Stillman - Sephardi religious responses to modernity

The Sherman Lecture Series

The Sherman Lecture Series is an annual series supported by the Sherman Trust on behalf of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK.

Edited by Dr Tudor Parfitt and Professor John Hinnels, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK.

Other volumes in preparation

ISSN 1023-7917

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Copyright 1995 by Routledge

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Stillman, Norman A.

Sephardi Religious Responses to

Modernity. (Sherman Lecture Series,

ISSN 1023-7917; Vol. 1)

I. Title II. Series

296.8

ISBN 3-7186-5699-X

ISBN 978-1-1343-6556-2 (Kindle)

Front Cover

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in a moment of meditation (Photograph by Joel Fishman)

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

Printed and bound by CPI Antony Rowe, Eastbourne

To our dear Jennie

Who has immeasurably enriched our familys life with her love and friendship

Gratitude may be, in the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, a lame sentiment, but its expression is a duty, and a pleasurable one at that. I am deeply grateful to the many individuals and institutions connected with the writing and publication of this book which is based upon my Sherman Lectures delivered at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, from 28 February to 3 March 1994.

My warmest thanks to Dr Tudor Parfitt, Director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at S.O.A.S. for having initially suggested my name to Professor John R. Hinnells, the Head of the Department of the Study of Religions at S.O.A.S. and the administrator of the lecture series. And of course, my thanks to Professor Hinnells for having invited me. Both he and Dr Parfitt were the most gracious and cordial of hosts. Naturally, thanks are due to the Sherman Trust for endowing the lectures. I was deeply honored to have been chosen to inaugurate the series.

My stay in London was kindly facilitated by Mr E.D. Ishag, who very generously provided me with comfortable accommodation. I have Mr Sidney L. Shipton of the Taali World Movement for a United Israel to thank for having made the initial contact with Mr Ishag. Dr Max Levene showed me many personal kindnesses while I was in London and contributed to making my stay there a pleasant one.

Over the years, my thoughts on the subject of Sephardi and Oriental Jewish religiosity and more particularly on the subject of Sephardi responses to modernity have benefitted greatly from conversations with Professors Menahem Ben-Sasson and Harvey Goldberg of the Hebrew University, Shlomo Deshen and Moshe Shokeid of Tel Aviv University, Dr Zvi Zohar of the Shalom Hartman Institute, and Rabbi Dr Marc D. Angel of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation Shearith Israel of New York. My profound intellectual debt to a number of them will be obvious from the numerous citations of their works throughout this book.

Zvi Zohar was particularly kind in tracking down and sending me an elusive reference that I needed on the very day he returned home from several weeks of reserve military duty. I regret that his important new book Tradition and Change: Halachic Responses of Middle Eastern Rabbis to Legal and Technological Change (Egypt and Syria, 18801920) (Jerusalem, 1993) reached me only after my book had gone to press and thus could not be cited in the notes. It is, however, included in the Bibliography.

My colleague at Binghamton University, Professor Allan Arkush kindly read the original manuscript of the lectures and offered many valuable critiques and suggestions. In this and other matters pertaining to Jewish intellectual history, he has helped me to clarify my own thinking with his keen and incisive mind.

My graduate student, Mr Josef W. Meri, has been a tremendous help to me as a research assistant, assiduously tracking down with his mastery of computer skills the far-flung locations of source materials in a variety of languages.

As always, the staff of the Binghamton University Interlibrary Loan Office and its director, James J. Mellone, were most helpful, cheerfully expediting dozens of requests for rare bibliographical items not available to me in Binghamton.

Some of the research that went into this book was conducted as part of a broader research project under a grant from the Maurice Amado Foundation through its Sephardic Education Project. Final editing and seeing the manuscript through the press was done while on sabbatical leave from Binghamton University while in Israel as Lady Davis Fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Dayan Fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel-Aviv University in Ramat Aviv during the academic year 19941995.

Finally, it is customary for an author to acknowledge his indebtedness to his family for their loving support and encouragement. My case has always been special. My wife Yedida is my closest colleague. We have collaborated on research projects, books, and articles. Even on independent intellectual ventures, we consult a great deal with one another and this book is no exception. My acquaintance with various aspects of popular religion discussed in Chapter Four owes much to her. Indeed, it was she who first introduced me to the spirit of Sephardi religious life which I have tried to evoke in this book. Normally, I would end my acknowledgements here. But a word of thanks must be said to our children, Mia and Enan. During the time I spent preparing the lectures upon which this book is based, they were even more encouraging and helpful than usual. Both of them performed all sorts of tasks on my behalf assisting me with university administrative work, providing secretarial assistance, and zealously protecting me from interruptions. Mia sought out and photocopied several rare items for me from Brandeis University Librarys superb Judaica collection. I give thanks to Him Who turns the heart of the fathers to the children, and turns the heart of the children to their fathers.

N.A.S.

July 1995

Over the past two hundred years, the Jewish people like the world around it has undergone a radical transformation, or more precisely, a number of radical transformations. For the greater part of the eighteenth century, most Jews Ashkenazim and Sephardim alike lived in semi-autonomous, corporate communities amidst the larger societies around them. In some places, they were viewed as aliens or pariahs, confined to ghettoes or a pale of settlement, or at the least restricted from living in certain locales without special permission. In other places, they were protgs, protected subjects (