Israel isn’t mostly Sephardic. It’s pretty evenly split between Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi Jews.
Left-wing and right-wing in Israeli politics don’t entirely map along the same issues as predominate the political spectrum here in the U.S. Specifically, Israeli politics cleave along two major fault lines that don’t have an analog here: secular vs. religious, and approaches to the Palestinian conflict. Left-wing parties in Israel are those that advocate a more secular society and reaching a peaceful accommodation with Palestinian interests, which has historically meant support for a two-state solution. Right-wing parties advocate a more religious society and a very hard line towards Palestinian issues.
Or at least, that’s how the various parties and coalitions have traditionally been laid out. The Israeli left has been gutted over the last two decades, and 2022’s dismal election returns were thought to possibly mark the end of a viable Israeli left. And no one knows how October 7 will reshape Israeli politics, other than it is likely to unleash immense change.
The Sephardic point of view is not registering with Ashkenazis in NYC. It is second-guessing the Sephardic endlessly and not even knowing who they are second-guessing.
The Ashkenazi do not have several hundred years of living in the worst of poor conditions in Arab lands.
The poorest ghetto in Egypt is Jewish. If it is still around I do not know. But I do know it was around in the 1960s.
I am not 100% on this but I think Sephardic loosely includes Middle Eastern Jews, Northern African, Spanish/Portuguese, and South American Jews.
The split is 45% Ashkenazi and 55% Sephardic. Jews generally are 80% Ashkenazi and 20% Sephardic. The Ashkenazi in Israel to a larger extent see the Sephardic point of view.
Without meaning to be glib, this actually does sound similar to what the US is now, or increasingly headed toward, with one large contingent in thrall to Christian nationalists while another group is more secular. It used to be fairly easy to map US party platforms, but one party no longer really has one. There used to be small v. large government parties, limited v. expansive government, but these ideas have faded much recently both nationally and at the state level.
There is a big difference. Israelis are not as religious regardless of the horror stories committed by settlers on the West Bank.
Jews by and large are 85% nonreligious as in atheist or agnostic. The remaining 15% are the most obsessive religious people on earth.
Those voting ultra-conservative do not need to be religious. The pressures on land claims by both sides are the reason for much of the vote. Again more Monday morning quarter-backing going on.
Sephardic Jews are the diasporic community resulting from the expulsion of the Jews from Spain/Lisbon in the late 1400’s, and have traditions and cultures specific to their shared community on the Iberian peninsula. The Mizrahi Jews have a separate background - these are the Jews that lived in the western Asian countries and whose culture and tradition dates back to the older diasporas of the Babylonian exile (700 BCE) and the expulsion of the Jews from Judaea by the Romans. Many of them were expelled from the big Jewish communities in Iraq and Egypt during the 1948-1953 unrest.
The Ashkenazi Jews come from different diasporas - but it should be noted have several hundred years of living in the worst of poor conditions in Eastern Europe (the Pale of Settlement was no picnic).
Okay, we are married into one Mizrahi connection on the Irish Catholic side out in San Francisco.
The numbers in Israel are negligible. Mizrahi is not a debate or discussion.
The Ashkenazi in NYC can look at Tel Aviv and relate. But in Israel that is an achievement not a given if the Arabs change the map. Those on the ground have a different memory. The Ashkenazi in Europe have the same SORT of collective memory. There is no escaping that once in Israel.
The rationales in American politics are warped. Different groups with no knowledge want input. Meanwhile wealthy or well off Jews who do not see the Sephardic point of view or even know there is a Sephardic point of view are placating everyone around them in the US.
Mizrahi Jews are the largest division of Jews in Israel:
I think you’re using Ashkenazi as a substitute for economic class status, which is just…a confusing terminology. Many Ashkenazi Jews live in America and EU countries, and have a standard of living consistent with being in a wealthy OECD country - but there are many that do not, and many of the Ashkenazi Jews who were part of the initial Zionist movements of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s were from poor shtetls in Eastern Europe (as you might expect amongst those willing to basically live in rural farming communities, as much of the area was back then).
This isn’t an Ashkenazi/Sephardic split, but an America-EU vs. non-OECD split.
I’m not going to talk about US politics (NPOM), but the key difference is that Israeli political divisions map primarily onto the secular/religious and Oslo/non-Oslo (to oversimplify) divides. Whereas in many other countries, there’s more often an economic component that strongly separates the left and right as well. In Israel, that division is fractured, because the deeply Orthodox communities are (to a first approximation) the poorest communities. So the right-wing parties in Israel are extremely dedicated to government social welfare programs that are the province of the left in many other countries.
I had it right in the first place. Sephardim and Mirzrahim are lumped together.
Israeli Jews are nearly evenly split between two Jewish ethnic identity groups – the Ashkenazim (45%) and the Sephardim or Mizrahim (48%). These two ethnic groups retain some distinct religious practices and cultural traditions associated with their ancestral roots.Mar 8, 2016
You are mucking about finding how many angels are dancing on a pinhead. If I entertain you we will get to over 10,200 angels.
Lawyers do not know this but there is a time not to endlessly type.
The Sephardim make up about 55 percent of Israel’s Jewish population and the Ashkenazim about 45 percent. Ashkenazim and Sephardim sub- scribe to the same basic tenets of Judaism, but there are differences in matters of ritual, outlook, and interpretation.