Personal note: I have yet to decide if I’m going to limit this blog to lessons I learn outside of the classroom, or include those. It just seems a little too generic and, well, cheating, to use things I learn in class. Given that I’m a student, it almost makes it too easy. For now, I’ll include my classroom learnings that aren’t the primary lesson of the day…

I have a professor who looks and sounds JUST like Christopher Walken likes to go on tangents a lot. He’s supremely opinionated and very worldly and intelligent, so he incorporates a lot of his experiences and learnings about the outside world to make his point. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to follow why he started telling us about so-and-so to begin with… but at least I get to hear about a lot of random people and what they do.

Today was one such day. I don’t know where his rambling began or why he started, but he ended up talking about the Jewish faith and community.

Today I learned that there are actually two distinct groups of Jewish people… Sephardi and Ashkenazi.

You always hear about the Shiite and Sunni Muslims — aparently this is a similar thing. The groups differentiate themselves based on the country which they or their families/ancestors are from. Sephardi Jews have roots in the Iberian Peninsula (present-day Spain and Portugal), while Ashkenazi Jews are generally associated with Central and Eastern Europe (mostly Germany). There are other differentiations, of course, whether they be cultural, religious or etchnic. In Israel, they tend to lump people into broad groups — any Jew with a European background, Iberian Peninsula or no, is considered Ashkenazi; while any other subgroup (including Mizrahi, Yemenite and Kurdish) is thought to be Sephardi.

The vast majority of people who consider themselves Jewish in the United States are Ashkenazi Jews: according to Wikipedia, 6 out of the 7 million Jewish people are Ashkenazi, “representing the world’s single largest concentration of Ashkenazim.” Karl Marx is considered an Ashkenazi Jew (fun fact), and Hank Azaria is a Sephardi.

The two groups even have their own languages. Sephardi Jews (I speak in a generalization, since as noted earlier, Sephardi can sometimes cover an extremely broad and diverse group) speak what is called “Judeo-Spanish”, while Ashkenazis are responsible for Yiddish thanks to its Germanic roots: although Hebrew is considered their primary language.

Of course, this is all extremely basic. There are tons of fascinating little details about both groups, but I at least now have a basic understanding that not everyone who is Jewish follows the same practices, rituals or even historical background as any other Jew. Anyone with additional information is welcome to post in a comment!

what do you make of this?

Additional Info:
http://www.jewfaq.org/ashkseph.htm

http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/judaism_guide/sephardi_jews/index.htm

http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/judaism_guide/ashkenazi_jews/index.htm