[Avodah] Consumer Alert: Minhog Scams On The Rise! Mislabeled, Cheap Middle Eastern Imports Flooding In, Threatening To Overwhelm Natives!

[Prof. Levine]

At 02:44 PM 6/16/2011, Lisa Liel wrote:

>>  If it is true that  Minhag goes by makom, not by ancestry,  then 
>> why doesn't all of America follow the minhagim of the 
>> Spanish/Portuguese Jews who first came here?   All of the shuls 
>> founded in America until the middle of the 19th century followed 
>> the Spanish/Portuguese ritual.
>
>There was no distinct Sephardic community in the US the way there 
>had been in Europe.  An Ashkenazi immigrant to a neighborhood that 
>was overwhelmingly Sephardi should absolutely have taken on the 
>Sephardi minhag.  That's how it's been done since Golus began.

I do not understand what you have written.  The first Ashkenaz 
synagogue in America, B'nai Jeshurun, was established in 1825.  Until 
then all synagogues in America followed the Spanish/Portuguese 
ritual. There were synagogues in NY, Philadelphia, 
Newport,  Savannah, Charleston, and Richmond, and they all followed 
the Spanish/Portuguese ritual.  There synagogues were the Jewish 
communities in these cities.


>>Did not the followers of the GRA who came to EY follow their 
>>minhagim and not those of the Sephardim who were already in 
>>EY?  Shouldn't they have followed the minhagim that were in effect 
>>when they arrived, according to you?
>
>If they settled amongst the Sephardim (which I don't believe they 
>did), then yes, they should have.  More to the point, they would 
>have.  But they set up their own geographically distinct communities.

You are not correct.  Jerusalem was small at the time when the 
talmidim of the GRA came and all of the Jews lived in close 
proximity.  They all lived within the old walled city until 1860. 
 From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Montefiore

In 1854 his (Sir Moses Montefiore's) friend 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_Touro>Judah Touro, a wealthy 
American Jew, died having bequeathed money to fund Jewish residential 
settlement in Palestine. Montefiore was appointed executor of his 
will, and used the funds for a variety of projects, including 
building in 1860 the first Jewish residential settlement and 
almshouse outside of the old walled city of Jerusalem - today known 
as <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mishkenot_Sha%27ananim>Mishkenot 
Sha'ananim. This became the first settlement of the 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Yishuv>New Yishuv. Living outside 
the city walls was dangerous at the time, due to lawlessness and 
bandits. Montefiore offered financial inducement to encourage poor 
families to move there. Later on, Montefiore established the two 
Knesset Yisrael neighborhoods, one for Sephardic Jews, one for 
Ashkenazim, which were even further away.

BTW,  the talmidim of the BESHT also came and they kept their 
Chassidic minhogim.


>The idea of Ashkenazim and Sephardim living in the same building and 
>maintaining separate halakhic minhagim is repulsive, and a false 
>understanding of Judaism.

I find the use of the word repulsive, to put it mildly, strange.  Is 
it repulsive that on Pesach in one apartment the Sephardic Jews are 
eating rice and in another next door the Ashkenazic Jews are not 
eating Kitnyos?

>  I've heard that when thousands of Jews began returning to Eretz 
> Yisrael at once, this question was addressed, and the decision was 
> that people should maintain their communities until a unified 
> halakhic authority could be set up.  Like the Israeli 
> "constitutional convention" mandated in the Declaration of 
> Independence, this body was not set up.  But the maintenance of 
> communities wasn't, either.  Instead, people maintained ancestral 
> minhagim while simultaneously mingling geographically, and split 
> the nation in a way that Korah and his community would have been proud of.
>
>Lisa

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