heritage who lived in Safed dur-
ing the 1500s. (Ashkenazim are
Jews from Central and Eastern
Europe.)
Ha'ari taught that the vessels
containing the divine light at the
beginning of creation had shat-
tered. Sparks of divine light
became mixed with evil as they
fell to earth. The mystics saw
their task as gathering the sparks
back to their source, which would
bring on the messianic age and
end the exile. They called this
process tikkun olam, repair of the
world, which has come to mean
social action to improve the
world.
Ha'ari's kabbalah spread
through the Jewish world, carried
by a longing for the Messiah.
Messianic fervor, born of the ex-
pulsion and fueled by massacres
in Europe and the belief that the
end of the world was near, led a
series of men to declare that they
were the king of the Jews.
The most famous of the would-
be saviors was a Sephardi named
Shabtai Tzvi who, in 1665,
declared himself the Messiah. His
following was so widespread that
his fame registered in England,
which had banished its Jews
almost 400 years earlier.

32

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1991

Fearing an insurrection, the
Turkish sultan imprisoned Shab-
tai Tzvi and offered him the
choice of conversion to Islam or
execution. Shabtai Tzvi chose
conversion, disillusioning most of
his followers. Others thought
their messiah clever and followed
him into apostasy as the true path
to the messianic age.
After Shabtai Tzvi, messianism
among the Jewish masses around
the world took a less radical form.
In Poland, a mystic called the
Ba'al Shem Tov sought another
path to the messianic age.
In the 1700s, he began to teach
the poor Ashkenazi Jews that the
way to God was not through rig-
orous study but through joy. Jews
could express this joy through
dance, song, and mundane acts
such as eating and drinking.
Chasidic Judaism rapidly
spread through Europe, and it is
still an active force in Jewish
communities around the world.
The Chabad/Lubavitch move-
ment remains a part of the
Chasidic movement.
Although Chasidism is viewed
by many as an Orthodox approach
to Judaism, in the 1700s it was a
radical challenge to established
Orthodoxy. Leading rabbis of the

day opposed the movement with
its populism, anti-intellectualism
and wonder-working rebbes.
There was a second religious
tradition that the Sephardim took
into exile, in addition to kab-
balah.
"They brought the concept of
codification of Jewish law, of not
just studying the Talmud," Rabbi
Serels says.
In Safed in 1567, Rabbi Joseph
Caro, who was born three years
before the expulsion, completed
the Shulchan Aruch, Hebrew for
the "Set Table." The Shulchan
Aruch, which codified the laws
governing Jewish behavior, re-
mains the authoritative guide for
traditional Jews, both Sephardi
and Ashkenazi.
"Since the Sephardim were
broken from their traditional set-
ting, they needed something to
remind them how to do things,"
Rabbi Serels says.
He adds that the Sephardim
were able to balance religion and
science in a way that Ashkenazim
never did.
The Sephardi tradition says
"you can study religion and
science side by side and combine
the two," he says. "You don't see

that in either secular or Chasidic
• society."
Ed Alcosser of the American
Sephardi Federation puts it more
bluntly: U.S. Jewry made a
mistake in adopting the spirit and
customs of Ashkenazi Jews.
Because Sephardi Judaism was
nurtured in the relatively
tolerant atmosphere of the Ot-
toman empire, it tends to be more
pragmatic than Ashkenazi
Judaism, which developed in fun-
damentalist Christian Europe.
With this flexibility, Sephardim
never needed Reform, Conser-
vative and Orthodox divisions,
many Sephardim point out.
"(Ashkenazi) Judaism is 'don't
do this; don't do that,' " Mr.
Alcosser says. "The Sephardi tra-
dition is 'you tan enjoy this; you
can enjoy that.' "
Knowledge of Sephardi customs
might have led to fewer divisions
among American Jews, Mr.
Alcosser says.
"It should have been studied
because there could have been
some answers there."

