David Rabeeya

[dauer]

I saw this article by David Rabeeya:

Zeek | A Sephardic Answer to Modern Jewish Identity | David Rabeeya

BB, thoughts? Know anything about him and/or can you suggest anything by him?

[bananabrain]

don't know the guy, but he seems quite eminent. my only comment is well, yes, but there's a little bit more to being sephardic than rationalism. i mean, there's a big picture of spinoza, a big picture of derrida (!) - no rambam, ramban, etc.... it kind of misses the whole thing about sephardic mysticism, poetry, song, to say nothing of halakhah. i mean, if you're going to consider everyone non-ashkenazi as sephardic, from morocco to yemen to afghanistan, that's kind of like saying that the only thing to ashkenaz is einstein and the vilna gaon, which would be ridiculous - and how rationalist is ovadia yosef? what price shabbetai tzvi? basically, it's a false dichotomy which reflects more about the writer's interests than anything else.

on the other hand, there was a link through to this amazing site with piyyutim - music and lyrics, too, which will really help me out, so ta very much for that anyway.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[dauer]

o hai. I forgot about this thread. I wasn't really interested in the whole rationalist aspect that came up. I'm well aware of the sefardic mystics and I agree he was looking to play a particular angle in that sense. My interest is more in the lesser emphasis among sefardic poskim on establishing fences, both what that looks like in theory and concrete examples of the differences and how they were reached. Before I read that article the only examples I knew of were kitniyot and shaving. I may know a few others but those are the only ones that come to mind.

-- Dauer

[bananabrain]

there's lots about the attitude to kabbalah, which is very different in the sephardic world, which essentially allows it to anyone over 20 "providing", from the ashkenazic world, which restricts it to anyone that isn't a big beardy sage already. there are a lot of other things around kashrut, like the time between meat and milk, as well as stuff around tefillah and all sorts of other bits and bobs. buy an orot siddur and/or a sephardi kitzur shulhan arukh and you'll see what i mean soon enough.

b'shalom

bananabrain