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44: Friday; August3,, 1984
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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With traditions that
date back more
than five centuries,
Southfield resident
Shirley Behar
devotes her life to
keeping Sephardic
Jewish culture
vibrant for future
generations.
BY ALAN ABRAMS
Special to The Jewish News
Their existence virtually un-
noticed by the greater Jewish com-
munity, a tiny enclave of Detroit-
area Sephardic Jews conduct Sab-
bath services — every Sunday — in
the centuries-old tradition of the
Golden Era of Spain and the Ottoman
Empire of Turkey.
Why Sunday? Although the
Sephardic Jews follow Orthodox tra-
dition and segregate the sexes during
services, no Orthodox rabbi would
administer to the needs of the 80-
member congregation because many
of them drive to services. Thus, the
Sephardic community of Greater De-
troit holds its Sabbath service at the
Yeshivath Beth Yehudah from 9 a.m.
to 10 a.m. on the Christian Sabbath.
Sometimes the services are delayed
until a member of the congregation
goes out onto Lincoln Rd. to beseech a
passing stranger whose presence is
needed to complete the minyan.
But the Sephardim did not al-
ways have to depend upon the kind-
ness of strangers. Five hundred years
ago, the Sephardim were the stars in
the Jewish crown while, for the most
part, the Ashkenazim were still suf-
fering from the almost daily vagaries
of Europe's Christian rulers. The tor-
tured wanderings of the medieval
European Jews could almost have
been played -outon a board game.
Across the faFeof Europe, Jews were
banned in one place, temporarily
welcome in another, expelled from
someplace else. Then the tables
turned. In 1492, while Columbus was
busy discovering America, the
Spanish monarchs occupied them-
selves by exiling the Sephardim from
Iberia.
Today, the Ashkenazim are
clearly in the ascendancy. In Israel,
the Sephardim perceive themselves
— often justly — as being treated like
second class citizens. The formerly
elite Sephardim have become the
underdogs and much of the legacy of
their culture has disappeared into
dimly lit rooms of museums of the
Diaspora. Sure, we all remember the
names of their. great: Maimonides,
Jehudeh Halevi, Solomon Alkabez,
Baruch Spinoza, but we honor little
of their heritage.
To Southfield's Shirley Behar,
this shameful situation exists only to
be changed. Behar, daughter of Jacob
Chicorel, founder of the first Sephar-
dic congregation in Detroit in 1917, is
waging a one-woman campaign to
keep alive and perpetuate the mem-
ory of the Sephardic culture she
learned from her parents.
Functioning, as an unofficial
goodwill ambassador to the
Ashkenazic community, Behar has
. conducted classes in Sephardic cul-
ture and folklore at the United He-
brew Schools: She effectively
punctuates her history lessons with
Sephardic folk songs, which she per-
forms. Through her efforts, students
have probably learned more about
the Sephardim than they would have
found in any dozen textbooks.
Born and raised in Detroit,
Behar is the youngest of six children.
Her mother, Judith, was born in
Izmir (formerly Smyrna), . Turkey's
third largest city and her father was
born in the nearby village of Urla, on
the Aegean Sea --- the natural border
between. Greece and Turkey. •"My
father was trained as a cantor by the
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