‘I’m not exotica, I’m Jewish, just like anyone from Central Synagogue’

Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews find their traditions are often unappreciated or invalidated in the Ashkenazi-centric Australian community, reports ANNE SUSSKIND

Sephardi and Mizrachi studies should be part of Jewish education in schools, in order to make the community more inclusive of non-Ashkenazi Jews and their traditions, says Rabbi George Mordecai of the Emanuel Synagogue.

Rabbi Mordecai was speaking after attending You Don’t Look Jewish, a recent Sydney Alliance roundtable, convened to explore the ethnic and racial diversity of Sydney’s Jewish community. The Alliance, a coalition of religious and cultural organisations, trade unions, community services and schools, aims for a more "just and sustainable Sydney”.

Rabbi Mordecai, who is from a Mizrachi background, said Ashkenazi people needed to know more about “our culture”. “The Sephardi gift was really profound, in food, philosophy, religion and science. So much of Jewish mysticism, philosophy and poetry was developed in the Mizrachi and Sephardi world, in the Jewish centres of Spain and Baghdad and the Ottoman and, and for a large part, from people in Islamic lands.”

Sephardi Jews descend from the Spanish community, while Mizrachi Jews come from Arab and North African countries.

Growing up in Sydney, he said, he had not personally experienced much racism. An incident that stood out was when he was younger and singing in a Sephardi concert choir, and a choral director had said to him, “You don’t want to sing like your grandfather and uncle, in a nasal way. There was a myopic orientalist mentality in the way he looked at everyone outside of Europe.” He said he could “110 percent” appreciate that there was discrimination against Sephardi and Mizrachi people in Sydney.

There are, says Rabbi Mordecai, big historical differences between the Sephardi and Mizrachi experience and that of Ashkenazi Jews, who are dominant in Australia, many having arrived from Europe after the Holocaust.

The Australian Ashkenazi Jewish community experienced “ancestral trauma” following the Holocaust, he said. “As Jews, we all do. I’m not going to even start with comparisons of suffering between Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrachi…”

But it was worth realising that Sephardi communities also suffered under Nazi rule in Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Salonica and other locations. Some communities were wiped out. In Iraq, under a pro-Nazi regime, approximately 180 Jews were massacred in a 1941 pogrom, known as The Farhud. Thousands of Middle-Eastern Jews became refugees after 1948 as a result of wars between Arab nations and Israel.

PhD student Luis Paredes, from Colombia, is more outspoken. He has lived in the US, Canada and Argentina and been in Australia for about three years, and says one of the reasons he’ll probably leave is the “invisibility” or silencing of the Sephardi and Mizrachi narratives.

He once wanted to be a rabbi, and being Jewish and community is important to him, so he wants to be where Jewish people are more diverse - in the US, Israel, France, or Canada. “Jews here need to realise that Jews can be more than Ashkenazi, a mindset change.”

One Friday, after a service, he had forgotten to take off his kippah, and was asked on an elevator in Bondi Junction, “Are you really Jewish? … Why are you wearing a kippah? You don’t look Jewish.”

Jews from South America, he says, look a bit Arabic. “I said I get that all the time. But it was the first time… Once is enough. Of course, racism was behind it. One of things about Anglo culture is the issue of race… I’m not exotica, I’m Jewish, just like anyone from Central Synagogue.”

In Bondi Junction Coles’ kosher food, there are no Sephardic choices, only eastern European, which he finds “very weird”. In Buenos Aires, even though the majority are Ashkenazi, no one will tell you can’t find Sephardi food, Paredes said. He would like to see Ashkenazis enjoy Sephardi food, perhaps, for example, ending the Peasch feast with mofletta, “a very delicious type of crepe, Moroccan with honey”.

Paredes said he finds Sydney Jewish community very focused on the experience of the Holocaust and Ashkenazi Jews who survived, while Sephardi Jews are focused on it in a more “remembrance way”.

Israel is at the core of Sephardi and Mizrachi identity, especially for people from north African and Arab countries who were expelled in the 1950s and 1960s, after the creation of the State of Israel.

“The reason why so many Jews in Israel are brown is they used to live in Morocco, Egypt, Libya, Iraq and Syria and were expelled and the only place they could go was Israel… many Mizrachi and Sephardi Jews came from these places.”

Judy Rassaby, who lives in Melbourne, but grew up in Sydney’s Sephardi community, says Ashkenazi people see their way as “the right way”. Anything else is not “strict or proper”.

On Pesach, her family has always had curry and rice as its main dish, but she was told by Ashkenazi friends not to bring it. “Ashkenazim don’t eat rice on Pesach, so it’s seen as being wrong. Many people define Jewishness by food, so if you don’t conform to that, gefilte fish and matzah balls, it’s not proper.”

Rassaby says Jewish life would be a lot richer if it incorporated other customs, such as the short Rosh Hashanah seder which some of her Ashkenazi friends have adopted.

 “[It’s] quite wonderful, with all these blessings, six or seven blessings, over foods that were abundant.” Typical foods include pumpkin, dates, leeks, pomegranate, as well as the familiar apple and honey.  Rassaby uses blessings, taken from her father’s old prayer books, translated, often used alliteration, such as “As we eat this leek, may our luck never lack in the year to come.”

Some Ashkenazim also recognise the value of including other perspectives.

Shoshana Cochrane is Ashkenazi, and her mother was a Holocaust survivor. What emerged from the Sydney Alliance meeting for her is that there’s little knowledge of “other worships” within the Jewish community, and a lot of division, which saddens her.

“Maybe I need to bother to go to a Sephardi shul to get a better understanding of different ways to worship,” she says.

Education about different aspects of Judaism is needed. “It came out very strongly from a Sephardi person, who said his children were alienated at one of the Jewish schools. I’m a bit hesitant to speak negatively about any of us as there’s such antisemitism around, but we need to reach out, and that includes Mizrachi and ultra-orthodox…

“I’d like us all to be more united. We in the Ashkenazi community maybe think we are more entitled, and we need to be much broader and accepting, inclusive and more inviting.”

Photo: Hilloula (Death anniversary celebration) honouring Morrocan rabbi Baba Sal at the Rambam Synagogue Melbourne