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<font size=3>At 02:44 PM 6/16/2011, Lisa Liel wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""> 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.</blockquote><br>
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.</font></blockquote><br>
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. <br><br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""><font size=3>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?</blockquote><br>
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.</font></blockquote><br>
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
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Montefiore" eudora="autourl">
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Montefiore</a><br><br>
<font size=3>In 1854 his (Sir Moses Montefiore's) friend
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_Touro">Judah Touro</a>, 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
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mishkenot_Sha%27ananim">Mishkenot
Sha'ananim</a>. This became the first settlement of the
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Yishuv">New Yishuv</a>. 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. <br><br>
</font>BTW, the talmidim of the BESHT also came and they kept their
Chassidic minhogim. <br><br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""><font size=3>The idea of
Ashkenazim and Sephardim living in the same building and maintaining
separate halakhic minhagim is repulsive, and a false understanding of
Judaism. </font></blockquote><br>
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? <br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""><font size=3> 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.<br><br>
Lisa <br>
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