American Jewish Archives Journal, Vol 44, No. 01 (1992)

American Jewish Archives
this country for many of the same reasons that impelled the East
European Jews to leave Poland and Russia.
Instead of Warsaw and Grodno or Zhitomir and Pinsk, they identi-
fied themselves as Monastirli, Castorli, Rhodesli, Yanioti or Saloniki.
They spoke Judeo-Spanish or Greek (and later Arabic). Their reli-
gious practices, their songs and poetry were all their own.
To the Yiddish-speaking East European Jews they were foreign-
ers,"Italyaneif (Italians) even after they read perfect Hebrew from a
prayerbook or wrapped their tefillin around their arms. And to the
already established Sephardim they could only be distant relatives,
relegated to the status of Oriental or Levantine Jews but not deserv-
ing of a true Sephardic status.
How little we know about these twentieth-century immigrants
from Turkey, Greece and the Balkan states. And while a certain mys-
tique defines the earlier Sephardic community, a mystique that led
Ashkenazim to join and even take over Sephardic congregations and
to claim Sephardic origins, no such aura of aristocratic bearing sur-
rounds this later wave of Sephardic immigrants.
Imagine the pain when the immigrants from Rhodes, Turkey or
Bulgaria walked the streets of the lower East Side of New York -
where many of the immigrants settled - when they came upon small
Ashkenazic congregations who called themselves Anshei Sefarad
(Men of Spain) and whose members would not even accord them
recognition as fellow Jews. We understand the hurt and the sense of
frustration that accompanies the belief by many American Sephardim
that they have been written out of the Jewish history of the hemi-
sphere that they call home.
That is why the editors of American Jewish Archives have asked Pro-
fessor Martin A. Cohen to edit this special volume. In these pages, the
reader will find scholarly essays by some of the most outstanding
interpreters of the Sephardic experience in the Americas. Beginning
with Martin Cohen's brilliant analysis of what he calls "The
Sephardic Phenomenon," these dozen essays examine the historical
and cultural history of the Sephardic presence in the western hemi-
sphere, but especially in North America.
The appearance of this special issue of American Jewish Archives
could not have been possible without the generous support of the