THE BEGINNING OF THE SEPHARDIM

We are now going to discuss the Sephardim not because they are less important than the Ashkenazim, but because they are less complicated yet more significant. This latter point, largely unknown today due to the majority extermination by the Nazi Holocaust, which has silenced them in our contemporary history. To delve into this diaspora, we must begin with the destruction of Jerusalem to gain a better understanding of their historical trajectory and why it is so important and distinct.

The situation for Jews after 70 AD was very different from the captivity imposed by Babylon when King Nebuchadnezzar, as there was no expulsion of them from Judea, Galilee, and its surrounding areas. Instead, due to various pressures from the ruling kingdoms, they were compelled to move away, and over time, there was a dwindling Jewish presence in the region. Though, to be precise, there always remained a Jewish presence there. Generally, the movement of the different diasporas was predominantly within the area stretching from the East, from present-day Turkey to the Persian Gulf, and southward to Alexandria. They did reach farther regions such as India, Morocco, Lithuania, and Spain, but the region of Syria and Iraq was the most prosperous and thriving.

After 135 AD, those who remained in the newly termed region Palestine by Rome, led by the rabbis known as the Tannaim, began to write down what they considered most important from their Pharisaic oral tradition. This was necessary due to the absence of the temple and the need to update their Pharisaism to this new reality. This compilation of writings covering the Second Temple period (536 BC to 70 AD) was called the Mishnayot (repeated teachings). By the 3rd century AD, this collection of writings was so extensive and used that there was a need to compile them, a task undertaken by Rabbi Judah the Prince, into the work known as the Talmud Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Talmud).

Parallel to this Jerusalem Talmud, another legal writing known as the Tosefta (supplement or addition) was formed by Judah’s disciples. For years, it was considered inferior to the Jerusalem Talmud due to its almost identical order, language, and concepts. However, over time, it was understood that it was truly a parallel work, originating from the same ancient source as the Mishnayot, representing a similar foundational thought. Therefore, shortly thereafter, both were compiled into a single work that complemented each other.

Over the next two centuries, the rabbis known as the Amoraim, with the arrival of these traditions from Roman Palestine to the diaspora in present-day Iraq, mainly to Babylonia, worked on this Jerusalem Talmud to clarify and expand upon it. These clarifications and expansions were called Gemara (study), because they applied the unique Jewish study methodology of debate known as Havruta (partnership) to these additions. Thus, this Jerusalem Talmud, also known as Mishnah, written in Hebrew, with its Babylonian Gemara written in Aramaic, along with the Tosefta, would form the Babylonian Talmud (Babli). This compilation of the Pharisaic oral tradition played a very important role in the formation and rapid cohesion of communities that now had to grow and survive exclusively as diasporas. Today, we might find many flaws in this Talmud and even view it as a vehicle that has favored the hardening of Israel, but it is impossible not to recognize that through it, God has maintained the nation of Israel with such a clear identity that it makes the revelation of the Messiah more possible today.

Without digressing into the preciousness of continuing with the Talmud, we reach the 7th century, when Islam emerged in that same region among historically idolatrous Arab tribes. With its bloody expansion and imposition of its worldview over the Byzantine Christian Empire (Eastern Roman Empire), the options for Jews and Christians living in the area were twofold: to stay and be subjected to humiliation as part of the new Sharia law (which does not allow conversion for these groups), or to escape to lands where Muslims had not yet arrived. Some left, but others chose to stay and continue developing, even if they had to endure daily humiliation. It was under this second social category that many Jews arrived in Spain accompanying the Umayyad Muslim caliphate troops, serving as servants, merchants, doctors, etc., integrating into existing communities that had come from centuries before. From Arab writers of the time, we know that some cities in Spain were already mostly Jewish before the Muslim arrival (Lucena, Granada, Barcelona, Toledo, and Tarragona), which is why the apostle Paul in the 1st century wanted to visit them (Romans 15:24, 28). And it is to the entire Iberian Peninsula that rabbis in subsequent centuries will identify as biblical Sepharad (Obadiah 1:20).

By the end of the 8th century, a period when Muslims were developing and expanding, the Jewish communities of the cities of Sura and Pumbedita in present-day Iraq, led by rabbis known as the Geonim, established two very important Yeshivot (schools or seminaries). From these institutions, four rabbis were sent to raise funds from Mediterranean communities to assist young people with their weddings. On their journey, they were kidnapped by pirates who demanded a high ransom. Since the sum was very large, only three communities could afford the ransom: Alexandria (where one was sent), Tunisia (where another was sent), and Córdoba (where two, father and son, were sent). In these places where they settled, the three main Talmudic centers of the Mediterranean arose. It was in Córdoba that the intellectual development of the Spanish communities began, transforming and enriching much of the Jewish heritage to this day.

To be continued…

Author: Dr. Liber Aguiar.