Sephardim: The Proletariat of the Jewish Race
The War Nerd makes an underappreciated point in his article about the Israelis who fired on Palestinian marching into the Golan Heights:
To wit, the Sephardim are the more right-wing, conservative sub-race of Jews. In North America there are relatively few Sephardim, so Jews get fairly stereotyped as bourgeois liberals. But in Israel, Sephardim comprise at least half the Jewish population, so the country tilts to the right. Interestingly, Benjamin Netanyahu (though himself Ashkenazi) dismissed the Israeli "tent city" protestors as "Ashkenazi leftists eating sushi and smoking nargilas." Clearly then, Ashkenazi functions in Israel as Jewish does in certain North American circles: as a signifier for effete liberalism.
The major exceptions to the Ashkenazi liberal rule are the Orthodox and the Russian Jews. The Orthodox are clearly conservative for religious reasons. (And almost all Sephardim are at least nominally Orthodox.) The Russian Jews appear to have imbibed from Russian culture a general enthusiasm for strongmen (witness the popularity of Avigdor Lieberman among Russian Jews in Israel) that translates into right-wing populism. Yet Orthodox and Russian Jews (and Jews who descend from 19th century Yiddish-speaking "Russian" Jews, like myself, don't count here) remain a minority of the North American Jewish population.
Frankly I wish there was a greater percentage of "Eastern" Jews in North America. They'd make a proletarian counterweight to the excessive bourgeois affectations of Ashkenazim. We have too many lawyers and not enough soldiers. I also want to date a Sephardi girl, because it's the closest I can get to dating out of my race while still dating within my race.
For every squeamish Euro descendant of socialist kibbutzim in those ranks, I’d bet there are ten Sephardim or Falasha with lots of juicy family stories about what it was like living in Muslim countries who’d be willing to empty their magazines into the crowd coming down the hill.
To wit, the Sephardim are the more right-wing, conservative sub-race of Jews. In North America there are relatively few Sephardim, so Jews get fairly stereotyped as bourgeois liberals. But in Israel, Sephardim comprise at least half the Jewish population, so the country tilts to the right. Interestingly, Benjamin Netanyahu (though himself Ashkenazi) dismissed the Israeli "tent city" protestors as "Ashkenazi leftists eating sushi and smoking nargilas." Clearly then, Ashkenazi functions in Israel as Jewish does in certain North American circles: as a signifier for effete liberalism.
The major exceptions to the Ashkenazi liberal rule are the Orthodox and the Russian Jews. The Orthodox are clearly conservative for religious reasons. (And almost all Sephardim are at least nominally Orthodox.) The Russian Jews appear to have imbibed from Russian culture a general enthusiasm for strongmen (witness the popularity of Avigdor Lieberman among Russian Jews in Israel) that translates into right-wing populism. Yet Orthodox and Russian Jews (and Jews who descend from 19th century Yiddish-speaking "Russian" Jews, like myself, don't count here) remain a minority of the North American Jewish population.
Frankly I wish there was a greater percentage of "Eastern" Jews in North America. They'd make a proletarian counterweight to the excessive bourgeois affectations of Ashkenazim. We have too many lawyers and not enough soldiers. I also want to date a Sephardi girl, because it's the closest I can get to dating out of my race while still dating within my race.
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