Can't Start the Party.......

The term "Sephardi" doesn't seem to sufficient to encompass the broad array of people covered by the term. At NYU, Sephardic seems almost synonymous with Persian. Originally, Sephardic was supposed to mean hailing from Spain. I think having more knowledge about history and trade routes and migration would help me understand how all these various regions are connected.

It's really interesting to see how the mission of the American Sephardi Federation has shifted over the years. So many of the Jewish sects have political focuses. It seems like the ASF had more of a political message in the late seventies/early eighties when it tried to publicize the mistreatment of Jews in Arab countries and the Soviet Union. Today, the focus seems to be largely on emphasizing a cultural identity and almost do PR for the existence of Sephardic Jewish communities around the world (with their magazine). I wonder if this shift means that there is less mistreatment of Sephardic Jews (maybe only because many have emigrated out of their homelands and the Soviet Union has fallen).

On the ASF website, there's a link to a definition of a Sephardic Jew, and Angel defines it as "Almost any Jew who isn't Ashkenazi." I think this definition is potentially troublesome because it creates an Other. It sets up the main Jewish group as Ashkenazi and all other cultures, although they might actually be extremely different and diverse, are lumped together under a name that doesn't even appropriately identify them all. When Kostelanz talks about Greek or Persian Sephardic Jews, he is describing something different from say Iranian or African Jews. As he mentions, Sephardic Jews are often left out of anthologies and other works on American Jewry. With such a huge emphasis on culture in defining today's American Jewish Identity, I wonder if this is why the ASF has started focusing on promoting some Sephardic culture; so it can compete with Ashkenazi culture on equal footing.