliyah of Yemenite Jewry. These waves of Chief Sephardi Rabbi of Jerusalem and kind of “false consciousness” attributable immigration to Israel continued up through Chief Rabbi of Morocco, Shalom Messas. to leftist discrimination, Levy (a German the 20th century. Between the two world In his commentary on the episode of the Jew) high-handedly dismisses the authen- wars, approximately 15,000 Yemenite Jews spies from the book of Numbers, Messas tic, historically-rooted Jewish nationalism arrived in Israel—a remarkable figure, as the compared the Sephardim to the Biblical of the Sephardim—thus embodying the Zionist movement was only beginning to set figure of Caleb, who possessed a natural paternalistic racism he claims to deplore. up shop in Yemen at that time. love of the land. In contrast, he likened the He also misses the tensions that, at pres- The independent character of Yemenite ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazim to the figure ent, characterize relations between the Zionism was vigorously articulated by the of Joshua, who over-intellectualized his Sephardi and ultra-Orthodox sectors of Is- Yemenite scholar, jurist, and translator, connection to the land as a consequence raeli society. Ultimately, reality is far richer Rabbi Joseph Kapach, in a 1982 speech he of the years he spent studying Torah with Get the latest from Jewish Ideas Daily in your inbox every morning. Sign up at www.jewishideasdaily.com Jewish Ideas Weekly, published by Jewish Ideas Daily, is a project of Bee.Ideas. To contact us, please email [email protected]. Moses—and who, as a result, required di- nize that the sartorial choice of a knitted But Levy is familiar with the ignorance of vine assistance to be saved from the sin of skullcap can represent a variety of ideologi- his target audience outside of Israel, who sadly the spies. In light of the positions articulat- cal positions. Wearers of knitted skullcaps but predictably hailed his article as “phenom- ed by Rabbis Kapach, Amsalem, and Mes- range from the religious-nationalist bour- enally provocative.” Levy’s article was nothing sas, Gideon Levy’s clumsy lumping of the geois, who often loathe kippah-wearing of the sort, but it did aptly demonstrate that Sephardim and the ultra-Orthodox into radical nationalists, to students and follow- anti-Israel passion blinds otherwise intelligent the same category appears to be twice re- ers of the line dictated by the influential Har people, both in Israel and abroad, from seeing moved from the truth. HaMor yeshiva, who would sooner profane what is in right front of their noses—or under Of course, we must be wary of painting the Sabbath than raise a hand against a po- other people’s skullcaps. with Levy’s broad brushstrokes, and recog- lice officer. Monday, July 25 of being a handmaiden of Zionism and priv- new biblical archeology. At Khirbet Qei- ileging the Jewish past, through invention yafa, on a ridge overlooking the Elah Val- The New Biblical Archeology of finds as well as destruction of Palestin- ley southwest of Jerusalem, Professor Yossi By Alex Joffe ian and Muslim remains. Israelis and Arabs Garfinkel of Hebrew University is revealing alike have been bitterly critical of research a unique, short-lived, and massively forti- Every summer, the Israel Antiquities Au- projects, particularly in Jerusalem, which fied town dating to around 1000 B.C.E. The thority holds a reception at the Rockefeller appear to upset the tinderbox city’s delicate location, and the site’s two gates, appear to Museum in Jerusalem for foreign archeo- Jewish-Arab relations. match the biblical description of the Judean logical teams excavating in Israel. This site of Sha’arayim. A short text found on a year’s reception in early July was attended potsherd in 2008, while not yet in fully de- by over 200 archeologists from over 50 dif- veloped Hebrew language or script, appears ferent Israeli and foreign projects, who are to contain the words “judge” and “king.” investigating sites ranging in age from the Guarding a primary route into Jerusalem, Paleolithic through Islamic periods. It was it is difficult to escape the conclusion that another indication that, despite its many in- Qeiyafa was fortified against the rival Philis- ternal and external critics, the new biblical tines to the west. Given the site’s date, a con- archeology is going strong. nection with King David (a biblical hero but But what’s “new” about the new biblical thus far a shadowy archeological figure) is archeology? tantalizing, although obviously still unprov- Part of the answer lies in the field’s scien- en. What is more obvious is that a high level tific and technological sophistication. The of planning and organization was necessary majority of archeological projects in Israel to build this site, precisely in the place and focus on sites outside the brief “Biblical pe- Digging at Khirbet Qeiyafa. time when we might expect from biblical riod” of the Israelite and Judean kingdoms, texts that the early Israelite state found itself ca. 900 to 586 B.C.E. But all projects incor- As a result, the impulse to use archeology threatened by the Philistines. porate scientific field and laboratory tech- as a means of reconciliation between Israeli Some six and a half miles west of Qeiyafa, niques as an end in themselves, using geo- and Palestinians (for example, by bringing Professor Aren Maeir of Bar Ilan University logical sciences as well as satellite imagery disadvantaged youths from both commu- is excavating Tel es-Safi, in all likelihood the to understand the changing physical land- nities together to work on excavations) has Philistine city of Gath. This enormous site scapes and climates of their sites. At many been strong. Some localized progress has contains a long sequence of settlement go- projects, teams with computers and spec- been made, but overall Palestinian attitudes ing back to at least 2500 B.C.E., and shows trographs sit on-site to analyze the chemical have hardened thanks to relentless official the advent of Philistines after 1200 B.C.E.

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