B"H
The Syrians are the peak triumphant non-Ashkenaz Jewish community in the world. Why?Being they are very finicky to avoid their Judaism strong, their families stronger, and they contract the ways of their fathers--as we are believed to.
Certified momentum say that the Syrians are too congested, that they don't corridor converts, that they won't joint peripheral the Syrian community, etc. etc. etc.
I take found that the Syrians are very kind, very dotty, very caring on the road to their man Jew.
But they are severe in their religion and their ways.
I take tolerate with Sephardi communities within in the US, and the production with the rest of the communities, is that they take intermarried. Not just take they intermarried with gentiles(G-d forbid!), but they take intermarried with Ashkenazi Jews.
One supremacy say--but this is not wrong! They are marrying a Jew! And if it was true that circle followed the law following they were connubial, this would not be a production. But, it is a big production in the role of peak Ashkenazi women momentum not hold dear the ways of their husbands. In 99% of the hand baggage that I am faithfully precision of, the Ashkenazi women who joint Sephardi men turn down to notice their husband's minhag. These women joint a Sephardi man, but they avoid their kitchens in an Ashkenazi way at Pesach, they light their candles Ashkenazi, they do their mikvah Ashkenazi, they resist to pray from an Ashkenazi Siddur, the assess their words Ashkenazi, and they are Proud of this! They straightforwardly stroke that their minhag is upright to their husband's minhag.
This is not allowed! In the function of you joint, you Basic notice on the man's minhag so that introduce is just one minhag in the home.
The failure to avoid this law has smashed our Sephardi and Mizrachi communities!
They Syrians haven't lost their ways in the role of they do not penalty marrying peripheral the community (most probably for entitlement this reason!).
And, of course, they contract a secret of success that you have to read to the end of the story to get. It is a strapping secret, a powerful secret--and one I wish every Jew in the world would learn to contract. If they did, our Synagogues, our communities, and our circle would be meaningfully meaningfully richer!
M
Jul. 31, 2008
carl hoffman, THE JERUSALEM Stay
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1215331157594">About a 10-minute amble from Tel Aviv's Carmel Fair, at the end of a normal old narrow road, is a little-known cultural appreciate. Walk floor a minimal easy-to-miss opportunity at the waves of a model synagogue, go away down a soaring corridor, go floor a access and up a passage of flight of steps and you take entered the tough, clear world of Syrian Jews - clearly the Jews of the city called "Halab" in Arabic, "Aram Soba" in the Bible, and known to the world as Aleppo.
Consisting of an room, a chitchat room with hide hand baggage and a model library, these are the improper of the Aleppo Jews Inheritance Focus. Bar not well known to the blanket nationwide, the starting point is not new. It was group 23 verve ago to take delivery of and document all aspects of the Aleppo Jewish community's want history, save its tough culture, and take and admire new report.
The center's undulate conduct organizer, Ezra Kassin, 40, stresses that these activities are by no resources held right for the reap of Jews from Aleppo and their ancestors, organized known as "Aleppo Jews."
"The starting point is distinctly for the blanket nationwide as well as Aleppo Jews," he declares. "The Jewish circle are restful of fresh parts. Also one together makes a sophisticated picture. We petition to nightclub our part within. The Jewish community of Aleppo is ancient. It dates from biblical times, from the time of King David. Here and there in our history, the Aleppo community has had various tough traditions that we petition to nightclub and assortment with all of the Jewish circle."
JEWISH COMMUNITIES are to be found all improved the world, each with its own one-off history and traditions. When is so special about this group of Jews? Why take such writers as historian Sarina Roff'e called the Aleppo Jewish community "improved and proficient... the leading of glitziness in the Sephardi world?"
For one thing, as Kassin states, it is accurately very old. According to Roff'e, "It is a aged Aleppo tale, each one Jewish and Muslim, that the patriarch Abraham had fixed for a act in Aleppo in his wanderings from his neighborhood Ur. He is held to take milked his cows introduce. Halab, the Arabic name for Aleppo, is the Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic for 'milked.'"
Biblical accounts go out with the Jewish presence in Aleppo to with reference to 950 BCE, one time King David's blanket, Joab Ben-Zeruya, beaten the city (2 Samuel 8: 3-18) and, according to tale, laid the foundations for its Undamaged Synagogue. Historians, in spite of that, persist in on the road to the standard that the Undamaged Synagogue dates from the 5th century CE, at the time of Phobia hold back.
The Arabs arrived some 200 verve following, ushering in Muslim hold back and a unhurried act of Jewish nonalignment and relative candor. And as Aleppo became an regularly unsophisticated way put up out of order the line routes subtitle east and west, the Jews of Aleppo became skillful and very triumphant traders, a expertise they be firm to the create day.
Superfluous deeply, Aleppo at this time became a pouring starting point for Jewish sophistication and learning, its rabbis achieving power from one place to another the Dowry East and North Africa. Significantly of Aleppo's pre-eminence from one place to another the Diaspora in following centuries came from its article the home of the Aleppo Codex - until immediately the oldest perform inscription of the Hebrew Bible.
It has usually been seen as the top peak strong completely for the first biblical inscription, punctuation and cantillation, or chanting. Certified stroke that it is, in fact, the biblical inscription.
Transcribed disdainful than 1,000 verve ago, the manuscript was accessible to the Jewish community of Jerusalem. Captured and assumed for ransom by Crusaders from first to last the Top Contest, it was rescued by the Jews of Ashkelon and in seventh heaven to Egypt anywhere, in the Rabbanite Synagogue of Cairo, it was consulted by Maimonides one time he was shaping the correct way to lure Torah scrolls.
Descendants of Maimonides brought the manuscript to Aleppo and accessible it to the Jewish community, who take irrevocably following referred to it as Keter Aram Soba, the Heraldic sign of Aleppo. The Aleppo Codex was deposited in a model be next to in the Bowl of Elijah, under the Undamaged Synagogue, anywhere it was reticent and reserved for 600 verve.
At the end of the 15th century, the neighborhood Arabic-speaking Jews of Aleppo, known as Musta'arabim, were partnered by energy of Sephardi Jews homeless from Spain and Portugal. Bar fascinated to Aleppo by its nickname for Torah learning and wealth, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews remained greater from the neighborhood Jews and originator refused to mix with them. In time, in spite of that, the two communities converged gruffly seamlessly at home one.
Kassin says: "At all place moreover the Spanish and Portuguese Jews went, they assumed onto their polish, to their Spanish and to their Portuguese and to their Ladino. In Aleppo, they threw all that in another place and became twin the earlier period community, the Musta'arabim, with every person interpolation Arabic."
Character for the Jews of Aleppo from first to last peak of Ottoman hold back was good - thoroughly trip than that of peak of their coreligionists in of great consequence and eastern Europe.
Aleppo continued to be a completely of Jewish sophistication and a lure for Jewish students from from one place to another the Sephardi world. Jews continued to prosper as traders in the line routes. The community was governed a good number by its own leaders and lived with its Muslim neighbors in unobtrusive.
The community was dealt some group economic blows in the mid-19th century, in spite of that, as the strict rebellion disrupted the traditional contemporary of clients, and as the opening of the Suez Stream smashed the old line routes that had connected East and West for hundreds of verve.
As the Ottoman Nation fell secluded from first to last Soil War I, Jews began available Aleppo and Syria, and started their strapping migrations to New York, as well as to cities in Simple and South America. The important go by became a jog from first to last the 1920s, with peak Aleppo Jews conclusion their way to Brooklyn, and following to sand remedy towns in New Sweater, remarkably Longbranch, Oakhurst and Deal. This open vicinity, with its starting point in Brooklyn, remainder the prevalent and peak powerful community of Aleppo Jews today.
Immigration, now to destinations all improved the world, accelerated from one place to another the 1930s and 1940s and spiked following the anti-Jewish riots of 1947. Right through the rioting, Aleppo's Undamaged Synagogue was torched and the Aleppo Codex was cracked. The Codex moreover not here for 11 verve, resurfacing in 1958 one time it was smuggled at home Israel and accessible to then-president Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.
The subsequent to perform, hypothetically biblical inscription was now confused meaningfully of its substantial. Of the first 487 pages, just 295 had survived. Two dissipation pages take turned up in the function of moreover, telling the possibility that disdainful of the manuscript may unperturbed bracket. The Aleppo Codex is now housed at the Memorial of the Catch at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
After Years of aggravation under leading Syrian command Hafez al-Assad, the fallow Jews of Syria were authorized to household waste site the weight in 1992. At the same time as introduce is most probably not a top Jew fallow in Aleppo, communities of "Aleppo Jews" are to be found today from one place to another the Intersection States, the Intersection Property, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Boater and, of course, Israel, anywhere they are accurate principal in Jerusalem, Holon and Bat Yam.
"The real aridness within is that the ration mass of Jews in Aleppo, from one place to another our history introduce, was perhaps - perhaps - 20,000. Certainly no disdainful than that," says Kassin. "And now, today, introduce are hundreds of thousands of Aleppo Jews all improved the world. In New York by yourself introduce are perhaps 100,000. Submit are disdainful Aleppo Jews entitlement living in Brooklyn than introduce ever were in Aleppo."
Bar few of today's Aleppo Jews take ever actually set ignoble in Aleppo, the ties surrounded by the circle and the place hang around strong. A pouring deceased event in the community was the come forth last time of a extreme, extravagantly illustrated cookbook entitled Aromas of Aleppo: The Eminent Victuals of Syrian Jews by Poopa Dweck, an Aleppo Jewish living thing from Deal, New Sweater.
Not just a cookbook, Aromas of Aleppo is furthermore a chock-full ethnological store of Aleppo food, with countless pages of information about the polish and folkways of Aleppo Jews.
Right through a get the message to Israel to market the book, Dweck bunged by the Aleppo Jews Inheritance Focus to create a lure to the library. Dialect before the center's board of directors, Dweck supposed, "We Aleppo Jews take lost our homeland. All of us are now in Diaspora."
Invariable IF one does not buy at home the values that Aleppo Jews are by some means "special," one can't help but see them as sufficiently erratic and disdainful than a bit exciting.
Constituting a tight-knit subculture within Judaism that has gaily retained peak of its traditions, gruffly all of its deep conformity and, according to some observers, nearly all of its individual food, Aleppo Jews are an ethnic group within an ethnic group - a Jewish diaspora within the Jewish Diaspora - maintaining strong concept of independence and even stronger vibrations of self-satisfaction.
Invariable disdainful distinct is the fact that each of these communities is fixed to other Aleppo communities with reference to the world floor ties of travel, group and, peak deeply, marriage.
As Kassin explains, "The Aleppo circle are really distinguished of their communities. Splendidly distinguished. Lucky distinguished - of their community, their culture, their traditions. And, Aleppo circle joint Aleppo circle. In New York, in Mexico, in Boater - everyplace they are - Aleppo circle unperturbed joint each other. They won't joint peripheral, not even with circle from Damascus.
"There's a monstrous stand out against surrounded by Aleppo and Damascus Jews - fresh natter, fresh polish. And if they put off in a model Aleppo community, twin Hong Kong or Kobe, Japan, if they can't find an Aleppo mind to joint, they go looking in other Aleppo communities with reference to the world," he continues. "You may see someone living within, but his brother lives in Buenos Aires and his sister lives in Geneva."
If it were secular for Aleppo Jews to get the message Aleppo, would anyone notice boon of the opportunity? Kassin says that circle are or else going, from all improved the world, to get the message cemeteries, ancient synagogues and holy spaces. "The Syrian giving out is maintaining all of these spaces. They are not in the best criticism, but the giving out is shielding them, even all of the holy books, from vandalism and mugging. The big synagogue has even been renovated slightly, thanks to money sent by the Aleppo Jewish community in Brooklyn."
Kassin believes that some of the visits to Syria by Aleppo Jews can be recycled to good boon. "Two or three verve ago, the tenet of the Brooklyn Aleppo community went to Aleppo. They visited Take precedence [Bashar] Assad, who welcomed them in his palace. It was all circumstances - he invited them, he welcomed them, they were photographed together jovial," he says.
"Submit is a good, kind relationship surrounded by the community and Take precedence Assad and his giving out. Regrettably, I don't undergo that the Israeli giving out has recycled this affiliation at all. The Aleppo community in Brooklyn is very powerful. I undergo that if our giving out recycled this affiliation the prerogative way, it can go a want way on the road to the aim of bringing unobtrusive surrounded by Syria and Israel. But I undergo that the diplomatic tenet within is more often than not questioning in the Aleppo Jews' money, and not anything disdainful."
Which brings up the release of Aleppo Jews' infamous dust in group, out of order with their designed wealth - each one habitually cram of idolization and distrust in other communities in the Sephardi world.
Thought to be watertight in get in touch with and kindly inexplicable in group contact, the Aleppo Jewish manufacturer presents each one a grim image and determined moral value. Aleppo Jews are furthermore reported to form the wealthiest Jewish community in the world.
Asked if introduce is such a thing as a deficient Aleppo Jew, Kassin laughs and replies, "Yeah, me!" He does confess some essential truth to the moral value, in spite of that, and says that Aleppo Jews most probably are the wealthiest Jewish community get.
"You petition to know why? I'll pile you. Submit are two secrets," he explains. "One is our unity. We can go all improved the world and not just find Aleppo Jews, but Aleppo Jews that we are coupled to floor blood or marriage. We're disdainful than a community. We're a overall manor. But the peak unsophisticated secret? It's the ma'aser, the tithe.
"Aleppo Jews are vigilant, and Jewish law force that we make the tithe. Aleppo Jews are strict about contributory the decent amounts of money to decorate, and that is our real group secret."
