The Ashkenazi Revolution

184abroad for about half a year. While he was gone, a plague broke out inthe small city and its environs, and many died. When the doctorreturned to the city of his birth, he entered a synagogue to see who satat the Eastern wall to replace the honorable ones who had passed on.What did his eyes see? In what should have been empty places, otherswere sitting. There was not an empty place at all”.“A great catastrophe had befallen the nation” – continued the attorneyCastro – “Entire tribes, that had sat on the Eastern wall of the nation,had been destroyed, disappeared and gone. The time has come whensome of those empty places, that have been vacated, should be taken bySephardic Jews.” (This is the end of Y. Nitzani’s quote of Castro).Now Nitzani continues and says:This proverb was told at the end of the Second World War; it made waveswithin Sephardic Jewry. If we add to this that until recently, the mainsource of immigrants, to the Land of Israel, was from Mideastern lands, itwill be understood why there was such hope to acquire a more honorablerole in the leadership of the nation (End of the Nitzani’s words).Until World War II, books were written, within Ashkenazi literature, aboutthe Spanish Inquisition, amid deep sympathy with the plight of thosetortured and persecuted people. But the reaction of Sepharad, to thecatastrophe of Ashkenaz, was entirely different. The Sephardic leaderswere glad, and rejoiced at the sight of the Ashkenazi tragedy. The plumbsof smoke had not yet ceased rising up, and they were already calculatingthe benefits that they would reap from this terrible calamity. Their joy wasof the same sort that the Philistines felt when they learned of the death ofSaul and Jonathan.If two researchers would rise and take upon themselves parallel tasks, onegoing out to gather all the material that expresses the reactions of Ashkenazto the Spanish Inquisition of 1492, and the other going out to gather thereactions of Sephardo-Mizrahi Jewry to the Ashkenazi tragedy of the