Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“What’s this Ashkenazi-Sephardi business?” he asked Eliav.

“Nothing of consequence.”

“Are Jews still divided into the two groups?”

“Yes.” Obviously Eliav wanted to stop the conversation.

“Which are you?”

“Ashkenazi, of course.”

Cullinane got the impression that his pipe-smoking colleague was proud of his Ashkenazi background. Later, when he had asked her about the matter, Vered was even more abrupt than her fiancé had been. “A trivial difference,” she snapped.

“Which are you?” he asked.

“Ashkenazi, of course,” And she, too, seemed proud of the designation. Then he began seeing short statements in the press to the effect that “the Sephardi Jews can better their relative position in Israel only by education.” He asked Vered what this meant and again she brushed him off: “John, it’s a minor educational problem that we’ll take care of in time.” But a few days later one of the leaders of the Sephardi community—whatever that was—stated: “In education we Sephardim are outrageously discriminated against, as indeed we are in all aspects of public life in Israel.” Again Cullinane asked what it meant, and again Vered assured him, “It’s nothing you would understand, John.”

Unable to get satisfaction from his colleagues, Cullinane went to the library, where the standard histories confirmed his rough understanding: the Ashkenazim were mentioned in the Torah as a minor Jewish people, whose name was ultimately used to designate Germany, and since it was from there that Jews emigrated to countries like Poland, Russia and America, most Jews in the western world tended to be Ashkenazim; whereas the Sephardim were those Jews who had moved first to Spain and thence to countries like Morocco, the Balkans and the less civilized parts of the world. Between the two communities a feud had developed: the Sephardim constituted the aristocracy of Judaism while the Ashkenazim were the uneducated field hands. It was the Sephardim who produced many of the great Jews of history—Maimonides and Spinoza for example—and certainly in America they formed the elite, characterized by men like Justice Cardozo. But when education became available in eastern Europe, the Ashkenazim quickly gained the ascendancy, while the once-honored name Sephardi was denigrated and applied to all Jews who were not Ashkenazi, whether they had any association with Spain or not, so that today Sephardi meant loosely the oriental Jew as opposed to the European, the lumpen proletariat as contrasted to the sophisticated expert from Russia or Germany. The two groups differed in inconsequential ways: Ashkenazim spoke Yiddish based on German; many Sephardim used Ladino, a vulgar Spanish. They also pronounced Hebrew differently, the Sephardi usage representing the world standard; and they followed different synagogue rituals, where the Ashkenazi was often preferred.

Prior to Nazism and the establishment of Israel the differences between Ashkenazi and Sephardi had been diminishing and indeed almost vanishing; of the 16,500,000 Jews in the world, a full 15,000,000 were Ashkenazi, and they controlled all significant movements and committees. “I doubt if I ever knew a Sephardi Jew,” Cullinane reflected. “There probably weren’t many in Chicago.”

But with the extermination of 6,000,000 Ashkenazim in World War II and the bottling up of another 3,000,000 in Russia, the Sephardim became proportionately more important; and when the state of Israel was launched, its geographical position in Asia meant that it contained more Sephardi oriental Jews than Ashkenazi Europeans. Suddenly what had been a diminishing factor became one of central significance.

“Jews won’t discuss it with you,” Tabari warned as he drove Cullinane to Akko for the purpose of picking up supplies. “They hope it’s a problem that will go away if nobody ventilates it too much.”

“Why do you say problem?” Cullinane asked, as the beautiful spires of Akko rose from the sea.

“Well, as an Arab I’m naturally closer to the Sephardim and perhaps I see things from their point of view. But I don’t believe I’m being prejudiced when I say that the Sephardim constitute more than half the population of Israel but hold less than five per cent of the good jobs.”

“Education?” Cullinane asked.

“And their easy way of life.” The Arab reflected, then said, “Let’s put it this way. If I were going on a camping trip with a bunch of Jews I’d want them to be Sephardim. Because then I’d be assured of a rollicking time. But if I had a factory where profits were obligatory, I’d insist upon hiring an Ashkenazi manager and as few Sephardi workmen as possible.”

This seemed an improbable situation to exist in Israel, a nation called into being as an answer to discrimination, but Cullinane said nothing. Later he asked, “Do we hire any Sephardim at the dig?”

“Not on the staff, of course. They don’t have the education. And there are none in the kibbutz gang, because they avoid kibbutz life. Among our volunteer students, two of the best. And naturally our Moroccans are all Sephardi.” He drove for a few minutes, then added, “Good Ashkenazim like Vered and Eliav are worried lest continued immigration change Israel into a Sephardi state.” Cullinane asked if that would be bad, but Tabari countered, “Look, old man, it’s not proper for me as an Arab to be discussing a purely Jewish problem. Ask Eliav. Or Vered.”

“I did. And they said, ‘It’s of no consequence.’”

“Being Ashkenazi, they would.” He stated this with no rancor but with a finality that announced, “I’ve no more to say.” But before he had driven another hundred yards he added, “The best clue is this. A heart specialist from America examined one thousand Jews in Israel. Of the Ashkenazim, sixty-four per cent showed signs of potential heart trouble. Of the Sephardim, less than two per cent.”

In Akko, Cullinane was impressed anew at the easy manner in which Tabari moved from one small shop to another, joking with everyone and picking up minor items needed at camp, but after a while Cullinane wandered off on his own to investigate a small mud-walled house from which loud noise was issuing. From the street he listened for a while to singing and shouting, then started to drift on, but he was hailed by a stout woman who cried from the door in Spanish, “Come on in, American.” He did not speak the language well, but at the dig in Arizona he had picked up a few colloquialisms.

“¿Que vaya?” he asked.

“Elijah’s celebration,” she said, offering him a bottle of beer. Jabbing her elbows back and forth she bulldozed a passageway through the crowd and led him into a small synagogue, about the size of a hotel bedroom and jammed with perhaps half a hundred oriental Jews, bearded, happy, shouting. The hallway was overflowing with women and children, babies and barking dogs. Services had not yet started and there was a wild passing back and forth of beer bottles, Israeli sandwiches in which layers of goodies were crammed into a pocket of flat bread, a hideous orange soda pop and plates of paste made from ground chickpeas. The conviviality was extraordinary and the noise increased when a fat beadle started bellowing, “You!” When people began poking Cullinane in the ribs he realized that the beadle was shouting at him.

“Put your hat on in the beth knesset!” the fat man yelled.

Cullinane had no hat, but the large woman found him a yarmulke and popped it on the back of his head. “Now you’re as good a Jew as we are,” she said in good English.

“What’s this about Elijah?” he asked.

“We’re marching to his cave,” she explained.

“Where’s that?”

“In Haifa.”

“Marching? In this heat?” It must have been more than fifteen miles from Akko to Haifa.