From out of hubris shall come contempt

   Israel currently has two chief rabbis—an Ashkenazi one and the Rishon L’tzion, the official title of the Sephardi chief rabbi. A bill making its way through Israel’s legislative process would end that division in 2023 by creating a single chief rabbi for the country.

   The legislation is the brainchild of Justice Minister Tzipi Livni of Hatnua, and is co-sponsored by two Bayit Hayehudi leaders—Religious Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett and Member of Knesset Eli Ben-Dahan.

   Livni’s goal appears laudable. “In a state where there is only one president, one Supreme Court president, one prime minister, and one chief of general staff,” she said, “there is no way to justify the doubling of the position of chief rabbi. We have to rid ourselves of the old-fashioned division of ancestral congregations and start bringing the country together.”

   How noble that sounds, and how so on point it seems. Jews are one people, after all, so maintaining two chief rabbis does seem divisive. The real question, however, is whether Livni’s stated motivation—and Bennet’s and Ben-Dahan’s for joining in—is less about unity and more about something insidious, namely the homogenization of Judaism at the expense of Sephardi and Mizrachi standards, practices, and culture. (The Mizrachi, often confused with the Sephardi, with whom they share many customs and practices, are Jews from Arab lands and North Africa. True Sephardim trace their origins to pre-expulsion Spain and Portugal.)

   Livni’s statement also ignores the realities of Jewish life—realities that have existed almost from our beginning as a people. The midrash tells of the frustration felt by the sages of blessed memory at how unresolvable were the decisions handed down by the Schools of Shammai and Hillel. If one said black, the other almost certainly would say white. Which one was correct? If the Oral Law truly was handed down at Sinai, then who spoke for the God of Sinai?

   The sages finally decided to lock the great minds of both academies into a single room, charging them to remain there until such time as they could produce one law that all could follow. Three years went by and yet, if the one said black, the other said white. Nothing had changed.

   Totally defeated, the sages looked to heaven for help. “You resolve this for us,” they cried. “You tell us which one of these two speak for You? Which one of these two teaches Your proper law?”

   Suddenly, a voice came from heaven: “Elu v’elu divrei elohim chaim; this one and this one are both the words of the living God.”

   There is no one truth. There is no one path. There is no one correct answer. There never was. What mattered—what still matters, the only thing that ever should matter—is whether the answer is “for the sake of heaven,” whether it is meant to enhance and enable adherence to God’s law. To insist that there is only one correct way to interpret God’s law or to observe it is to reject everything that Judaism ever stood for.

   Yet rejection of views that contradict our own is precisely what exists in Jewish life today.

   Let us be honest. There are no “Jews,” per se, any more, and perhaps there never was. There are Litvak Jews and Galitzianer Jews; German Jews and Polish Jews; mitnagdim and chasidim; Gerer and Sadagorer; charedi and Reform. In each group, there exists a sense of triumphalism and superiority. There is, however, little sense of unity because there is almost no acceptance of differing approaches to Jewish law, observance, and culture.

   Nowhere is this more evident than in the millennia-old contempt that Ashkenazi Jews traditionally have held for Jews from just about anywhere else, mainly (but not only) Sephardim.

   Sometime in the 4th century, Jews exiled by the Romans from the Land of Israel were resettled in southern Italy. Over the next half millennium, they migrated to a large strip of land extending from Northern France through Northern Germany along the Rhine. That area of northwestern Europe was called “Ashkenaz.”

   From the time that Ashkenazi Jews began to emerge on the scene, its denizens have held to the notion that they know better than anyone else how everything should be done—and that hubris colors everything they do.

   This hubris is evident in many ways, including in a reformulation of Isaiah 2:3 found in the Sefer ha-Yashar, written 800 years ago by Rashi’s grandson, Rabbeinu Tam. The original verse reads, “for out of Zion shall come the Torah, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (ki mi-tzion tetzei Torah, u-d’var Adonai Mirushalyim). In Ashkenaz, this became, “For out of Bari shall come the Torah, and the word of the Lord from Otranto,” Bari and Otranto being towns in southern Italy. Long before Rabbeinu Tam’s time, Bari apparently was a center of Ashkenazi learning; before his time and during it, Otranto indeed was.

   A hundred years after Rabbeinu Tam, a German-born rabbi, Asher ben Yechiel, echoed the sentiment after settling in Toledo, Spain. “I would not eat according to [Sephardi] usage, adhering as I do to our own custom and to the tradition of our blessed forefathers, the sages of Ashkenaz, who received the Torah as an inheritance from their ancestors from the days of the destruction of the Temple. Likewise, the tradition of our forebears and teachers in France is superior to that of the sons of this land.”

   That Ashkenazi hubris carried itself into official policy in the State of Israel. The Russian Jews and the German Jews who helped found the state and who were its earliest leaders (ironically, they were mostly secular themselves) made every effort to destroy the culture and religious practices of Israel’s Sephardi and Mizrachi citizens.

   Presumably, this discrimination ended once the Sephardi and the Mizrachi gained political clout—made possible in large part by the activism of a Rishon L’Tzion, the late Chacham Ovadia Yosef—but although the situation in Israel has markedly improved, some of this discrimination exists to this day, particularly in the charedi communities. (For an example of this, do a web search using the words Emmanuel, school, and sephardic.)

   This hubris was always puzzling, not the least because the first Mizrachi immigrants to the Land of Israel were Abraham and Sarah. The Babylonian rabbis who created the version of the Talmud considered authoritative by all were Mizrachi. Sephardi rabbis are among the greatest figures in our religious history. Sephardim excelled in philosophy and science; they gave us great art, literature and liturgy.

   Who can imagine Jewish life today without the many contributions of Sephardi and Mizrachi rabbis, scholars, and liturgical poets?

   Successive Jewish law codes depended on the version Maimonides compiled. Indeed, Jacob ben Asher, son of Asher ben Yechiel, based most of the rulings in his Arba’ah Turim (the “four rows”) on Maimonides’s code, and on the rulings of the Sephardi talmudist Rabbi Meir Abulafia. The definitive code, the Shulchan Aruch, which was patterned after the Ba’al Ha’Turim’s work, is the product of a Sephardi great, Rabbi Joseph Caro. (It was augmented by the glosses of an Ashkenazi rabbi, Moses Isserles, a/k/a the Rema, to make it usable by Ashkenazim, as well as Sephardim, marking one of the rare times when the two cultures found common ground.)

   The Friday night hymn, L’cha Dodi, emanated from a Sephardi. So did other parts of the liturgy used even in Ashkenazi synagogues. Various customs common to all also emanated from the Sephardim, such as the all-night study sessions on Shavuot, a staple in Ashkenazi circles today.

   Creating a single chief rabbi for all Jews in the State of Israel, which almost certainly will play into the hands of this Ashkenazi hubris, ignores the huge differences between how Sephardi and Mizrachi look at Jewish law, and the way the Ashkenazim do.

   A look at the different ways Ashkenazi and Sephardi authorities approach cleaning the home for Pesach is instructive here.

   According to Orthodox and Conservative Ashkenazim, the smooth surfaces of many electric ranges are not eligible for kashering for Pesach, rendering them unusable unless they are covered in a way that will not also burn down the house. Yet, according to decisions by several prominent Sephardi rabbis, including Yosef and another former Rishon L’tzion, Mordechai Eliyahu, glass tops only need a thorough scrubbing and porcelain tops need boiling water poured on them.

   Again, according to Orthodox and Conservative Ashkenazi authorities, there is no way to kasher metal baking utensils. According to Sephardi guidelines, however, cleaning them thoroughly and then placing them in an oven set at the highest temperature for an hour will do the trick. (Do not try this if those “metal” utensils have plastic or wooden handles.)

   The Sephardi authorities also allow the kashering of Teflon-coated frying pans and the like; Ashkenazim do not.

   They also allow the kashering of wood, plastic, and rubber items, such as spatulas and mixing spoons. Ashkenazi authorities forbid it.

   Pesach food is yet another example. Ashkenazim have far fewer foods available to them because of the kitniyot ban, originally a ban on legumes (kitniyot), but now extending to suspected legumes, wannabe legumes, legumes that are not legumes, and the derivatives of each. The Sephardim never accepted this ban—which even some Ashkenazi authorities early on called a “minhag sh’tut,” a foolish custom. (There will be more about kitniyot in a future blog around Pesach time.)

   These halachic differences may be bridgeable over time, but for now there is a wide gap between the two. Having one chief rabbi will not bridge that gap; however well intentioned, it will only exacerbate the situation and, given political realities (Ashkenazi charedim dominate the election process for the post), is only likely to revive the attempts to obliterate Sephardi and Mizrachi culture.

   We as a people have come a long way in 3,500 years. How sad it is that after all that time, we still have not figured out how to make the journey together while celebrating our differences as opposed to demonizing them. How much sadder it will be if legislation supposedly designed to bring us together ends up dividing us even more.