User:Haleigh1212/sandbox

Article Evaluation

• I don't think it is appropriate to disregard the differences between Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, and these two distinct groups, despite their similarities, should not be lumped into one group
• The article is more of a compare/contrast of Sephardim and Ashkenazim, rather than a sole focus on Sephardim. Although some comparisons need to be made to differentiate Sephardim from Ashkenazim, the constant comparison makes the article lose focus.
• Phrases like "the most important theological motive" should be avoided in order to maintain objectivity
• Something to keep in mind: Diction is a little dense for typical person trying to learn about Sephardic Jews. Certain terms should be explained more in depth to create a more clear understanding-- always consider audience
• Lots of focus on liturgy of Sephardim rather than customs of Sephardic Jews, consider changing article title to reflect this emphasis on liturgy
  • Does include section on law but seems like a lot of information to stuff into one article
• Only one secondary source written within the last five years was included in article
• Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals is one of the sources, seems to be very biased as the article has a paying membership, who most likely influences the content of the website
• Part of WikiProject Judaism
• We talked about sistema de castas and the development of a lighter-skin Sephardic identity in contrast to black Jews; this article focuses solely on aspects of Sephardim (liturgy, law) rather than identity

Article Selection

North African Sephardim

• "History of North African Jews" section is very condensed and could be greatly expanded upon
• Explains that Sephardic Jews in Morocco were the "most fortunate" because of the aid they received but I would like to see more information added about the living and social conditions of Jews in other areas in order to see if they really were better off
  • Has one quote describing terrible conditions but it doesn't describe which area this Sephardic Jew was from
  • Maybe should avoid saying "most fortunate" all together because it creates bias
• Title seems very broad for such a short article -- should either incorporate more topics, such as religious practices, or should pick a more narrow title
• Does not include any sources from the past decade, which means information could use some modern opinions and updating
• However, the label "Sephardic" is misleading because, although the expulsion from Spain and Portugal led to the conglomeration of Jewish groups, many Jewish communities were formed before Jews reached the Iberian Peninsula.

Maghrebi Jews

• Refers to Maghrebi Jews as "North African Jews"
  • I'm not sure if I'm thinking too much into this, but maybe Maghrebi Jews are included in North African Jews but they are not fully representative of North African Jews as a whole because there were other types of Jews with different customs and practices, including the Sephardic Jews
    • Maghrebi and Sephardic practices were similar but not the same
      • I should research more about the exact differences and similarities between Maghrebi and Sephardic Jews to be sure
• "The relationships between Muslims and Jews in the Maghreb were relatively good" is a very non-specific, biased statement
  • Relative to what?
  • What does "good" mean? Did they frequently interact with one another and respect each other's customs or did they just tolerate each other?
  • Same with "relatively well treated"
• Highly lacking in sources
  • Although there isn't much information in the article, three sources is still not enough to reflect what is included in the article
  • One article cited is written in French, so I can not evaluate this source

Canaan (son of Ham)

• Article discusses how some modern scholars believe the Curse of Canaan was used to justify Israel's conquest of Canaan
  • This could be interestingly paralleled with the religious justifications for racism against darker Jews based on the Curse of Canaan/Ham in either a separate article or a sub-section of this article since it is a little short, and this comparison would still relate to the original topic
• One of the sources (http://www.pseudepigrapha.com/jubilees/10.htm) is a website with The Book of Jubilees, but it does not appear reliable or profession
  • Phrases could have been easily altered
  • I would like to compare this website with a different source regarding The Book of Jubilees
• Article needs more information about how Canaan was and his significance to the Curse of Ham
  • Article doesn't that the Curse of Canaan was widely misinterpreted to be a curse on Ham instead
    • Would like to add how this Curse was employed in a racial context, would have to be careful to remain unbiased
• My most common complaint regarding sources is relevant for this article as well: it does not contain any sources from the past decade
  • Modern sources are very important because they make sure newly developed opinions are included in the article, which creates a broader, more contextualized view of the topic
    • Although the article should never take a stance, it should provide viewpoints from multiple standpoints and time periods

Potential Sources

• https://www.jstor.org/stable/4324122?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=maghrebi&searchText=and&searchText=sephardic&searchText=jews&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dmaghrebi%2Band%2Bsephardic%2Bjews%26amp%3Bgroup%3Dnone%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bacc%3Don&refreqid=search%3A1e4da7cb992d4639d6de00e90e2ab614&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
• https://search.proquest.com/docview/1297233227/36B11D9AEE504471PQ/34?accountid=14667
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3427049/
• https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1028703.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A45a3c0ec998e7df40995b3dd44811afc
• https://search.proquest.com/docview/293542658/82F9D1AE39614535PQ/11?accountid=14667

Notes on what I will add to North African Sephardim (start drafting your contribution)

Detailed outline and notes:

• Want to include a section about relations between black and North African Sephardic Jews
  • Current article has a section about how North African Sephardic Jews relate to other Sephardic groups (Eastern Sephardim, Sephardic Anuism)
    • Establishment of the Atlantic Sephardic sistema de castas
      • How presence of blacks and mulattos lead to the sistema de castas
        • Avoid talking a lot about how the sistema de castas was created to prove Sephardic "whiteness" because this is an idea of the author and cannot be stated as fact)
          • Can mention this idea but have to state that it is Schorsch's theory
        • Exclusionary ordinances and practices put in place because these are concrete examples of discrimination
          • 1627 burial ordinance in Amsterdam: blacks and mulattos not allowed to be buried in cemetery unless they had a Jewish mother buried there
          • 1627 ordinance of Amsterdam Mahamad: didn't want blacks to become Jewish
          • 1641 ordinance: Sephardic women were not allowed to send blacks and mulatto slaves to reserve seats for them in the synagogue
      • Information from Schorsch's "Early Modern Sephardim and Blacks" that we read for class
• How did Sephardic Jews get to North Africa?
  • Campbell suggests that Jewish communities, including Sephardic Jews, formed in isolation and started to conglomerate (Sephardim with Maghrebi) after they were expelled from Spain and Portugal
    • Can add the Campbell article as a source to the claim already made in the current article
• Genetic studies show that some Sephardic Jews may have originated in North Africa, rather than traveling to North Africa after they were expelled from Spain
  • Sephardic Jews have North African (Morocco and Algeria specifically) and European ancestry
    • Sephardic Jews may have existed among Maghrebi Jews before many historians formerly thought
    • Keep in mind that this is just one finding and does not prove that Sephardic Jews existed in North Africa before their expulsion for Spain and Portugal
    • https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-genetics-jews/genetic-study-offers-clues-to-history-of-north-africas-jews-idUSBRE8751EI20120806
• Relationship between North African Sephardic Jews and Maghrebi Jews
  • Jews from the Maghreb who settled among the Sephardim were labeled (by the Sephardics) as "Berberiscos" to separate themselves from the Maghrebi
    • Shows that communities were initially separate and did not want to be classified together
      • Similar to our discussion in class about how one group can isolate itself from another group by crafting an identity for them, even if the group being isolated does not necessarily approve of this identity
      • https://books.openedition.org/cjb/222
  • Can't find a source to corroborate article's claim that "As they arrived local Maghrebi Jews welcomed them, paid their ransoms and supplied them with food and clothing despite the cholera Sephardi Jews came with."
    • Continue to look for a source to show how Maghrebi Jews greeted Sephardi Jews, if not consider deleting claim from article
• Modifying Language section of current article
  • Add source for explanation and identification of Ladino -- https://www.everyculture.com/Europe/Sephardic-Jews-Language.html
    • Ladino also included Turkish
    • Religious works and literature written in Spanish and Ladin
• Minor wording changes to fix
  • Surnames section says that Sephardim who were originally from North Africa have "Arabic sounding" surnames
    • Problematic phrasing -- Arabs can be Sephardic Jews, aren't two separate things

Changes Based on Peer Review

• My peer reviewer reminded me that the study I found about Sephardic Jews potentially existing in North Africa before their expulsion for Spain and Portugal is just one study, and I need to make sure to specify in my article that more research needs to be done before this can be a definite claim. I thought this reminder was very important because I do not want to include misguiding information in my article; I just want to state some possibilities that studies have suggested.
  • I do think it is important to still include the study in the article, though, because it challenges the very definition/name of a Sephardic Jew, and it was mentioned in several articles that I read. Furthermore, Sephardic Jews are often defined by their relationship to Christian Europe, so the study's findings, if true, could possibly transform the North African Sephardic Jewish identity.
  • Another source that I found (Campbell) states that Sephardic Jewish culture was formed even before Jewish communities were expelled from Spain and Portugal. I think it probably would be better to focus more on the timeline of Sephardic Jewish culture rather than the exact timeline of Sephardic Jewish people arriving in North Africa because it is so murky.
  • Update: Decided not to include genetic studies because the articles that I found did not cite very reliable sources for the studies and I didn't feel comfortable including such controversial information without proper backing
• My peer reviewer also suggested that I needed to find more information about relations between Sephardic and Maghrebi Jews if I wanted to create a whole section about their relations in my article. I do agree that I need to find some more information than what I had, but I do not think I need too much more because I do not want North African Sephardic Jews' relations with other groups to be the main aspect of the article. I just didn't like how the original article included information about Maghrebi Jews without relating it back to the main topic of the article. Below is the additional information I have found thus far.
  • Many Jews in the Maghreb came to identify with Sephardic Jews after the expulsion in 1492 (Schroeter)
  • Close ties between Jews in the Maghreb and Spain even in the Middle Ages (Museum of Art and and History of Judaism)
  • North Moroccan and Algerian coasts were dominated by the Spanish and Portuguese, which led New Christians (who were previously Sephardic Jews) to the city of Fez in the Maghreb, where they could reconvert to Judaism (Museum of Art and History of Judaism)
    • This emigration spread Spanish/Sephardic culture and customs to the Maghreb, such as the Qabbalah/Kabbalah -- mystical interpretation of the bible, knowledge of inner/mysterious process leads to utmost intimacy with God (Dennis)
  • Update: The relationship between Sephardi Jews and Maghrebi Jews was more central to the article than I thought because North African Sephardim has transformed into an umbrella term for Jews descended from exiles of Spain and Jewish communities in the Maghreb. I found sporadic claims throughout the original article that referred to this relationship, and I also conducted a lot of outside research that indicated the importance of this relationship to the definition of Sephardim and the development of Sephardi culture in North Africa.
• Lastly, my peer reviewer told me to find more information about relations between blacks and North African Sephardic Jews. Upon further reflection, I have decided to remove this section from my article completely because it implies that there has to be a distinction between these two groups, and one cannot identify as a black person and a Sephardic Jew.
  • However, I do still want to include the 17th century exclusionary ordinances that early modern Sephardic Jews implemented against blacks in order to demonstrate Sephardic Jews' attempts to separate themselves from blackness.
  • Update: Decided not to include 17th century exclusionary ordinances because I only could find evidence for those implemented in Europe, not North Africa, so it didn't seem directly applicable to this Wiki article
• FINAL ARTICLE: A lot has changed since the peer review! I ended up focusing more on the relationship between Sephardi Jews and Maghrebi Jews as well as locating sources to corroborate the original article's claims, especially in the Language section.

Overview of Final Changes to North African Sephardim

Relationship between North African Sephardic Jews and Maghrebi Jews

• After looking through the article, the research that I found overlapped with some of the claims that were already included in the article, but many of the claims regarding relations between Maghrebi and Sephardi Jews were scattered throughout the article. Therefore, I decided to incorporate my research with some of the already existing claims in the article to develop a new, more cohesive section.
• Placed this section after the "Sephardi Jew" and "Maghrebi Jew" sub-headings because it links the two groups together

When Sephardi Jews emigrated to the Maghreb following their expulsion from Spain in 1492, the Maghrebi Jews referred to Sephardi Jews as rumiyyin, Arabic for "European," or megorashim, Hebrew for "expelled." Similarly, the Sephardi referred to the Maghrebi as forasteros, Spanish for "foreigners," or toshavim, Hebrew for "local community."

A Sephardi Jews from Morocco, circa 1919.

Despite each group's initial recognition of one another as the outsiders, Maghrebi Jews aided many Sephardim who reached Morocco. The Berber King of Fez, Mulai Muhammed esh-Sheikh, agreed to let Sephardi Jews settle outside the city walls, attracting 20,000 refugees alone. As Sephardi Jews arrived, local Maghrebi Jews welcomed them, paid their ransoms, and supplied them with food and clothing despite the cholera with which Sephardi Jews came. Additionally, Fez provided a place for New Christians, who were previously Sephardi Jews that were forced to convert to Christianity in Spain, to reconvert to Judaism.

Sephardi Jews also spread Sephardic culture and customs to the Maghreb. For example, Sephardim brought with them new methods of practicing the Ketouba and the ritual slaughtering of animals. Although Maghrebi Jews initially challenged Sephardi customs, with the struggle between the competing cultures lasting for over four centuries, the large influx of Sephardi Jews who settled in the Maghreb outnumbered the small number of Jews currently living in this area. Thus, according to Schroeter, many Maghrebi Jews ultimately assimilated into the Sephardi community, which accounts for the popularity of Sephardic customs in this area today.

Created "Meaning of Sephardim" section and separate from Language Section

However, the label "Sephardic" has been described as misleading by Christopher L. Campbell et al, who argue that although the expulsion from Spain and Portugal led to the conglomeration of Jewish groups, many Jewish communities were formed before Jews reached the Iberian Peninsula.

• Describes how the term "Sephardic" can be misleading and leads into the next sentence about how the label "Sephardic" has been expanded to include Maghrebi Jews
• This section focuses specifically on the definition of Sephardim and how this definition has evolved

Edits to Language Section

• Added source to corroborate the original article's evidence about Haketia
• Added sentence about recent efforts by Sephardi Jews in Morocco to preserve Haketia, even if it is a dying language

Minor Wording and Logistical Changes

• Surnames section says that Sephardim who were originally from North Africa have "Arabic sounding" surnames
  • "Arab sounding" is controversial and suggests that people or groups can be classified as Arabic solely based on their names
  • Eliminated this phrase
• Fixed minor grammatical and diction errors throughout
• Slightly reworded and rearranged lead section to better reflect topics to come
• Corroborated original article's claim about the Berber King of Fez, Mulai Muhammed esh-Sheikh, by finding the page number where the information about him was located in a book that was already cited (Jane Gerber'sThe Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience)
• Added more details and provided links to original article's sources
• Found information about Portuguese occupying northern Morocco in Jew Under Moroccan Skies, so I attributed a claim already made in the article to this source
• Rearranged photos to make the photo of Sephardi Jews from Morocco next to the section that includes information directly about Morocco

Bibliography (Potential Sources)

1. Advameg, Inc. (2018). "Sephardic Jews -- Language." Countries and their Cultures.
2. Begley, Sharon (2012, August 06). "Genetic study offers clues to history of North Africa's Jews." Reuters.
3. Campbell, Christopher L.; Palamara, Pier F.; Dubrovsky, Maya; Botigué, Laura R.; Fellous, Marc; Atzmon, Gil; Oddoux, Carole; Pearlman, Alexander; Hao, Li (2012). "North African Jewish and non-Jewish populations form distinctive, orthogonal clusters." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 109 (34): 13865–13870.
4. Dennis, Geoffrey W. "What is Kabbalah?" ReformJudaism.org. https://reformjudaism.org/what-kabbalah.
5. Elgrably, Jordan (1996, Nov 04). "A celebration of the jews the world forgot; religion: Sephardic jews are in the process of rediscovering their language, their literature and their ties to each other." Los Angeles Times.
6. Marçais, Philippe W.; Horner, George; Karp, Mark (March 1955). "Peoples and Cultures of North Africa." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 298: 21–29 – via JSTOR.
7. Miller, Susan Gilson; Petruccioli, Attilio; Bertagnin, Mauro (2001). "Inscribing Minority Space in the Islamic City: The Jewish Quarter of Fez (1438-1912)". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 60 (3): 313. doi:10.2307/991758.
8. Schroeter, Daniel (2012-09-28), Abécassis, Frédéric; Aouad, Rita; Dirèche, Karima (eds.), "Identity and nation: Jewish migrations and inter-community relations in the colonial Maghreb", La bienvenue et l’adieu | 1 : Migrants juifs et musulmans au Maghreb (XVe-XXe siècle), Description du Maghreb, Centre Jacques-Berque, pp. 125–139, ISBN 9782811106065 {{citation}}: no-break space character in |work= at position 78 (help)
9. Solomin, Rachel M. "Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews." My Jewish Learning. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/sephardic-ashkenazic-mizrahi-jews-jewish-ethnic-diversity/.
10. "The Jews in the Levant and the Maghreb." Museum of Art and History of Judaism. https://www.mahj.org/en/discover-collections-permanent-collection/9-the-jews-in-the-levant-and-the-maghreb.
    1. Used this source as a starting point to find more reliable sources
11. Zenner, Walter P. (1967). “Sephardic Communal Organizations in Israel.” Middle East Journal. 21: 173–186 – via JSTOR.