What do you think of Amen Seudas/Seudat Amen?

Well let's see.
The word "mizrahi" is a made up word of the past 20 or 25 years with political connotations. When I was growing up and any time before that the word was Sefaradi.
By sefaradi the idea was that the Jewish world was divided into Ashkenazim and Sefaradim and each gropu was further divided.

Ashkenazim included litvish, chassidish, yekkish, Ruissian, central european, general misnagdim and the like.

Sefaradim included north african, asian, turkish, italian, spanish and the like.

Teimanim were their own category but basically considered more like sefaradim and not ashkenazim.

What's so complicated?
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"Olam Chessed Yiboneh", Tehilim 89.

Last edited by Ruchel on Tue, Oct 19 2010, 2:42 pm; edited 1 time in total

Italian is Sefaradi? In minhag Italian is closer to Ashkenazi, and in fact it's its own minhag. Same for Greek. Same for Berber. Same for Mizrachi though many of them have been assimilated into Sefardi-ish and their rabbanim bemoan it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_ethnic_divisions
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"You will have many many children and make successful shidduchim beh", rebbetzin Esther Jungreis
"It's all cultural, disagree respectfully", me

Well Ruchel, the former chief rabbi of Italy told me that when members of his kehila make aliya he tells them that their chief rabbinical authority is the Sefaradi chief rabbi and not the Ashkenazi one...so that must say something too.

The Greeks in EY consider themselves sefaradim. All those who daven at the big greek shul in Tel Aviv follow the sefaradi chief rabbi as their rabbinic authority.

Berbers? Morrocan North Africans? Of course they consider themselves Sefaradim, at least those in EY.

Mizrahi is a made up political word and has nothing to do with anything religious!!

Of course they are different but sorry to say, being older and even remembering when the word "mizrahi" was invented, that it's a political invention of the State of Israel folks.

The idea at first was to differentiate European sefaradim from others and particularly north africans, this was at the time of MK Charlie Bitton and the Black Panthers. Even at the time of the Wadi Salib riots, the first racial riots in Israel (Haifa 1959) the term Mizrahi was not yet used, it only became more common in the 1970s, first used politically during Bitton's time in the late 1960s.

There was in fact a big argument about using it, because the word "mizrachi" prounounced the same as "mizrahi" in Hebrew by sefaradim (meaning the "het" and "chet" business) was part of a name of a political party! The Mizrachi-hapoel hamizrachi....only when the mizrachi became part of the Mafdal, the coalition of religious parties in the 1980s, was the term "mizrahi" finally used to mean only one thing on the political scene, the "orientals", as they are known in English.

And Ruchel if you would thoroughly read the wikipedia article you quote, you would see that it basically says what I am saying.

Also the term "eidot hamizrach" is not "mizrahi"...otherwise there would be no need for a new term. Eidot hamizrach is an old term used for decades...mizrahi is a new politicized term that was meant to be poltical....do you understand enough about israeli ethnic politics to know its history? Living here for the past 36 years...I do....

Even "Mizrachi" is extremely large and diverse. But it's less uneducated than "Sefardi" as an umbrella name.

As for Italian or Greek being Sefardi, they both existed millenia before Sefardi/Ashkenazi so they wouldn't suddenly turn so.

Google tells me just in Salonika there were 36 (!) various shuls, each one with its own minhag of origin from Russia to North Africa to Portugal to France to Poland to Greece to Turkey to Provence.
Italy was in a similar situation before the "Enlightenment". Bulgaria too. Probably some areas in Romania.

I suppose nowadays to many it's just chul nitpicking and good for the trash.

Ruchel we are talking about today or post-war and not prewar. It has no application to the argument at hand.

Excuse my interruption.
I just wanted to update that I ended up not going It just doesn't feel right to me.
Instead I am vegitating and procrastinating instead of doing the dishes and setting out clothes for the kids tomorrow. I may have made the wrong choice Question

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גשם, גשם בוא!

That's fine, until your derech conflicts with your minhag (charedi yekke bullied into keeping 6 hours, DL Polish bullied into dropping the sheitel, Chabad Yemenite bullied into wearing a sheitel, etc).

Silver Member Joined: Mar 25 2008 Posts: 650

Chanchy I really don't know if you read the post too fast or are trying to start a fight.

Why are you blaming ME for something that a few sefaradi rabbis wrote or said about women?

Did I say that this was MY reasoning?
Did I say that this was MY psak?
Did I say that this was MY thoughts about women??????

I brought INFORMATION. Like someone who would mention something - not their opinion, but just for information's sake to add to a discussion that was going on.

Why in the world are you calling ME a racist? Call those rabbis racists, that's fine and dandy, but why me?

That would mean that anyone who ever mentions that Hitler said or did this and that is a Nazi?

Wow, a lot of high school teachers all over the world teaching the Holocaust have just become Nazis.

So maybe chill out and next time read the post better and see whether anywhere I mention that I agree with this or that it is my opinion. I didn't. Ever. Just brought it for general information, nothing else.

Gee, I see that people are really looking for fights here...for no reason...go fight with the rabbi who wrote it, not with me.

I don't agree with it, I think it's crazy. But it exists hence I brought it.

I think a lot of opinions are crazy that rabbis write or say, just don't blame me for them.