Sephardic Culture

Recently, while searching for information for a discussion on a much more "Orthonomic" issue, I ran into a thread on a very old discussion of modern Orthodox educators about ideas for a Sephardic Culture Day. The discussion on Sephardic Jewry was much more interesting to me than what I was searching for an is the impetus for this post.

The initiator of the thread was looking for ideas for a Sephardic Culture day in addition to his own. I'm glad that he was seeking ideas, because he really needed them. His list was definitely limited: food, Sefer Torah, and Tefilla.

The sparsity of the list provided, and many of the other ideas provided, left me somewhat shocked, saddened and dismayed, as well as a little angry.

How is it that over one thousand years of glorious history that brought the Torah world the likes of so many greats including Yehuda HaLevi, Yosef Caro, the Abarbanel, the Ibn Ezra, the Ramban, and the Rambam, and many more, as well as some of the more recent greats such the Ben Ish Hai, Chief Rabbis Benzion Uziel and Chaim David HaLevy, and Rav Ovadia Yosef Shlita,
became reduced (in the minds of the educated, no less) to borekas, a "quaint" Sefer Torah, and and a different Nussach?

To limit Sephardim to a borekas and pasteles, is akin to limiting Ashkenazim to Gefilte Fish and kugel. And, that is patently ridiculous.

And, don't think for a second that these educators who were discussing their schools' Sephardic Culture Days have never met a Sephardi or Mizrachi Jew. For the most part, they all appeared to be in communities that host their own, longstanding, full-service, Sephardi Batei Knesset. So, I can only assume that their schools have been educating Sephardi students for many years.

While I do (greatly) appreciate that many schools are trying to include Sephardim in their curriculum, I personally believe that Sephardic education or culture is part and parcel of a Torah education and should be incorporated into the regular classroom education, rather than relegated to its own corner, as something that is, perhaps weird or even exotic.

While it goes without saying that Sephardi students should be knowledgeable of their interpretations of halacha and minhagim, their nussach, and their history,. . . I think that Ashkenazi students too would benefit from knowing some of the basics of Sephardi life. As American Jews become more and more integrated, it is important to know some of the basics of interpretations of halacha and minhagim between different types of Ashkenazim, Hasidim, and Sephardim. I firmly believe that it is valuable to have at least an elementary familiarity with different Siddurim, as there will be times when a person will attend a minyan or a simcha where the Nussach and the minhag is different. And, understanding the interplay of Jewish history and general history is vital towards understanding and dealing world and communal issues in the modern world, from kiruv in different types of communities to Messianism to Iran.

(More to come).