Monday, July 10, 2017

Why are there Ashkenazic and Sefardic Jews?



Rabbi Mendel Kessin, latest shiur


8 comments:

Unknown said...

Greetings from the Holyland !!!! Noticed today a comment on your blog.. Anonymous said...
"This is why I get upset when I see articles or comments written by Rabbis who, should know better, call Bilaam a 'prophet' instead of a sorcerer that he was" No need to get upset !!!! The Talmud in tractate Bava Batra 15 b states that there were 7 gentile prophets one of them Bilam .. Kol tuv ..Yehuda Richter

Mr. Cohen said...

SEPHARDIC JEWS REJECT REFORM JUDAISM:

Reform—with rebuke for existing forms inherent in the very word—was by its nature incompatible with traditional Sephardic orthodoxy. Reform, an attempt to bring Judaism “up to date,” to make Judaism appear to be at home with existing American religious patterns, was attacked by traditionalists as a subversive attempt to “Christianize” Judaism. Under Reform, women would come down from their secluded balconies in synagogues, and worship side by side with their husbands. Men would take off their tall silk hats. [Reform] Synagogues would look more like churches. English would replace Hebrew.

SOURCE: The Grandees: the Story of America's Sephardic Elite (chapter 14, page 192) by Stephen Birmingham, year 1971, First Lyons Press paperback edition, ISBN: 9781493024681 ISBN: 149302468X
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“…it [Reform Temple Emanu-El, in year 1868 CE] represented—on a national scale—a triumph for the Reform movement, which the Sephardim had so long opposed.”

SOURCE: The Grandees: the Story of America's Sephardic Elite (chapter 18, page 253) by Stephen Birmingham, year 1971, First Lyons Press paperback edition, ISBN: 9781493024681 ISBN: 149302468X
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“While Reform Judaism was remaking the pattern of Jewish life, threatening to topple the traditional orthodoxy, these [Sephardic] Jews knew nothing of it.”

SOURCE: The Grandees: the Story of America's Sephardic Elite (chapter 21, page 273) by Stephen Birmingham, year 1971, First Lyons Press paperback edition
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“…the insistence of the Sephardim on retaining the Orthodox form of worship—against the trend toward modernization and Americanization that has been marked among Jewry all over the country …”

SOURCE: The Grandees: the Story of America's Sephardic Elite (chapter 22, page 284) by Stephen Birmingham, year 1971, First Lyons Press paperback edition, ISBN: 9781493024681 ISBN: 149302468X
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“To this day there is no Sephardic synagogue which is not strictly Orthodox. Although not all Sephardic Jews are personally Orthodox, Orthodoxy has remained the official Sephardic tradition. Nowhere in the entire Sephardic world has Reform or Conservative Judaism penetrated.”

SOURCE: The Secret Jews (chapter 3, page 99) by Joachim Prinz, year 1973, Random House, ISBN-10: 0853031851 ISBN-13: 978-0853031857
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“The Reform leaders did not rest on their laurels, and continued agitating until they had obtained a foothold in virtually every single kehillah in New York.
Out of 100 shuls that had been established in the early 1800s, only a pitiful ten percent, ten shuls in all, remained Frum [Orthodox].
Three or four of the ten were Sephardicshuls, and the rest were Ashkenazi shuls that had heroically managed to withstand the pressure of the Reform movement.”

SOURCE: The Rav HaKolel and His Generation 5th Edition (chapter 7, page 53) by Rabbi Yonah Landau, year 2014 CE, 68 Lee Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211
…We do declare that:
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We affirm the eternality of our holy Torah, the Jewish nation, and the Holy Land of Israel.

We affirm that our Judaism is solely determined by the teachings of our Holy Torah, both written and oral, as passed down through the generations, all the way to Sinai.
Movements such as Conservative and Reform are foreign to our Torah tradition, and their executions of halachic rites such as: marriage, divorce, and conversion will NOT be recognized.

SOURCE: RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY THE IRANIAN RABBANIM IN THE UNITED STATES AT ITS FIRST NATIONAL RABBINIC CONFERENCE, 2017 JUNE 7 * YEAR TAF SHIN AYIN ZAYIN, SIVAN 13, IN ONTARIO, CALIFORNIA:
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Anonymous said...

True that these sorcerers could be referred to as prophets because they could have visions just as well as the Jewish prophets, but it is more correct to call them what they really were and that is - 'sorcerers', as their visions came from the 'dark side' (impure). H' gave ten measures of black magic to the world, so it is powerful but when you read 'prophet', it seems to give a different meaning to it. Don't know who the other ones were and maybe some were even righteous, but Bilaam, we know, was evil. In the end, everything is from H'.

Anonymous said...

This is a very interesting shiur. This would be in conflict with Rabbi Wallerstein's teaching to stay away from non-Jewish music.

Anonymous said...

The boundaries between the Ashkenazim and Sepharadim may be ending, but our minhagim do not.

LondonMale said...

Is it the case that there are 35 Ashkenazim Tikkunim to be made and 35 Sephardic Tikkunim to be made?

If so, how do the Jews of Ethiopia, Iran, China, India etc fit in to this?

Anonymous said...

Think that Jews from Iran would be considered more to the Sephardic side. Whereas Jews coming from Ethiopia, China and India might be considered in a different category altogether as many of these were and are of questionable Jewish heritage, where much is missing from their Torah knowledge, such as the Oral Laws. Moshiach will be the one to answer all such questions.

Anonymous said...

Iran yes definitely Sefardi.