U. S. Jewry scarcely took notice when, last week in Manhattan, the Union of Sephardic Congregations held its second annual meeting. Ail Jewry is divided into two groups—the Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Of the latter there are comparatively few left in the world. Yet once the Sephardim were the most powerful Jews on earth.
That was when the Moors governed Spain and, like Moslems elsewhere, made no religious, cultural or economic discriminations against Jews. While the Ashkenazic (German) Jews of northern and eastern Europe were scuttling from one oppressive country to another. Sephardic (Spanish) Jews were looming in the Mediterranean basin as leaders in medicine (Isaac Israeli), philosophy (Maimonides), government, and in commerce. When Christians drove the Moors from Spain and devout Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews bag without baggage (1492), Sephardic Jewry declined. Some of the Spanish Jews migrated to the Netherlands. Spinoza was a Sephardic Jew. A Lisbon-born Sephardi who lived in Amsterdam was Manasseh ben Israel, who persuaded Cromwell to allow the Jews to return to England (they were expelled in 1290). That return allowed Benjamin Disraeli, a Sephardi, to become Prime Minister of England and Sir Philip Sassoon, also a Sephardi, to become the rich crony of the present Prince of Wales. (England's potent Isaacs, Samuel and Rothschild families are Jews of German origin.)
Other Sephardic Jews fled to South America. In 1654 a few reached Manhattan from Brazil and at once established the Spanish & Portuguese Synagog—North America's first. Until 1825 it was the only synagog in Manhattan. By that time sufficient German Jews had drifted into the community to organize Manhattan's first Ashkenazic congregation, B'nai Jeshurun.* Since then waves of northern and eastern Jews have spread over the U. S. and bred until last year U. S. Jews numbered some 4,230,000. But only 40,000 are Sephardic Jews, and most of these migrated from the Near East since the beginning of this century, driven by Turkish wars and political upsets.
Last week Dr. David de Sola Pool, rabbi of Manhattan's Spanish & Portuguese Synagog, presided over the Union of Sephardic Congregations.† The chief problems are to make a new English translation of their Hebrew prayer book; to organize a U. S. school to train rabbis in their ritual, which is slightly different from the Ashkenazic ritual. (Sephardic rabbis now must be imported. Rabbi Pool was trained in England.)
Eminent U. S. Sephardim include the late Emma Lazarus (poetess), Dr. Solomon Solis Cohen (physician, teacher), Ernest Clifford Peixotto (artist, writer), Jessica Blanche Peixotto (his sister, social economist), Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (jurist).
*First U. S. Ashkenazic congregation was Philadelphia's Rodeth Sholom, founded 1801.
†Sephardic congregations exist in Manhattan (11), Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Atlanta, Montgomery, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Rochester, N. Y., Montreal.