From Sephardi to Mizrahi and Back Again: Changing Meanings of Sephardi in Its Social Environments

Harvey E. Goldberg

Jewish Social Studies, Volume 15, Number 1, Fall 2008 (New Series), pp. 165-188 (Article) Published by Indiana University Press DOI: 10.1353/jss.0.0029

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From Sephardi to Mizrahi and Back Again: Changing Meanings of Sephardi in Its Social Environments
Harvey E. Goldberg
A bstr act
This article sketches historical shifts in the meanings and associations of the term Sephardi. Post-Iberian migrations and the post-emancipation perception of European Jews potentially made Sephardi the main marker of the Eastern half within binary ethnic discourse reflecting the ingathering of Jews in Palestine and the State of Israel. This did not evolve, paralleling a historically based reluctance of old-time Sephardim to be identified with Easterners. Instead, broad ethnic divides were coded utilizing the lexeme mizrah. Sephardi retained some prominence and partially reverted to its associations with religion. Relevant factors were a dual rabbinate and the emergent Israeli Shas party combining politics, religion, and Sephardism. There is also evidence that the images and terms Sephardi and Mizrahi gradually became coeval in valence to Ashkenazi within Israeli discourse regarding religion. Key words: Sephardi, ethnic categories, Israeli society, Eastern Jews

t is a perennial dilemma in cultural and historical research how to sort out the strength of influences from the past in relation to the impact of synchronic factors operating in any social situation. This is particularly true in cases of migration, when people separate themselves from a home setting yet carry with them many orientations and dispositions that they express, consciously or unconsciously, within new economic, political, and cultural realities. Social research in Israel, in
Harvey E. Goldberg, From Sephardi to Mizrahi and Back Again: Changing Meanings of Sephardi in Its Social Environments, Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society n.s. 15, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 16588

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the decades after the state was established, generally downplayed the impact of the pasts of the Jewish immigrant groups that altered the human landscape of the society.1 With time, however, it became clear that various cultural factors originating elsewhere continued to resonate in Israeli society, whether in terms of cultural content or in the forging of identities that drew selectively on images and memories from the past in response to the challenges of the new society. One line of sociological analysis regarding Israel has stressed the ability of the more established (European/Ashkenazi derived) groups to set the terms within which the culture and the past of weaker segments of the society (coming from Middle Eastern countries) are defined and accorded recognition.2 These analyses, while providing important insights into the social power entailed in processes of cultural construction and identity formation, overlook the diverse seats of memory throughout a society and the subtle and shifting dynamics that shape self-identification even in the face of powerful forces working to dictate those processes.3 In a collection entitled Charting Memory: Recalling Medieval Spain , Stacy Beckwith has offered an interdiscursive picture of how Medieval Spain has been remembered.4 She refers to discourse across disciplines as well as across the religious boundaries defining Christians, Muslims, and Jews, many of whom continue to remember Spain far from its historic geographic borders. In highlighting the diversity of memories, Beckwith attempts to move past the conventional practice of treating these chains and traditions of memory as distinct and separate strands, and thus to both capture, and perhaps in a sense reconstitute, aspects of the medieval convivencia of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish life. The chapters of her collection illustrate how the content and mode of memories of later eras select among, and rhetorically highlight, images and narrations of the past but always do so in collective contexts and processes of interaction. Jews in that region, who were dubbed Sephardi (Sfaradi ), thus existed in a range of socio-religious situations. Their self-cognition probably was threaded through categorizations that also included Christians and Muslims, as exemplified in terms such as Mozarabs, Mudjars, and Moriscos. Some of these labels and their historical derivatives can be relatively clearly delineated, whereas others, like Moors, are notorious in their lack of historical or contemporary specificity. Delineating the trajectory of a term that subsequently emerged as an inclusive reference to Jews originating from the Iberian peninsulaSephardimrequires attention not only to the medieval Spanish context but also to the encounter of Sephardim as communities

and as a social and religious category, with Jews outside of that region, both in relation to Jews from various parts of Europe (Ashkenazim) and vis--vis coreligionists long residing in the Arab East. As in all cases of cultural encounter, such contact yielded mutual exchange and influence concomitant with dynamics that reasserted and re-formed social boundaries and identities. Modern Israel is a site in which Sephardi groups are found, and where Sephardi traditions receive some expression, alongside Jews (and non-Jews) of varying backgrounds. Several complex fields of cultural and social interaction shape the shades of meaning that the term Sephardi has carried in the past and continues to acquire in the evolving circumstances of Israeli society. The meaning of Sephardi, or any ethnic category, that one sector within Jewish life seeks to privilege cannot ignore different and competing emphases. A brief account that includes reference to the impact of the contemporary political party ShasSephardi Torah Observerswhich lays claim to flagship representation of Sephardi tradition, serves to illustrate the complexities at work in specific social contexts in contemporary Israel. It is well known that Shas has attracted voters who do not themselves follow a strict religious way of life, and that many have indicated appreciation of how the party succeeded in restoring pride to their cultural heritage, even though they do not agree fully with its ideology. This lack of full agreement can also reach points of tension. I have, on several occasions, attended a Jerusalem synagogue established early in the twentieth century by families who mostly came from Persia, whose descendantsin small numberscontinue to pray there on Shabbat and holidays even though they do not consider themselves dati (religious). This synagogue is found in the Mahaneh Yehudah neighborhood, an area of contact among a number of Middle Eastern and Sephardi groups in the decades before the state was established.5 Most of those who attend the synagogue no longer live in its vicinity, and they drive to Mahaneh Yehudah on the Sabbath even though this is prohibited by rabbinic law. Liturgically, these synagogue-goers see themselves as maintaining a Jerusalem Sephardi tradition with which they are all familiar. However, in the matter of reading from the Torah during the course of the service, they now rely on a yeshivah student educated in Shas institutions who they pay to read the parashah (weekly portion) each Sabbath. While dependent on his skills, they also resent this student, for he arrives only shortly before the Torah-reading service, does his job, and then leaves, showing little solidarity with the groups local heritage and sense of identity. Their attachment to a very specific Sephardi tradition notwithstanding, families connected to this syna-

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gogue feel totally Israeli, and among the Persian founders of the synagogue was the Banai family that later produced prominent figures, and even icons, within Israeli culture. This synagogue has appeared in the media, recognizing its colorful ethnic background, in particular with reference to the late Yossi Banai, but this is done without any hint of a connection to the world of Shas. The traditions and memories that a group holds and nourishes, and the way that these are recognized (or not) and marked, are unquestionably shaped by contemporary social forces that enter into a politics of identity. A synchronic view alone, however, tends toward a reification of ethnic definitions and categories, and toward an inability to grasp the content and dynamics of historical imprints that at times surface in unexpected ways. With this in mind, my article undertakes to sketch some of the historical, social, and semantic settings that gave shape to the contemporary uses and understandings of the term and notion Sephardi, with special attention to the complexities in the pre-state Yishuv and its continuation in Israeli society. Any (ethnic) term takes on its significance both from the social setting within which it functions and the syntactic frames and semantic fields within which it operates. From a methodological point of view, then, focusing on a single ethnic category by itself carries the analytic danger of isolating and perhaps essentializing it. But by following the term Sephardi, even cursorily, from the late Middle Ages through more recent periods, and observing how it accrued, discarded, and reconfigured social and cultural meanings, we get a sense of historical shifts as well as factors that give such labels their persuasive sense of inherent-ness. My account touches briefly on earlier stages, though dwelling more on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many of the interpretations offered are tentative and are intended mainly to spur further research in these directions. Among the phenomena worthy of attention is the way that earlier associations of Sephardi reassert themselves, not in any pre-set way but through a confluence of social forces and modifications in meaning that become visible in the details of specific and evolving interactional fields. Early History As is well known, Sepharad is a place name appearing once in the Bible that was applied by Jews to the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages, and the term came to characterize communities there and their traditions. At one level, and over the course of time, Sephardi became a gen-

eral category in comparison to Ashkenazi, but it was never a homogeneous category. Regional differences existed within it, such as Andalusia or Castilia, traditions that continued to have significance for some time after the 1492 expulsion from Spain. The same is true for the category Portugesi, after Jews left Portugal, beginning several years later. One factor that may have contributed to crystallizing the notion of Sephardi as an enduring ethnic and religious subdivision was the publication and wide circulation of the Shulhan Arukh. Beginning in about 1570, Joseph Karos composition was printed repeatedly with glosses by Moshe Isserles integrated into the main text and with distinct typefaces marking the writings of the two authors. Although the purpose of such a publication was inclusivenessto provide a halakhic guidebook that could appeal to a wide audience constituted by many communitiesa by-product of this technique of printed transmission, among those with the requisite literacy skills, may have been to unify diverse Sephardi realms but at the same time to inscribe deeply a notion of enduring differences between that world and the one deemed Ashkenazi (also with internal differences). It might be fruitful to explore this hypothesis in terms of recent analytical thrusts coming under labels like diffrance or distinction, and to speculate as to whether this difference embedded in the Shulhan Arukh partially contributed to shaping contemporary binary perceptions of world-Jewry. It is important to remember (for those not specializing in Sephardi topics), that Sephardi traditions developed in Europe (absorbing both Muslim and Christian influences) and thence spread eastward (but not only there), in a variety of directions and at different periods. It is also important to stress that the growing association between Sephardi and Eastern was not a tension-free process. One instructive example is provided by Abraham Yaaris study of the development of the hilulah (pilgrimage festival) of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai at Meron in the Galilee on the 18th of Iyar (Lag ba-omer/La-omer).6 Today, the linkage between that place and date and the figure of Bar Yohai as author of the Zohar appears seamless, but this was not always the case. Yaari documents a phase of tension between the scholarly, meditative kabbalists from Spain and the ecstatic popular celebrations carried out by Jews from the region, even before the identification of the place as the burial spot of Bar Yohai was widely accepted. Another indication of the complexity of the process was the preservation of terminological and social distinctions between Sephardi Jews coming from Europe (not necessarily directly from Spain or Portugal) and the local Jews. Known examples are the separate communities of the Grana (Livornese, appearing in documents as qahal qodesh portu

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gesi) and Twansa (Tunisians) in Tunisia, or the distinction between the Francos (Seores Francos) and the Mustaaravim (those of Arab language/culture) in the Levant. Aleppo is a well known instance of where this distinction was maintained and clear, and Yaron Harel indicates that, in Aleppo, the Francos maintained their own distinct Sephardi rabbinic tradition in a manner that did not occur everywhere that the two populations were in contact.7 Further study of the topic might benefit from comparing the Aleppan situation with the way Yaron Tsur has documented the varying intersecting trajectories of Grana and Twansa in Tunisia.8 The general point, for our purposes, is how there was both growing contact between and partial merging of the two groups but also simultaneous processes of distancing that distinguished Sephardi traditions and self-identification, on the one hand, from local Eastern communal forms and traditions, on the other. Growing European Impact In the late eighteenth century, the cultural-religious division between Sephardi and Ashkenazi began to be caught up in the growing economic, political, and military gaps and tensions between Europe and the East, 9 and the contrast started to absorb images like those analyzed by Edward Said in his Orientalism. During the nineteenth century in Palestine, the number of Jews migrating there from Europe led to Ashkenazim equaling and eventually surpassing the number of Se phardim and Eastern Jews (some of whom also arrived in various migrations at the time). One curious socio-linguistic development taking place in this setting was the absorption of the term Franco into Yiddish (becoming frenk), so that a term signifying prestige in the Se phardi Levant ended up having disparaging connotations in the group that was assuming more importance locally. The dynamics of this linguistic journey are still not well understood.10 Perhaps, in a situation hypothesized above (comparing the Levant to the Tunisian situation), alongside pure Seores Francos and economically weaker Arabicspeaking Jews, there existed both socially mobile Mustaaravim and Francos who had lost social and economic standing. One can easily imagine how members of the latter category, seeking to hang onto their European descent as a lifeline of prestige, might become targets of slurs among Yiddish-speaking newcomers.11 Whether or not data are available to test this reconstruction, the global political and cultural forces becoming stronger in nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine

made issues of culture and group-identification crucial for economic, legal-political, and social (prestige) reasons. Even with the growth of these partially parallel international and local constellations, there did not emerge rapidly, globally, or with consistency a simple binary identification of Sephardi with the East. A thrust toward classification schemes like this may have existed, but its expression was not sweeping, and plural systems of categorization of ethnic differences and traditions coexisted with Orientalist binary perceptions. Without sorting matters into cause and effect, the nonexistence, or perhaps resistance to, such categorization may be seen in several realms. New, small groups that arrived in Ottoman Palestine during the nineteenth century did not automatically or easily link up with existing, larger, and recognized organized communities, whether of European provenanceAshkenazimor most directly from outside Europe, such as Sephardim or Moghrabim. Economic issues were crucial in these developments, because funds from abroad (halukah) were important in all cases. New groups could be beneficial to the established institutions if tied to a solid financial base in the Diaspora, but they could also become an economic burden if this were not the case. A well-known instance is that of Jews from Yemen arriving in the 1880s and later, but this dilemma may also be seen in the shifting fortunes of Jews arriving from some regions in the Caucasus, which could be ambivalently included in either Europe or Asia.12 For various reasons, it made sense for the old-time Sephardi community and leadership to continue to highlight their specific status and traditions, including language (such as Ladino/Judezmo). They had established ties to the local Arab leadership (largely Muslim, but also some Christians) as well as to Ottoman authorities. An important aspect of the latter was the status of the chief rabbinic figure (rishon le-tsiyon) in the country, even though Ashkenazim began to outweigh Sephardim in number as the nineteenth century wore on. Some of the latter, both by virtue of Spanish/European cultural memory and through ongoing commercial and banking activities, had ties throughout the Mediterranean. (In this manner, some Moghrabi families arriving in the nineteenth century meshed easily with some old-time Sephardi elites.) One may surmise that the very appearance and growth of Zionist-oriented immigration at the end of the century, including Jews who saw themselves as embodying advanced European ideas and culture, increased the motivation of oldtime Sephardim to stress their own traditions and identity in contrast to Eastern groups who were viewed as less endowed.

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In this context, it is worth asking whether the positive image that classic Sepharad had attained within learned circles of the science of Judaism emerging in central Europe in the mid-nineteenth century had any echoes within the nascent Zionist Yishuv several decades later. Yaffah Berlovitz has shown that writers within the First Aliyah were ambivalent in regard to the creations of medieval Sephardi poets but that at the time a small group of Jerusalem-born intellectuals did appear who were knowledgeable about both local Arab life and Arab literature, and who proposed a model of Zionism rooted in Sephardi history and Arab culture as an alternative to the formulations imported by the European newcomers.13 Individual members of this small group had successful academic and/or cultural careers, but their impact on a collective level was minimal. Later, in the twentieth century, there appeared a few European-born champions of the historical contribution of Sephardi writers and their potential future significance to a contemporary Hebrew renaissance, notably in the personage of Hayim Nahman Bialik.14 This intellectual thrust had some additional implications as time went on, and it is well known that a positive image of medieval Sepharad was concretized in the selection of street names in the Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem, in which many new arrivals from Germany concentrated in the 1930s. Promoting a positive Sephardi aura was not without its complexities, however. In a 1927 address to a group calling itself Halutsey Ha-mizrah, Bialik praised the richness of Sephardi literature in earlier centuries and challenged his audience to participate in a Hebrew literary renaissance by drawing on the treasures of their past, but he also described contemporary Sephardi literary culture in terms of a dry branch or being sterile.15 Without making it explicit, Bialik appears to have implied that Sephardim were now at a historical-cultural low point characterizing the Orient as a whole. This ostensibly paradoxical stance constitutes a romantic double think regarding Sephardim/Orientals as representing a past golden age while persisting on the margins of contemporary Jewish life. Internally inconsistent perspectives like these have been analyzed by Michael Herzfeld with reference to European views of Greece and have been explored in connection with Sephardim, defined broadly, by Jolle Bahloul.16 Examples of how the peripheral and exotic Orient or Asia has been seized on as inspirational with regard to some valued future appeared early on within Zionism, such as the participation of representatives from the Caucasus in the Fourth Zionist Congress, supposedly illustrating the ideal of Jews working the soil and bearing arms.17 Another example, in Ottoman Palestine itself, is the thesis that Jews from

Yemen were seen as paragons of ancient Jewish culture but were only employed as low-paid artisans.18 It would be too simple, however, to ignore differences in the content, context, and pragmatic implications of these various ideologized representations and to lump them all into a single case of the orientalization of non-European Jews. In the first half of the twentieth century, it was still common for groups coming from different Middle Eastern regions to maintain their communal distinctiveness and to be recognized as such by outsiders. At the same time, it is reasonable to assume, the growing Jewish population in Mandate Palestine, fed mostly by immigrants from Europe but also from Middle Eastern locales, increased both contact with and consciousness of internal Jewish diversity. This, combined with heightened nationalist awareness stimulated by opposition to Jewish immigration from Arab groups, on the one hand, and the felt need to cultivate a coherent national culture, on the other, may have nourished the tendency to sort Jewish categories into an overall binary system in which the West was arraigned against the East. In such an implicit scheme, it has been argued, Jews who were rooted in Arab and/or Muslim milieus were usually not viewed as sources of creativity by the European-based majority and leadership but as problematic instances of hybrid categories that needed to be purified.19 In postulating such cultural mechanisms, one must be cautious about retrospectively assuming that tendencies emerging with force at a later period were precisely in place in the past. As stated, ethnic plurality, in contrast to a binary scheme, was still salient and publicly institutionalized during the Mandate period. This can be seen in the names of many synagogues, particularly in Jerusalemfor example, Urfali (northwestern Syria/southwestern Turkey), Halabi (Aleppo), and Yazdi (southern Persia)and of some burial societies that continued to stress former local identities even though, from a broad religious point of view, they could be placed under the rubric Sephardi.20 If one wished to search for latent mechanisms of handling problematic classifications, it could be argued that the diversification of ethnic categories was an implicit but purposeful cultural ploy aimed at disguising a broad attribution of all Jewish Orientals to the same category, thereby maintaining a desired image of plurality under a pan-Jewish umbrella. This would parallel the suggestion that, in the early post-state decades, some of the widespread ethnic stereotypes regarding individual Middle Eastern immigrant groups were a dispersed and thus disguised reflection of images that were concentrated together when focused on local Arabs.21 But such retroactive historical imputations must also take

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into account that later social phenomena were not exact replicas of what existed in the pre-state period. For example, use of the term edah as the prime marker of Middle Eastern Jewish ethnicity was not manifestly univocal in the pre-state period. Then, the term ha-edah ha-haredit referred to a wing of the ultra-Orthodox world, printed prayer books often distinguished between Sephardi and Edot Ha-mizrah (communities of the East), and a fledgling ethnological journal established by Raphael Patai and some colleagues adopted the name Edot and intentionally drew on materials from both the European and the Middle Eastern worlds. It is also clear that some aspects of the ideological and social factors entering into the conceptually bifurcated ethnic tensions that grew after the state was established had appeared earlier in specific circumstances.22 With regard to Sephardim proper in the pre-state period, a very rough sketch of coordinates might map three broad directions (with no attempt to attach quantitative assessments to them) regarding their place as ethnics vis--vis the developing Zionist Yishuv: those who remained outside the development of national culture and institutions and who, in the extreme form, identified with ultra-Orthodox points of view; those who fully accepted the premises and joined the emerging lifestyle of Zionists that were forged mainly by European immigrants and ideologies; and those who were sympathetic to the Zionist project but felt that this did not contradict Sephardim maintaining their own identity and utilizing their existing social and cultural capital as participants or even leaders in the Zionist cause. The last point of view, whose expression was largely frustrated, has been exemplified in a book by Elie Eliachar, who criticizes Sephardim who accepted the (Zionist/Ashkenazi) ideological position that refused to recognize the role of internal-Jewish ethnic diversity in the nationalist program.23 Eliachar may also represent a position in which oldtime Sephardim presented themselves as potential leaders of Oriental Jews, a stance that partakes of both identification with them and acceptance of the premise that Oriental newcomers needed guidance in order to integrate into the Yishuv and Israeli society.24 Developments after the State After the establishment of Israel as an independent state, several interrelated developments gave shape to the categories and discourse entailing the notion Sephardi, a term that must be seen within cultural and semantic fields that included other ethno-religious labels. Among

these were three salient processes: first, large-scale immigrations, wherein about half of the approximately 650,000 Jews arriving after independence (May 1948 to the end of 1951) were from Eastern countries, followed by the intensive immigrations from North Africa in 195556 (and, in the case of Morocco, again in 1963);25 second, extensive bureaucratic involvement of the state in shaping the trajectories of immigrant groups;26 and, third, establishment of census categories. This last point is, of course, an aspect of the second process, but it deserves special attention because of the way that it fed into scholarly discourse on immigrationin which sociology was prominentthat reflected other influences as well. Some general trends emerging in these processes are indicated in the following paragraphs. Among them, I note two themes. One is the arbitrariness of the categories that emerged, both in the tendency to present the Jewish population in simple binary terms and in more objective country-based classifications. The second is the ideological tendencies surrounding Jewish ethnicity that to a degree were threaded through discourse on the topic, whether in the form of downplaying its relevance or, to the contrary, of stressing its persuasive relevance even when un-named. This discussion is necessarily only a sketch, with the subject warranting extensive and detailed treatment. As part of this caution, I also note that often the language and terminology used to discuss ethnic phenomena reflect the diverse contexts in which they appear. The large-scale, post-state immigration gave impetus to the tendency to conceptualize Israeli society in binary terms from a Jewish ethnic point of view. Anthropologist Dorothy Willner, who was employed in the rural settlement project of the 1950s, observed that Dichotomous categories, such as European and Oriental or Ashkenazi and Sephardi, were the common ways of drawing broader distinctions within the population. 27 This was not the only process at work, however, and no single set of categories was available to express a binarism that did not appear forced somewhat from a historical- cultural point of view, or that did not meet with resistance from one group or another. The notion of Sephardi was available, but even the social science literature of the first two decades, which typically did not dwell on historical niceties, did not mobilize the term. One sociological study that surveyed immigrants did not mention it at all.28 Another work by a social anthropologist gave an overview of group relations in a new society and explained why it preferred the phrase Middle Eastern Jews over Oriental (see below) or over the census-driven rubric of Africa-Asia but did not relate explicitly to the term Se phardi. 29 A comprehensive demographic study of immigration men-

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tions Sephardic Jews once in passing with reference to the nineteenth century,30 and S. N. Eisenstadts The Absorption of Immigrants, a paradigm-setting work for a generation of social research, gives only brief hints regarding dilemmas attached to the term in a chapter entitled The Oriental Jews in Palestine. 31 Eisenstadt acknowledges that Oriental is a category that includes wide diversity, giving a list of close to a dozen groups which begins with Sephardim.32 He then explains that the latter term originally applied to those originating from Spain and states that The Se phardim form a category by themselves, and exhibit marked differences from other Oriental Jews. Eisenstadt nevertheless generalizes with regard to Oriental Jews: Despite their differences, most of them formed a more or less unified sociological block as compared with the rest of the Jewish community in Israel.33 Only in the broader picture given by cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai is some attempt made to offer a portrait specific to Sephardi Jewry separate from that of Oriental Jews as well as to discuss some of the complex interactions between them and other communities.34 In the same book, however, Patai refers to the Sephardic-Oriental Jews in Palestine and, on the following page, mentions Oriental and semi-Oriental (Sephardi) Jewish groups.35 As indicated, the old-time Sephardi elite only partially accepted this global conceptual incorporation, an attitude that might have contributed to encouraging use of the term Edot Ha-mizrah when referring to Middle Eastern Jewry that did not entail descent from Iberian Sephardim. This term had existed in the pre-state period, such as in prayer books defined as representing the liturgy of sfarad u-vnei edot ha-mizrah , but the expression, as it emerged in general use, now encoded an ethnic (and by implication an ethno-class) meaning and did not refer only to cultural traditions. It should be noted that the term Sephardi was not meaningful to many immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East. It played hardly any role in the everyday self-categorization of villagers from the Tripolitanian hinterland whom I first encountered in a moshav (cooperative agricultural settlement) in 1963,36 even though by objective criteria their religious lifewhich was activestrongly reflected Sephardi traditions. Institutionally, the official division of the rabbinate into Ashkenazi and Sephardi sectors continued to exist, expressed not only on the higher level of the two chief rabbis but also in appointments within the bureaucracy of local religious councils throughout the country, so that cities and many small towns had two rabbis. This categorizing practice only intermittently affected daily affairs, and Willner re-

marked on the then-new, widespread tendency to categorize immigrants in terms of their country of origin, such as Tunisians and Romanians.37 This took place even when it was clear that important variation existed within some countries, such as the differences between newcomers from the Atlas Mountains and people who had received elementary or high school education in Casablanca. Willner attributed this new, simplified categorization to cognitive overload given the rapidity and diversity of immigration at the time, though not all popular ethnic labels followed the country-of-origin principle precisely. Jews from northern Iraq were called Kurdim, a term that was salient in some pre-state immigration settings (like Jerusalem),38 and new terms arose, such as Anglosaksim, that included English speakers from North America, England, Australia, and so forth. When examined closely, the classification by country-of-origin is rather ironic, in that Jews coming from some of these geopolitical units, particularly within the Middle East, had not viewed themselves as part of the national entities to which the labels pointed. But country-of-origin was the easiest and most objective way for the new Central Bureau of Statistics to classify immigrants, and it became the basis for the larger grouping into immigrants from Asia, Africa, Europe, and America. Both for official purposes and for social research using these data, the contrast between people from (or whose fathers were from) Asia/Africa as opposed to Europe/America soon became the standard binary method of distinguishing Easterners from Westerners when addressing ethnic dimensions of demography and social mobility, or lack thereof.39 These categories were clearly not perfect (for example, Jews from South Africa were Anglosaksim), but for the most part social research preferred technical solutions to these issues over introducing historical and cultural perspectives into their investigations or into policies linked to their studies. This lack of sensitivity to significant cultural variation hidden by census categories has changed only slowly, as illustrated recently by Jews from the Caucasus, who first were included in the statistics together with all other Russians (those from the former Soviet Union) but in 1996 were placed in a category that distinguished immigrants from the Asiatic regions of Russia from Europeans, and eventually (for some social issues) they were identified as separate from other groups like Jews from Bukhara.40 The reliance on seemingly objective terms (like country of origin) and the avoidance of concepts relating to familiar cultural content (like Sephardi) reflected a general reluctance to place ethnicity at the center of social description and analysis in the social research conducted immediately after Israeli independence. Although, in an

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early paper, Eisenstadt used the term Oriental Jews,41 the main thrust of his subsequent publications was to focus on general social structural variables and to contextualize ethnicity within these only when observed social trends forced giving it recognition. One possible reason for this (albeit not mentioned by Eisenstadt but explicitly raised and then dismissed by his colleague Joseph Ben-David) was that downplaying ethnicity fit into, and reinforced, the nation-building ethos of the time.42 Another reason was that both this ethos and the crystallizing sociological paradigm, though by no means Marxist in any strong sense, still carried within them assumptions that ethnic and national expressions constituted false consciousness. A next generation of sociologists would also claim that the hegemonic categories of the 1950s and 1960s masked the reality of Ashkenazi domination (which I discuss below). I believe that all these explanations bear relevance, and the adoption of this particular approach to Oriental Jews might even be overdetermined, particularly when one remembers how central nation-building was in sociology and political science at the time (from the late 1940s through the early 1960s) in the English-language-dominated research literature. A side note regarding the title of Eisenstadts paper might indicate that, to Americans during that period, the term Oriental mostly carried connotations of the Far EastJapan and Chinaand not the Middle East. This incongruence aside, the title points to the rapidly emerging strength of binary perceptions of Israeli society. The tendency to minimize ethnicity notwithstanding, it forced itself on the attention of society and of researchers in various ways. Almost all writers on the subject point to the 1959 riots by Jews from North Africa (primarily Morocco)43 that took place in Wadi Saliba neighborhood of Haifaand then spread to some other locales as a significant juncture. The political system had to react to these protests, but it managed to do so while limiting the extent to which ethnicity was expressed in politics.44 On another level, though attempts were made to impose cultural homogeneity on the immigrants (some early examples of which are recognized today as outlandish), it quickly became accepted that ethnic traditions would continue in the realms of food, celebrations of holidays, and synagogue life. The most common way of referring to Middle Eastern immigrants, which lumped them together but left room for recognizing some of this variation, became Edot Hamizrah; as already mentioned, this was generally distinguished from Sephardi (which became restricted in its reference as descriptive of a group or of group-belonging). Within 20 years of independence, there were indications (hardly noticed by sociological analysis at first) that

not only were Middle Easterners preserving some practices from the past but they were also refashioning aspects of their traditions to reflect their current place in Israeli society. Subsequent Developments: Sephardi and Mizrahi By the late 1960s, the ratio of people in Israel who could be labeled Middle Eastern as compared to European (based on their or their fathers country of origin) was reaching equilibrium. Just as relevant was the growth of Middle Easterners in the age category in which they could serve in the army and vote. By this time, too, Jews of Moroccan background were the largest country-of-origin category in Israeli society. After the 1967 war, explicit expression and awareness of ethnicity in the public sphere grew in intensity, and other salient expressions of ethnicity appeared over the following decades. These included protests against inequality, dramatized by the appearance of the Israeli Black Panthers in the early 1970s; the growth of popular Middle Eastern ethnic expressionssuch as the Mimouna festival (at the end of Passover), which attracted 100,000 people to Jerusalem; governmental response to omission of the history and culture of Middle Eastern Jewries in the educational curriculum, leading to the creation, in 1976, of a special department devoted to that topic; the development of a critical sociology (and other disciplines) that examined biases within social science discourse during Israels first quarter-century and put forth the category of Mizrahim (in contrast to Ashkenazim) as a more relevant model of understanding ethnic relations in the society; the appearance of the Shas party in 1983 as a successful linkage of ethnicity and politics while highlighting Se phardi tradition placed in a framework of strict religiosity; and subsequent dramatic immigrations in the 1980s and 1990sfrom the (former) Soviet Union and from Ethiopiathat did not displace older ethnic categorizations and problems but added new dimensions so that simple binary representations of Israels ethnic reality became less sharp and more rhetorical. In the following paragraphs, I will touch on some of these developments, with special reference to the categories Sephardi and Mizrahi. In the late 1970s, a combined social and analytic critique of the term Edot Ha-mizrah developed. Sammy Smooha argued that, when edot is used in this manner, it typically refers to an ethnoclass rather than to a strict classification by origin. As such, the term allows unexamined assumptions about differences in class and status

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to remain in place. Both Smooha and Shlomo Swirski, who emphasized differentials in power, promoted the term Mizrahim (as a noun and name of a group, rather than as an adjectivemizrahi ) to include all groups with Eastern origins because it places the issue of social power up front and intimates that this reality stems from shared disadvantaged placement and discrimination within Israeli society rather than reflecting historical cultures and remnants of an immigrant past.45 The term was rapidly accepted within critical social science (and some humanities) discourse, among the widening circle of intellectuals of Middle Eastern/Mizrahi background, and eventually by the media. Today it has become a hegemonic expression for representing a perceived binary ethnic split in Israel, gaining clear prominence when compared to the term Sephardi in this regard. I would also argue that the emergence of the term went hand in hand with recreating the category Ashkenazi as relevant to social analysis.46 Less attention was paid to the fact that not all groups who do not come under an Ashkenazi label feel connected to the term Mizrahi. This has been reported both with regard to Israelis from Turkey and from Bulgaria, whose link to a Sephardi identity is straightforward, and with regard to Jews from Iran.47 These empirical exceptions, however, did little to lessen the widespread appeal of Mizrahi in both scholarly and popular discourse. In the context of these developments, to grasp the meanings of Se phardi in Israeli society is to attend to more than one emphasis and to appreciate contextual variation in its usage. It continued to have the focused meaning of one group (or several related groups) who had an identifiable cultural-religious tradition and who, in the past, were largely Ladino speakers. In comparison to the newer inclusive marker MizrahiSephardi could also be placed side by side with Edot Ha-mizrah in explicitly constituting a label with cultural-historical implications that left current sociological associations implicit, whereas Mizrahi directed attention to the here and now, to younger people, to social protest, and to politics. The social resonances of Sephardi and Mizrahi were thus different. The former still bore hints of an elite (depending on the situation), and the ability to call on global sets of connections, whether expressed organizationally (such as the World Sephardi Federation, which was first organized in 1925 before the Zionist Congress in Vienna) or through the image of wealthy personages like Nessim Gaon (who headed the World Sephardi Federation for many years) or the late Leon Tammam (who set up a rival organization). Mizrahi, by contrast, was clearly rooted in Israeli class experience. Sephardi leaders, whether local or from abroad, expressed concern and sympathy over the Miz-

rahi plight, and some had pretenses of leadership in relation to these issues, but they did not carry with them the tradition of poor and powerless immigrants struggling against an establishment. An instructive figure might be that of Yitzhak Navon, from an old Jerusalem Sephardi family, who represented the integration of Sephardism into Israeli society48 and, by implication, the integration of Israel into the region. As president of the state (197883), he delivered a speech in Arabic to the Egyptian parliament in 1980. Success at this level did translate directly into dramatic progress regarding Israels economic and social problems, which were still strongly correlated with ethnicity. Many social and economic problems interlaced with ethnicity continue to exist today, and they deservedly attract public criticism, but the 1970s may also be seen as a period of opening up possibilities for countervailing forces working to rectify inequalities. I suggest not that there was a rapid, tangible attainment of equality at the time but that a leveling of the playing field began that allowed greater expression to a variety of social and cultural forces. Several points are worthy of attention in this regard. First, by the early 1970s, about one out of four marriages crossed the EuropeanMiddle Eastern divide. Although such intermarriage is neither an unfailing measure of social equality nor a sure mechanism for bringing that about, a trend of more marriages of this type does indicate a loosening of the link between ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Second, the social critique emerging in the 1970s was accepted by significant elements within the Ashkenazi population. This included many people engaged in social welfare and education who were sympathetic to the claims of the Panthers if not always to the specific style of this form of protest. Parallel to this, the critical social analysis mentioned above was by no means restricted to researchers of Mizrahi background. An intellectual and social program eventually emerged that reflected younger Mizrahi intellectuals, calling itself the Democratic Mizrahi Rainbow (ha-keshet ha-demokratit ha-mizrahit), but it never sought to distance itself in principle from Ashkenazi intellectuals, and one could say that its very existence was evidence of a growing Mizrahi voice in society generally. As stated, concrete successes in bringing about greater equality within society were mixed, though it appears that one area in which the playing field opened up significantly to non-Ashkenazi influence was in the intertwined realms of culture and religion. Here, images and content associated with Sephardi appear to have successes, in comparison to Mizrahi. This will be discussed briefly with regard to the Shas party, and also more broadly. The Shas party ran successfully in the Jerusalem municipal elec-

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tions in 1984 and rapidly became significant on the national scene, as it continues to be today. Although the short-lived and small Tami (hatnuah le-masoret yisrael ) political party that preceded it seemed to confirm the conventional wisdom that political ethnicity had no future in Israeli society, Shass success has forced a rethinking of that conclusion. Most analysts focus on social, economic, and political reasons in explaining Shass appearance and success rather than on historically based cultural and religious issues.49 One cultural issue worthy of greater attention is how Shas has managed to bring together two very different religious emphases: the systematic Sephardi halakhism of Baghdad-born Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, who was trained in Jerusalems Porat-Yosef Sephardi yeshivah, and the more popular (ecstatic, mystical) orientation widespread among Jews from Morocco.50 The incorporation of these different Mizrahi cultural backgrounds under a single political umbrella was possible, I suggest, because of the presence of the ideological-religious banner of Sephardism that carried with it demonstrable and historically acknowledged content. As a political party claiming to be able to rectify the results of inequality and discrimination that characterized Israeli society from its formative period, Shas positioned itself in relation to the social and identity elements of Mizrahiyut, but perhaps its ability to bridge a variety of groups was partially enabled by the more cultural-religious and historically based set of symbols embodied in the term Sephardi that entered into the partys official name.51 Beyond politics, the success of Shas may reflect an overall trend, to which it has contributed but which may also be in tension with the more strictly religious (dati or haredi) aspects of the partys ideology. I refer to the fading of Sephardiand to some extent Mizrahias marked categories and their emergence as fully standard (nonmarked) expressions of religious culture in Israel. Indications of such a trend (which I argue is present, without claiming that it has swept throughout the society) may be evident in a number of ways. In recent years, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi has appeared (implying that he felt that he had to appear) at central events in the Mizrahi world such as the mid-winter hilulah of Morocco-born Baba Sali (Rabbi Yisrael AbuHatzira) in the Negev town of Netivot.52 In the same general realm, an ostensibly different phenomenon points in the same direction: the public suggestion that towns and local councils need only one official rabbi (not twoSephardi and Ashkenazi) has repeatedly been raised in recent years as a result both of pressure to cut governmental budgets and of certain political ideologies. Another phenomenon, which may not be widespread but is known in Jerusalem, is the existence of mo-

hels, who have the ability to conduct a circumcision ceremony according to Sephardi, Ashkenazi, or Yemenite customs and liturgy, depending on the request of the client. A trend that has received research attention is that Mizrahi music (some of which has its origins in synagogue music) is seen by many as one of the mainstream expressions of Israeli music.53 Thus, though a sense of distinction is maintained, the situation is far from what it was in the first post-state generation, where anything coming from the East was expected to give way to Israeli (European-based) cultural preference or taste. There is even a sense in which traditions from the East are perceived as the most telling or authentic representations of Jewishness in the Israeli context, and not only with exotic connotations. At least one ritual object of Mizrahi backgroundthe hamsa (hand of Fatma) has become an inclusive Israeli symbol. Once viewed as a sign of superstition, the hamsa (at least within the visual public sphere) is now utilized as a general sign of Israeli-ness, of connection to Jewish tradition, and even to texts.54 Several years ago it appeared in the graphics of a televised promotion for an annual summer festival, in which people were offered the opportunity to experience a variety of approaches to studying classic sources, whatever their religious background might be. In these examples, there may be some melting of the distinction between Sephardi and Mizrahi, but the general point is that, in the realms of tradition and religion (which partially glide into one another and partially are in tension), both of these Eastern expressions have become mainstream Israeli, particularly within a set of images contrasting them with Ashkenazi as standing for middle class, secular, and bearing global-cosmopolitan cultural orientations as opposed to local-national ones. As a final reflection, it should be noted that such a process of the firm Israelization of elements of Sephardi and Mizrahi culture probably entails a thinning of the semantic and cultural associations with classic SepharadSpain. This appears poignantly in the halakhic project of Ovadiah Yosef. Although the rubric Sephardi remains salient, at the center of the historical memory mobilized by the leader of Shas stand the texts created by Karothe Bet Yosef and the Shulhan Arukh55 which become a kind of portable homeland now situated in the Land of Israel, rather than evocations of Spain itself. In other cases, too, the process of Mizrahi and Sephardi traditions becoming one version of standard local culture probably entails some dilution of their historic linkages as they become inserted into the flux of social life in Israel. Yet even the partial retention of past forms and traces leaves open possibilities of cultural reworking that cannot be predicted in advance.

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The meanings and cultural associations of the notion of Sephardi have obviously shifted historically. To say this, however, is not to slip into the clich that each generation simply has (re)invented the Sephardi that best serves its interests. The meaning of this (or any) cultural-ethnic term that one sector within Jewish life seeks to privilege cannot ignore different, and sometimes competing, emphases. Group labels and the cultural content linked to them cannot be separated from scenes of interaction in which they come up against the ideologies, practices, and identities of other groups, nor be separated from semantic fields that are at once dynamic and a reservoir of historical associations. In the case of Sephardi, this includes both new creations like Mizrahi and re-workings of older terms like Ashkenazi. My own reading is that, despite all the buffeting by diverse social forces and vectors of signification, the term Sephardi at this time in Israeli society largely highlights recognized realms of religion and tradition within a broader matrix of cultural meanings, and only to a lesser extent serves as a sharp marker of social boundaries.

Notes
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Israel Anthropological Association in Sderot, May 2004, as well as at the Stanford University workshop in 2007. It is based partially on research supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 907/02) and has benefited from discussions with Chen Bram. Noah Gerber provided some important references and made comments on an earlier draft. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from foreign-language sources are mine. 1 Harvey E. Goldberg, Introduction: Culture and Ethnicity in the Study of Israeli Society, Ethnic Groups 1 (1978): 16386; Harvey E. Goldberg and Hagar Salamon, From Laboratory to Field: Notes on Studying Diversity in Israeli Society, Hagar: International Social Science Review 3 (2002): 12337. 2 Gil Eyal, The Disenchantment of the Orient: Expertise in Arab Affairs and the Israeli State (Stanford, 2006); Yehouda Shenhav, The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity (Stanford, 2006). 3 Harvey E. Goldberg and Chen Bram, Sephardi/Mizrahi/Arab-Jews: Reflections on Critical Sociology and the Study of Middle Eastern Jew-

ries within the Context of Israeli Society, Studies in Contemporary Jewry 22 (2007): 22756. 4 Stacy N. Beckwith, Charting Memory: Recalling Medieval Spain (New York, 2000), xiv. 5 For a perspective on the neighborhood, focusing on one Sephardi group, see Walter Zenner, A Global Community: The Jews from Aleppo, Syria (Detroit, 2000). 6 Abraham Yaari, Toldot ha-hilulah be-Meiron, Tarbits 31 (1961): 72101. 7 Yaron Harel, Mahloket ve-haskamahSfaradim u-mustaarabim behaleb, in Ladinar: Mehkarim be-sifrut, be-musikah uve-historyah shel dovrei Ladino, ed. Y. Dishon and Sh. Refael (Tel Aviv, 1998), 11938. 8 Yaron Tsur, Yahadut Tunisyah be-shilhei ha-tkufah ha-trum kolonialit, Mi-kedem umi-yam 3 (1990): 79114. 9 Daniel J. Schroeter, The Sultans Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World (Stanford, 2002). 10 Thanks to David Bunis for email discussions on this matter. 11 The complex field of interaction that involved Sephardim, old-time Middle Easterners, and newcomer Ashkenazi Jews in nineteenth-century Palestine is sketched by Raphael Patai, who also indicates that some of the Ashkenazim sought to intermarry with and join the established elite Sephardi families. See Raphael Patai, On Culture Contact and Its Working in Modern Palestine, American Anthropologist n.s. 49, no. 4, part 2 (Oct. 1947): 20. 12 These Jews have variously been called Kavkazim, Tatim, or Yehudei Ha-har. I am thankful to Chen Bram for a historical perspective regarding them. See, e.g., Chen Bram, Yehudei kavkaz be-Dagestan: Zehut kolektivit ve-hisardut kehilatit (Ramat Gan, 2007). 13 Yaffah Berlovitz, Reshitah shel ha-sifrut be-erets yisrael ve-zikoteha le-shirat sfarad: Hatzaah le-model tarbut yehudi-arvi, Bikoret u-farshanut 32 (1998): 94110. Prominent within this group were David Yellin (18641941) and Avraham Shalom Yahuda (18771951). I am indebted to Noah Gerber for pointing me to some of the materials discussed in this and the next few paragraphs. 14 Berlovitz, Reshitah shel ha-sifrut, 100101, and Shmuel Avneri Bialik ve-edot ha-mizrah: Anatomiyah shel alilah ve-elbon shav, Ha-arets: Tarbut ve-sifrut , Jan. 2, 2004. The latter writer, Bialiks archivist, discusses the by-now infamous quip attributed to Bialik that he hated Arabs because they were like Sephardim. In claiming that it is not likely that this remark originated with Bialik, the article gives a picture of Bialiks views regarding Sephardi literature and related topics. A more recent discussion by Lital Levy, From Baghdad to Bialik with Love, Comparative Literature Studies 42 (2005): 12553, shows the complexity of Bialiks position. 15 Hayim Nahman Bialik, Tehiyat ha-sfaradim, in Devarim shebe-al peh ,

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vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1935), 11017. Levy, From Baghdad to Bialik with Love, supplies a translation of the passage cited on p. 152, n. 45. 16 Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology Through the Looking Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe (Cambridge, Engl., 1987); Jolle Bahloul, The Sephardic Jew as Mediterranean: A View from Kinship and Gender, Journal of Mediterranean Studies 4 (1994): 197207. 17 Yisrael Kloizner, Ha-tnuah ha-tsiyonit ba-kavkaz be-reshitah, Shvut 8 (1981): 8698; Chen Bram, Mitnagdim anu le-hityashvut meyuhedet shel edot mizrahiyot, yehudei ha-har mi-kavkaz: Al hakarah, hishtalvut ve-zehut, in EdotEdut le-yisrael , ed. A. Mizrahi and Y. Ben-David (Netanya, 2001), 54771, esp. 569, nn. 13. The delegates wore Caucasian dress at the Congress. 18 Eyal, Disenchantment of the Orient , 5556. The place of Yemenites and Yemenite artisanship in the Bezalel school established in Jerusalem by Boris Schatz will be discussed in a forthcoming doctoral dissertation by Noah Gerber. 19 Eyal, Disenchantment of the Orient ; Shenhav, Arab Jews. 20 See, e.g., the list of communities registered in 1939 in the Jerusalem District Commissioners office that appears in Raphael Patai, Israel between East and West: A Study in Human Relations (Philadelphia, 1953), 8283. 21 Harvey E. Goldberg, Historical and Cultural Dimensions of Ethnic Phenomena in Israel, in Studies in Israeli Ethnicity, ed. A. Weingrod (New York, 1985), 179200, esp. 19496. 22 Bram, Mitnagdim anu le-hityashvut meyuhedet shel edot mizrahiyot; Penina Motzafi-Haller, Intelektualim mizrahim 19465: Ha-zehut haetnit u-gvuloteha, in Mizrahim be-yisrael: Iyun bikorti mehudash , ed. Hanan Hever, Yehouda Shenhav, and Penina Motzafi-Haller ( Jerusalem, 2002), 15290. 23 Elie Eliachar, Living with Jews (London, 1983), chaps. 1314. 24 One discussion of Sephardim within the Zionist field in the Mandate period is found in Eyal, Disenchantment of the Orient , 4853. 25 For an overview of this period, see Judah Matras, Social Change in Israel (Chicago, 1965). 26 Anat Liebler, Ha-statistikah ke-arkhitekturah hevratit: Al kinunah shel ha-lishkah ha-merkazit le-statistikah ke-mosad apoliti (Masters thesis, Tel Aviv University, 1998). 27 Dorothy Willner, Nation-Building and Community in Israel (Princeton, 1969), 200. 28 Judith T. Shuval, Immigrants on the Threshold (New York, 1963). 29 Alex Weingrod, Israel: Group Relations in a New Society (New York, 1965), 3. 30 Matras, Social Change in Israel , 22. 31 S. N. Eisenstadt, The Absorption of Immigrants: A Comparative Study Based Mainly on the Jewish Community in Palestine and the State of Israel (London, 1954). 32 Ibid., 90. 33 Ibid., 91.

 34 Patai, Israel between East and West , 2226, 6366. 35 Ibid., 62, 63. 36 Harvey E. Goldberg, Cave-Dwellers and Citrus-Growers: A Jewish Community in Libya and Israel (Cambridge, Engl., 1972), 86. 37 Willner, Nation-Building, 200. 38 It was probably also common for Jews in Baghdad to refer to those from the north of Iraq as Kurds; for the most part they did not speak Arabic. 39 Some studies distinguished between immigrants from Asia and those from Africa, which showed some significant differences in the early years of large-scale immigration. 40 Chen Bram, Hakarah, heeder hakarah ve-hakarah shguyah bi-kvutsot be-kerev olei hever ha-amim, in Rav tarbutiyut bi-rei ha-yisreeliyut , ed. O. Nahtomi ( Jerusalem, 2003), 16392. 41 S. N. Eisenstadt, The Oriental Jews in Palestine (A Report on a Preliminary Study in Culture-Contacts), Jewish Social Studies 12 (1950): 199222. 42 Joseph Ben-David, Ethnic Differences or Social Change? in Integration and Development in Israel , ed. S. N. Eisenstadt, R. Bar-Yosef, and Ch. Adler ( Jerusalem, 1970), 36887 [originally published in Megamot 3 (1952): 17183]. 43 For an exploration of the specific place of Moroccan Jewry in the study of Mizrahim, see Henriette Dahan-Kalev, Heker ha-mizrahim ba-sotsyologyah ha-yisreelit: Ha-marokaim ke-mikreh shel ha-mikreh, Peamim 108 (Summer 2006): 87126. 44 Hanna Herzog, Adatiyut politit-dimui mul metsiut: Nituah sotsyologi-histori shel ha-reshimot ha-adatiyot le-asefat ha-nivharim vela-kneset (Ramat Efal, 1986). 45 Sammy Smooha, Bikoret al girsah mimsadit adkanit shel ha-gishah ha-tarbutit be-sotsyologyah shel yahasei edot be-yisrael, Megamot 29 (1985): 7392, which relates to Eliezer Ben-Refael, The Emergence of Ethnicity: Cultural Groups and Social Conflict in Israel (Westport, Conn., 1982). A reply is in E. Ben-Refael, Adatiyut, teoryah u-mitos, Megamot 29 (1985): 190205. See also S. Smooha, Social Research on Jewish Ethnicity in Israel, 19481986 (Haifa, 1987), and Shlomo Swirski, Israel: The Oriental Majority (London: 1989 [original Hebrew and longer version, 1981]), 1, 6061. 46 Goldberg and Bram, Sephardi/Mizrahi/Arab-Jews. For more refined approaches to the notion of Mizrahi , see Hever, Shenhav, and MotzafiHaller, Mizrahim be-yisrael . 47 Walter Weiker, The Unseen Israelis: The Jews from Turkey in Israel (Lanham, Md., 1988), 12; Guy Haskell, From Sofia to Jaffa: The Jews of Bulgaria and Israel (Detroit, 1994), 14041; Judith Goldstein, Iranian Ethnicity in Israel: The Performance of Identity, in Weingrod, Studies in Israeli Ethnicity, 23758. 48 In 1997, Navon was named chair of a newly created National Authority for Ladino. 49 There are exceptions to this generalization; see, e.g., Zvi Zohar, Le-

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hahzir atarah le-yoshnahHazono shel ha-rav ovadyah, in Shas: Etgar ha-yisreeliyut , ed. Yoav Peled (Tel Aviv, 2001), 159209. Also, in 2002, Nitzan Hen, Knesset correspondent for Channel 1, organized a televised panel discussion on Ovadiah Yosefs religious and halakhic views, in contrast to his political positions. 50 For an example of this process not linked directly to Shas, see Andr Levy, Hilulah rabah ve-atseret tshuvah: Nitua h mikreh, in Mehkarim be-tarbutam shel yehudei tsfon Afrikah , ed. Issachar Ben-Ami ( Jerusalem, 1991), 16779. 51 The original name of Shas is the International World Sephardic Association of Torah Keepers (Hitahdut ha-sfaradim ha-olamit shomrei torah). 52 Yoram Bilu and Eyal Ben-Ari, The Making of Modern Saints: Manufactured Charisma and the Abu-Hatseiras of Israel, American Ethnologist 19 (1992): 2944. 53 Motti Regev and Edwin Seroussi, Popular Music and National Culture in Israel (Berkeley, 2004), 191247. 54 According to Shalom Sabar (personal communication), the only country that utilizes the hamsa more than Israel, as a public image, is Morocco. See his Yeihud ha-khamsa: Motiv ha-yad ha-magit be-hagut uve-folklor shel ha-yehudim be-artsot ha-Islam, Mahanayim: Bamah le-mehkar le-hagut ule-tarbut yehudit 14 (2003): 193203. 55 The Bet Yosef, echoing the authors first name, is the earlier and larger halakhic compendium, of which the later Shulhan Arukh is a condensation. In terms of promoting his program, the current leader of Shas does not shy away from playing on the resonance of his family name with the title of that book and with Karos first name.