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February 26, 1999/10 Adar 5759, Vol. 51, No. 22
Despite progress, cultural rift still exists in Israel
GARY ROSENBLATT
The New York Jewish Week
Orly Levy has not yet seen a documentary film called "The South", which opened in New York recently, telling the story of a Sephardic teenager struggling to make it in an Ashkenazi world. But Levy knows the story all too well. She lived her own version of the film, taking a bus by herself at 13 from Petach Tikva to Tel Aviv to demand that education authorities send her to a first-rate high school. They did, placing her in an academically competitive boarding school, and Levy, the daughter of poor, uneducated parents who came to Israel from Turkey and Iraq, managed to rewrite her life story.
"But there is a price to pay," Levy recalled this week. "My parents were offended by my decision, and it created a rift between us." Levy, who graduated with honors from Hebrew University and is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin and a visiting scholar at Columbia University, said that while growing up in Israel she always felt the need "to create for myself a different track. There was this fear in the back of my mind that if I didn't fight hard, a track would be imposed on me."
Her fear was well warranted. Since the mass immigration to Israel of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries in the 1950s, the Sephardic population has been Israel's underclass, languishing far behind the Ashkenazim in economic, cultural and educational status and success. The Sephardim make up 75 percent of Israel's poor, and, as Levy noted, "women are the underclass of the underclass." Sephardic girls traditionally marry at a young age with little formal education and are expected to produce many children while helping to support the family.
Two decades ago, an organization known as ISEF (the International Sephardic Education Foundation) was established by Edmond Safra, head of New York's Republic National Bank, to promote higher education for promising young Israelis from disadvantaged backgrounds. Levy is one of about 500 talented people helped each year by ISEF in the form of scholarships to pursue academic degrees. Most are in Israel, but about 40 doctoral candidates are studying in this country.
Nina Weiner, the founding executive director of ISEF, speaks with a mother's pride about the talent and resilience of students like Levy, yet she says she is troubled by a growing lack of tolerance in Israel and fears that "discrimination has become institutionalized."
True, there have been recent positive strides, such as the growing number of "intermarriages" between the two groups and the political popularity of Yitzchak Mordechai, the first serious Sephardic candidate for prime minister. But there are also more reports of feelings of resentment among Sephardim, brought on in part by government efforts to accommodate the large-scale influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union in the last decade.
Once again the Sephardim feel that they have been shunted aside, still the have-nots in a society that has made great financial gains but where one in five children are growing up in poverty and the gap between wealthy and poor is second only to the U.S.
Filling a social service void, the Shas party has focused on helping poor Sephardim with a wide range of educational programs for children and care for the elderly. The party has restored pride to many Sephardim and become a major political force, third in size only to Likud and Labor. But it preaches an ultra-religious, separatist philosophy that is radically different from the traditional tolerance associated with Sephardic culture.
Despite Israel's social problems and her own struggle to improve her lot, Orly Levy plans to return to Israel after completing her doctorate here, and teach in a university.
"My life has been about the ability to make choices," she said, "and that's what I want to see more of for my people in Israel.''
Gary Rosenblatt is editor and publisher of The New York Jewish Week.
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