martillo@mit-athena.UUCP (Joaquim Martillo) (04/22/85)
I received many questions about the Sefardi shitah in the past couple of weeks and I have been too busy to reply for which inconsiderateness I apologize. I do not mean to have implied that Sefardim are any less religious than Ashkenazim merely that Sefardic hakamim have not been so interested in driving away anyone who is unwilling to be superpious. For this reason in many areas halakah according to the Sefardi tends to be more lenient (though not in all areas, most Sefardic Hakamim require basar halaq -- essentially glatt kosher but perhaps a bit stricter -- the Maimonidan shitah is even stricter in terms of shehitah). If you wish to observe miswot according to Sefardic practices, the best place to start is the Qisur Shulhan `Aruk of Cordovero who was I believe the Hakam Bashi of Marakesh. This is basically the Sefardi Ganzfried (without the contaminations found in the Ashkenazi abridgement -- my father would say). Believing that contemporary Sefardi practice can be determined merely from studying Karo is a common misbelief among religious Ashkenazim. For current Sefardi thought consulting the Ben Ish Hai or `Obadia Yosef is best. Levi the Ab Bet Din in Tel Abib who often appears on TV is also very readable though he is more of a popularizer. Unfortunately there really is very little on Sefardic Judaism in English worth reading. Really the interested will have to bite the bullet and attend Yeshiba. The program I posted a week ago is quite good for beginning. I saw in the Art of Fiction by John Gardiner: One may learn to love Shakespeare by reading him on one's own -- the ignoramus is unlikely to have done even this -- but there is no substitute for being taken by the hand and guided line by line through Othello, Hamlet, or King Lear. This is the work of the university Shakespeare course, and even if the teacher is a person of limited intellignece and sensitivity, one can find in universities the critical books and articles most likely to be helpful, the books that have held up, and the best of the new books. Outside the university's selective process, one hardly knows which wa yto turn. One ends up with some crank book on how Shakespeare was really an atheist, or a Communist, or a pen-name used by Franscis Bacon. Outside the university it seems practically impossible to come to an understanding of Homer or Vergil, Chaucer or Dante, any of the great masters who, properly understood, provide the highest models yet achieved by our civilization. What he says about a relatively young literature, is even more true about immensely older and more sophisticated Jewish scholarship. The Western University (which actually developed out of the Christian Seminary) is basically lehabdil analagous to the Yeshibah which unless you happen to come from a family of sages is the only place you can acquire the tools to took part in Jewish learning and scholarship. As for following Sefardic minhagim during Pesah, I am not a hakam and cannot give permission to change minhag. I know that my grandfather and uncle in Italy told Ashkenazim living within their communities to adopt Sefardic customs and to live according to Sefardic halakah. If the question is between following Sefardi halaka and breaking halaka certainly you should follow sefardi halakah. If you want to eat rice and kitniot over Pesah, I must confess I do not understand how Ashkenazim can be so worried about these foods when most Ashkenazim do not and have not followed historically the halaka mide'oraita' about yashan. Basically, for any Jew to take part in a Seder where the masah is made with flour which is not yashan is much more problematical than for an Ashkenazi to eat rice (inspected of course) and kitniot during Pesah.