"oriental Jews"

[Alice Faber]

David Bergdahl wrote:
>Frank Abate wrote:
>
>> From an ancient Roman perspective (which is where all this started),
>even
>> Greeks were vaguely "Oriental", at the farthest extent of "Europe",
>and much
>> influenced by the "Orientals" to their immediate east.  Just east of
>Greece
>> was the original "Orient".  As Western knowledge of the world
>increased, the
>> application of the term kept moving east, eventually all the way to
>the
>> Pacific (the same sort of thing happened in the US; Michigan was once
>> considered "the West").  Then came the need for such terms as "Near
>East",
>> "Middle East", and "Far East" (compare US "Midwest").
>
>After the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 refugees from Arab
>lands ("Sephardim" = "Spanish") were called oriental Jews to distinguish
>them from
>European Jews ("Ashkenazim" = Hebr. "German").  The etymology in The New
>World Dict disputes the Sephardim-Spanish association and declares the
>original "region mentioned in Ob. 20 was prob. orig. an area in Asia
>Minor," which would locate "orientals' east of Greece.

This usage of Oriental might be based on translation from the Hebrew
Mizrahi 'eastern', In Hebrew, Sephardi refers more to religious
tradition than to ethnicity. And, in any case, some Mizrahi Jews
(i.e., those from Iran and Iraq, not to mention Yemen) don't claim
descent from the Jews expelled from Spain in 1942. And some exiles
from Spain ended up in Eastern Europe. But that's another story.
--
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Alice Faber                                             faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                                  tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
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