The Ashkenazi Revolution

183The policy of identification with foreign demonism, that is imbeddedwithin the Sephardi hatred toward Ashkenaz, is not just typical to the lowersocial strata of the Sephardo-Mizrahi people. This hatred foundsatisfaction, and comfort, in the Holocaust, but it did not begin with theHolocaust. It constitutes a direct continuation of the Sephardi feelings ofhatred toward Ashkenaz, which were ignited with the meeting of the twopeoples at the end of the 17 th century, and in the decades after that. Itseems that even then the Sephardic leaders had reached the conclusion thatthey could not compete with Ashkenaz, and that only external calamitiesagainst Ashkenaz, such as the persecutions of 1648-1649, could restoreSephardic dominance among the Jewish peoples. This conclusion explainsthe ease with which Sephardi leaders adopted slander, backbiting, and otherforms of taking advantage of foreign powers. We find an instructive lessonof the attitudes of the Sephardic leaders, in the modern era, and of theoptimism and joy that the Holocaust brought this gang, in the centralideological publication of the Sephardi leaders, “Tribe and People”, volume4, in the article by Knesset member Ya’akov Nitzani, a member of Mapai.In this article, which was written in response to my article in volume 3 ofthe periodical, Nitzani writes:Sephardic Jewry, with its sages, rabbis and famous personalities, not justof the golden age in Spain, but also many years after this, wished topreserve its honorable status within Jewry. It is not easy for it to makepeace with the fact that the hegemony of the nation had passed into thehands of Ashkenazi Jewry… The feeling of pride, however, of SephardicJewry, was damaged more than a little when it sees itself outside the circleof the leadership of the people, and no part of it sits in the Hall of Fame ofthe nation, but on the outskirts. It doesn’t want to see itself as one who isof declining wealth.Remember the story of the attorney Leon Castro, of blessed memory, theillustrious leader of Egyptian Jewry, who said:“In a certain small city in Eastern Europe, there was a doctor whotraveled to Western Europe to advance his studies. He remained