How the Sephardim Won Political Clout in Israel

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Only recently have those discrepancies started to fade. "Now we preach social integration. We are busing our children. We have about 25% mixed marriages," says Eliezer Shmueli, a Sephardi who is director general of the Ministry of Education. "There is a renaissance of Sephardic culture and ethnic pride." A record 29 Sephardim sit in the 120-member Knesset; three are in Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's 19-man Cabinet. Chief of Staff Moshe Levy is a Sephardic Jew, as is Israel Kesar, secretary-general of the 1.1 million-member General Federation of Labor. The second in command of both major political parties, Yitzhak Navon of Labor and David Levy of Likud, are Sephardim of Moroccan descent.

Even more important, the Second Israel has become, numerically, the first. Now that the Sephardim account for more than half of Israel's population, they enjoy a considerable say, although not yet a proportional share, in the running of their homeland. As this was happening, they found an unlikely spokesman in the quintessentially Ashkenazic person of Menachem Begin (some even pronounce his name Ray-geen to give it a Middle Eastern ring). The right-wing former Prime Minister appealed to the downtrodden Sephardim both because of his fierce nationalism and because of previous neglect of their basic needs. In the 1977 and 1981 elections, the Sephardim helped bring Begin to power by delivering an overwhelming majority of their vote. This year, however, their political party preferences remain uncertain, and ethnic divisions have been largely eclipsed by ideological differences.

That may be true for almost the first time since 1948, when the new nation of Israel suddenly became a Babel-like meeting place for Jews from about 100 countries speaking 70 languages. Religious-minded and often untrained, the newly arrived Sephardic immigrants (including 260,000 from Morocco, 120,000 from Iraq and 50,000 from Yemen between 1948 and 1958) found that their new home had been built on the principles of secular Zionism. Israel's schools, its bureaucracy, its kibbutzim had all been set in place by Europeans.

Outnumbered and outclassed, the Sephardim quickly drifted to the bottom of the social hierarchy. There they remained, thanks in large part to the shortage of housing: with rental accommodations almost nonexistent and mortgages scarce, the ill-qualified immigrants who longed to settle in Jerusalem, the city of their prayers, found themselves herded instead into cheerless prefabricated tent towns, remote villages precariously close to Arab positions or the Negev wilderness. The more fortunate families that managed to stay in Jerusalem did well to find single rooms, in abandoned Arab houses. There was little work to be found and little food. Often young boys lived off what they could pick from the pockets of Ashkenazim.