In my previous diary on the origins of the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, there was a request for further diaries on the other Jewish populations of the world.
This diary will explore the history of the Sephardim, those Jewish people who trace their heritage to the Iberian peninsula and the expulsions from there in the late middle ages.
The expulsions forced the Sephardim to become a "diaspora within a diaspora" and become prominent in many parts of the world. Sephardim have been important in medieval and Renaissance civilization, and the founding of the USA, among many other feats.
As in the previous diary, this one makes no claim on what might be a just solution to the I/P dilemma.
Who are they? (Hint: probably not what you think)
In keeping with the theme of the previous diary, I will examine a misconception in this one as well. In that diary, the misconception was the disproven notion that the Khazar people were the ancestors of the so-called 'Ashkenazim' - the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe.
In this diary, I will address the misconception that goes something like: "Sephardim represent one of two divisions of Jewish people". Often accompanying that misconception is the notion that they are the ones who should be viewed, opposed to the Ashkenazim, as more "Exotic" or more "Brown" or more "Arab" or more something. People often try to view Israel through an American racial lens, and flush out who is 'white' and who isn't. It is pretty ridiculous, actually.
In fact, the Sephardim are, like the Ashkenazim, just one of many groups of Jewish people throughout the world. The defining characteristic of the Sephardim is that they trace the origin of their community to Spain and Portugal . "Sefard" in fact, is the Hebrew name for far Western Europe.
Now, because of the way that religious traditions evolved over time, many groups of Jews who are not Sephardic in a cultural sense follow Sephardic religious customs, and this is the source of a lot of confusion. Furthermore, in the lands that the Sephardim populated there was often a blending with an original Jewish community. This history deals with the Sephardic people in an ethnographic and cultural sense.
More Mediterranean Origins
Like the Ashkenazim, the genesis of the Sephardi people is the waning of the Roman Empire, throughout which Jewish people were dispersed. And as with the Ashkenazim, we have genetic evidence to show that at many members of the founding population of the Sephardim had origins in the Middle East.
Studies of Y-chromosomes reveal that the Sephardic Jews have male lineages that are similar to other Jews, and similar to Arabs in the Levant, but different from the local populations in the regions where they lived.
To again cite the prominent Y-chromosome study published in PNAS (M. Hammer et al., 1999),
The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.
Since dispersing throughout the Western world, the Sephardim have retained a substantial amount of internal genetic coherence, as evidenced by a number of hereditary diseases that are present in the population but uncommon outside.
Like the Ashkenazim, the exact genesis of the Sephardi community is murky, but a Jewish population emerged in the Iberian peninsula who were initially tolerated by their Visgothic rulers, and who developed their own creole language, Ladino. Ladino emerged as a mix of Latin and proto-Spanish elements, with Hebrew and other influences, later to be enriched with Turkish and Arabic.
Again, as with the Ashkenazim, genetics and linguistics paint a consistent picture of the origin of the Sephardi community. Hebrew men - and some Hebrew women - mixed with Greek, Roman and local populations, and a hybrid culture emerged. Throughout their history in many lands, the Sephardim have maintained some continuity with their Iberian heritage, often retaining Ladino as a vernacular language, and quite often retaining Latin surnames.
Golden Age I
For the Jews in Iberia, the situation under the Visgoths deteriorated, and they were victimized by violence and unfair restrictions. The Muslims who conquered the peninsula in 711 AD were greeted as liberators by the Jewish community, and indeed they were.
For the first few hundred years in Islamic Iberia, Jews enjoyed a golden age. The medieval polymath Maimonedes exemplifies how the Iberian Jews were at the forefront of the science, medicine, math and literature of the time, influencing the whole Islamic and Christian worlds, and acting as a crucial bridge between the two. This was the beginning of a pattern that continues to the present day of Jewish people flourishing when a society is open enough to give them the opportunity to, to the jealousy of many others.
In the eleventh century, Iberia had by far the largest Jewish population in the world, probably around 300,000 people. The population of Portugal was 10% Jewish.
Troubles and more troubles
Tolerant Iberian Islamic rulers were replaced by fanatical ones, who persecuted the Jews. The conquest by Christian rulers of the Spanish Kingdoms and Portugal was initially celebrated by their new subjects, but the Castillian and Portuguese kings tolerated the Jews only as long as it was convenient, then turned on them. In 1391 a pogrom by zealous Christians killed 1/3 of the Jewish population of Spain.
By 1492 in Spain, and 1498 in Portugal, the choice was given to the once great Jews of the peninsula: convert, die, or leave.
Many converted, and large numbers of these converted families were prominent in the Spanish empire. Some settled in New Mexico where today a surprisingly large percentage of the male population has the Jewish Y-chromosome signatures mentioned earlier.
But many also left. Although they were leaving their homeland, the expulsion turned the Sephardim into a worldwide phenomenon. Those expelled from Spain and Portugal settled throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe.
Those that settled in North Africa mixed with the already existing Jews in those lands to form a hybrid Jewish culture that emerged in Morocco and Algeria. This community existed in relative poverty for several centuries, but began to thrive under French rule, eventually producing the Nobel laureates Jaques Derrida and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji.
Golden Age II - Ottoman Empire
The vast majority of the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal settled in the European lands of the Ottoman Empire, where they were personally invited by the Sultan Beyazid II. He recognized the folly of the Spanish monarchy expelling their best subjects, saying
Ye call Ferdinand a wise king he who makes his land poor and ours rich!
The Sephardim who settled in the Ottoman empire took to the principle cities and became the economic movers in Istanbul, Salonica, and Sarajevo, enjoying a period of tolerance not seen since the early part of Islamic Spain. The previous Jewish population of Turkey and Greece, the so-called Romanoits, who had been there since ancient times, were largely absorbed into the Sephardic community. Jews were at the forefront of the Ottoman economy, and were viewed by the Sultans as a helpful buffer by the Muslim rulers against the empire's largely Christian population.
Salonica, in Ottoman Greece, became one of the major Jewish cities in history with a Jewish majority. For the first and only time in history to that point, the Jews of Salonica exercised economic, demographic, and even political dominance over their Muslim and Christian neighbors.
Ottoman Sephardim also settled in Jerusalem, essentially reestablishing the Jewish community there, as well as other cities in the Levant. Beginning in the 1800s, the Ottomans encouraged immigration of Jews to Palestine to dilute the native Arab population.
Golden Age III - Western Europe
Other refuges from the expulsions from Spain and Portugal made their way to Italy. My own paternal ancestors were in this wave, settling in Italy, only to have to move on again two hundred years later when Jews were expelled from the Papal States. My line chose Poland, but others chose other parts of Italy. The Sephardim that stayed blended with other Italian Jews, and after the founding of the modern Italian state, provided it with many prominent families and two prime ministers.
Those Sephardim that made it to Northwest Europe became even more prominent. The community in Amsterdam thrived in that city's tolerant, commercial atmosphere, and funded many of the voyages of exploration and trade that characterized the Renaissance world. In this meliu the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, descended from Portuguese Jewish refugees, revolutionized Western thought. For his efforts, however, he was excommunicated by the more conservative religious authorities.
In England, the protectorate established at the end of the Civil War rescinded England's four hundred year ban on Jews. Two hundred years later, a Sephardic Jew, Benjamin Disraeli, was the Prime Minister (although he converted to Christianity). One of the major early financial backers of Jewish immigration to Israel was the English Sephardic Jew and prominent citizen Moses Montefiore.
Golden Age IV - America
The Portuguese Jews were prominent in establishing settlements in Brazil. The first Jewish settlers in the United States, a boat load of Dutch Jews who arrived in New York in 1654, were Sephardim of Portuguese heritage. Dutch Sephardim were also among the original settlers of other colonial cities.
Sephardic Jews fought and died in the American Revolution. As president, George Washington penned these famous cherished words in a letter to the Sephardic Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island:
May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in the land continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other inhabitants. While everyone shall sit safely under his own vine and fig-tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.
Sephardim were also prominent in Charleston and Savannah. In fact, they were a force in Southern Politics. The first two Jewish Senators were Sephardim from the South, and the Confederate States of America had a Jewish cabinet officer, Judah Benjamin, 40 years before the United States managed that feat.
Sephardic Jews remained among the most prominent Jewish families in America. Benjamin Cardozo, the second Jewish Supreme Court justice, and Emma Lazarus, who wrote the poem on the Statue of Liberty, were both descendants of original Dutch-Portuguese Sephardic settlers.
Ethnic and religious identity
Some people want to consider Jewish ethnic divisions, especially between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, to be quite prominent. However, whenever these two groups mixed, such as in the Balkans, Greece, Northern Italy, Western Europe, and later America, assimilation and commonality was the result.
As my own family history shows, contact and migration between different regions was part of the Jewish experience. A very common Sephardic last name in the Middle East is actually Ashkenazy or Eskanazi or variants thereof, indicating the extent to which this mixing was in place.
In the religious sense, Sephardic has come to mean all Jewish religious practice that is without the particular customs of the Ashkenazim. In that way, 'Sephardic' religious rituals are practiced by a larger group of people than the Sephardim themselves. However, as we can see from the history outlined here, due to the overlapping of different Jewish groups, the ethnic divisions between who is Sephardic and who is not, whether in the Middle East, North Africa, or Europe, have always been muddled at best.
Sephardim from the Holocaust to today
Hitler was one person who certainly didn't think too much of Jewish ethnic divisions. The Nazis almost completely exterminated the largely Sephardic community of occupied Salonica and Sarajevo just as they did the Jews of Warsaw and Berlin.
The Jews in Istanbul were spared by Turkey's neutrality in the war, but were largely driven out by riots in 1955 which targeted the Greek and Armenian communities as well as the Jews. Those in North Africa, although pretty much untouched by the Holocaust, were in a precarious position after the end of colonialism and the establishment of Israel, and most left for either Israel or France.
Today small numbers of Sephardim remain in Morocco, Turkey, and the Balkans, but most have left for Israel - or in some cases France. Within Israel, a division in religious practice persists between Ashkenazim and Sephardim (among the non-secular), with many Jews not of actual Sephardic origin falling under the Sephardic religious umbrella, as mentioned above. Actual Sephardim from North Africa, Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans are prominent throughout Israeli society.
This series:
- Jewish history: fact and myth I - The Jews of the Shtetls, Khazar or not Khazar
- Jewish history: fact and myth II - These far flung Iberians
- Jewish origins 3: Africa - Back in Black
- Jewish origins 4: Babel on - Iraq, Persia, Central Asia
- Jewish origins 5: India and China - Call center cousins
- Jewish origins: Vol 6: Continuity, and what is a Jew?