The Ashkenazi Revolution

72among more accommodating and less cruel peoples, near the shores of theMediterranean Sea, which allowed movement and escape to variousdirections. However Germany was located in the middle of a greatcontinent with no exit and which turned out to be a death trap. In the largercompetition between Ashkenaz and Sepharad, the latter had all theadvantages. The strength of Ashkenaz lay in its vastly superior nationalspirit compared to that of Sepharad. The conditions in Turkey, during itsgolden age when it opened its gates to the Spanish refugees, were betterthan those in Poland. Constantinople was, in those days, an internationalcultural center, but Poland was a marginal province in a land of swampsand forests. The tolerant and pluralistic regime that ruled Turkey, allowedthe founding of great Sephardic settlements. However, Sepharadsucceeded in this only to a limited degree. Yosef Nasi received a charter toestablish a principality in the Land of Israel, but this unique opportunitywas wasted. There was an opportunity to establish large Jewish settlementsin Latin America, but the Sephardic Jews who arrived there assimilated anddisappeared. Ashkenaz entered a new era through the great gate ofHasidism, the first modern popular movement in Europe, which wasinfused with strong emotions of love for others and social justice.Sepharad entered a new era via the gate of the Shabbetian movement, aregressive movement, which belonged in the Middle Ages and not in themodern age. The Baal Shem Tov turned into a fruitful symbol of educationwhile Shabbetai Zevi was made into a source of disappointment andspiritual exhaustion. In every case, Ashkenaz has prevailed over Sepharad.We have proved ourselves stronger than the Sephardim in Holland. We putSepharad in our shadow in England, in which it had been rooted forgenerations. It wasn’t the Sephardic settlements, that surrounded the Landof Israel on all sides, that built it, made its desolate places fruitful anderected a state within in, but the distant Ashkenazi Jews, the people ofRussia, Poland and even far-away Siberia, they were the ones who put anend to the slumber that had encompassed the land and the Sephardicsettlement within it, which remained asleep. It appears that, in every case,history granted Ashkenaz success in overcoming every challenge thatSepharad failed at. Ashkenaz founded great communities in the UnitedStates, took advantage of, as appropriate, the charter of the Land of Israel,