Lawrence, NJ – Sephardic Jews in America are a minority of a minority, as they are vastly outnumbered by Jews of Eastern European, German, Russian and Polish descent known as Ashkenazi Jews.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
But Sephardim form an important part of the Jewish heritage and tapestry, with ancestors who fled to the Ottoman Empire after they were expelled from their native Spain in 1492.
During a lecture series this month at Rider University, Judaic historian Devin Naar, himself a Sephardic Jew, put the spotlight on how the Holocaust ravaged, displaced and ultimately helped integrate Sephardic Jews with their Jewish brethren.
Naar, whose speech was the 10th Annual Dorothy Koppelman Memorial Holocaust Lecture at Rider, noted that Koppelman’s parents were Ashkenazi Jews who came to America from Turkey and Greece during World War I but left behind loved ones in Salonika, Greece, who perished in the Holocaust.
Their story is similar to the stories of many European Jews who immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century and had relatives who perished at the hands of the Nazis.
But their story offers a glimpse into the Sephardic Jewish experience, especially through its roots in Salonika, which in the early 20th century was considered the Jerusalem of the Balkans because almost half of its 170,000 residents were Sephardic Jews, Naar said.
Their move to the United States and loss of family “encapsulates the lesser-known experiences of the Sephardic Jews,” said Naar, an advanced doctoral candidate in Stanford University’s history department.
A 2001 Lawrence High School graduate whose father, Harry I. Naar, is an arts professor at Rider, Devin Naar is completing his doctoral dissertation on the history and culture of Sephardic Jews in the first half of the 20th century, with a particular focus on Salonika.
Devin Naar acknowledged his interest in the Sephardic Jewish experience has personal, not just academic, roots. His grandfather came to the United States from Salonika in the 1920s, along with his parents and eight siblings.
But his grandfather’s oldest brother stayed behind and, along with his wife and two children, was slaughtered at Auschwitz in 1943.
The Sephardic communities in New Brunswick and other parts of central New Jersey retained strong ties with their northeastern Mediterranean roots, he said.
“We often think about the stories of the Old World and the New World as separate,” Naar said. We think that “immigrants left the Old World, became absorbed into the American melting pot and never looked back.”
“I want to tell a different story,” he said. “It is now known that a quarter or more of all immigrants returned home during the great era of mass migrations in the late 19th and early 20th century,” he said.
“The Sephardic Jews were no different, but those who stayed in the States retained links to their native communities,” he said, while noting that the American and Balkan Sephardic Jewish communities grew increasingly apart after World War II.
But Sephardic Jews through their community organizations and newspapers in New York City helped to rally people against Nazi book burnings and the threat of Adolf Hitler at the onset of the Third Reich, Naar said.
They offered financial support to orphanages and survivors of Nazi occupation in their native land, he said.
Before World War II in the early 20th century, Sephardic Jews faced discrimination and stereotyping from the dominant Ashkenazi Jewish communities in the United States within which they often settled, most notably on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he said.
They were perceived as being less Jewish and having lower class, according to Naar.
Sephardic Jews sought to counter those prejudices by integrating with their Ashkenazi brethren and into U.S. society in general, as well as by forming their own communities to retain Sephardic identity, Naar said.
“These Jews were well integrated into American society,” Naar said.
One of them, he noted, was Emma Lazarus, famed for the inscription on the Statue of Liberty that ends, “I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
if money is the ruler, then they are feet above the rest.
however when it comes to financial representation, they are anything but a minority.
sheivet levi was also the smallest of all shvotim & they were the chosen ones by hashem.
let our sfardi brothers & sisters know that we love them and we’re all one big families.
They may be a minority but they sure do dress better!
Signed: an ashkenazi
Why do people think that Siphardim have “more” money. First off, most Siphardim do not have wealth and affluence. The small Syrian community in Brooklyn indeed does, as well as the Persians in LA. But most Siphardim, have come recently unto the US shores, and are struggling. The advantage of the Syrians is that they have been here since the early part of the 20th century. They have had plenty of time to amass wealth and hand it down to their kids.
Secondly, dressing better does not mean larger bank accounts. It is within Siphardic culture to impress by show of fine clothing and nice cars/homes. A lot of their accumulated wealth is spent in that fashion. Who knows what is the real deal..I.E. Bank accounts.
Funny how Ashkenazi believe/ed that their Jewish roots are more authentic than the Sefardim. It’s like watching Black people in America who think they have authentic roots to African cultures.
enough with this sephardic ashkenasik bios
I find it interesting that the article felt it necessary to talk about the discrimination of the Ashkenazim of the lower east against the Sephardi. They were not the only ones discriminated against. They were just a wrung on the ring of Jew on Jew hatred. In the mass migration era of the early 20th century, the wealthy Sephardim who had been here since the days of Mikveh Israel hated the wealthy Ashkenazi Germans who came after them. The wealthy Germans hated the greenhorn polish and Russian who came over and worked the garment trade. The greenhorn Russians hated the established Russians and they all hated the poor Sephardi. The only difference was that as much as they all hated each other they were still Jews and the wealthy set up funds to help the poor improve and assimilate (in this case that is not a bad word).
All jews are beloved to Hashem and to each other. – if there is a tendency to ‘group’ within your own ‘circle’ it is just because it is culturally familiar and cultular heritage has to be a little bit exclusive in order to protect and preserve the heritage distinctiveness and unique flavor. It is not a judgment or condemnation of any one, Never take it as a personal put down.
The sepharadim are most def. The cream of the crop… Especially the syrian community.I know that my ashkenazi yeshivah would not be around were it not for a few very giving and supportive syrian holy yidden… Tizku lmitzves heilige sfardeshe yidden
People use the term “Sefardi” for non Ashkenazi Jews, but this isn’t accurate.
Sefardi Jews are Jews who’s family originated in Spain.
Those Jews who come from Persia, Iraq, Buchara, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon ect. are not Sefardi Jews, they each have a history that is unique and ancient.
Remember, everyone likes to simplify the history of our people so much that you would think the Jews came out of Egypt, all lived in Israel until Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judea, we all went into Babylon, which was conquered by Persia and all hung out there until Cyrus allows the Jews to re-build the temple, we all move back and live in the land until the Romans throw us out, the ones who remain write the Yerushalmi and wind up known as the Ashkenazim, the rest go to Babylon and write the Bavli, disperse throughout the middle east and are known as Sfardim…but none of this is true! There have always been separate and distinct groups within the Jewish nation, each with their own customs and beliefs, each just as valid as the next. The Jews of Malta were there from before the Gemara was written, so were the bnei teman and the Cochin Jews of India….
But we’ve homogenized them all as “Sefardim”.
sad.
The way to not be a minority is by having large families. The way not to FEEL like a minority is to excel in Torah and Mitzvos. They way end this millennially long sense of disunity (save for when we unite when facing crisis) is by teaching our children ahavas Yisroel for ALL of Hashem’s firstborn children, even those who view the world differently. The way to let old ridiculous prejudices dissipate into oblivion, especially in today’s frum world where certain prejudices (e.g. Sefardi, Yekke, Polish, Russian etc.) are simply non-issues to the younger enlightened generation, is by NOT writing inferiority-complex, dig-up-the-past articles such as these. Let the writer of this article, instead of spending time on advanced doctoral ideas of questionable practical value, become a renown halachic and/or spiritual leader such as the late, holy Rav Mordechai Eliyahu obm. He had a healthy self-image and was most humble, and scholarly, and spiritual, and provided guidance to thousands (incl. non-sefardim). How about you and your self-image?
it ammazes me that although we are one people with the same godwe still choose to divide ourselves, isn’t it not enough that for centuries we have been divided by others???? Wake up and remember who you really are ….