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2 Stigma, Identity, and Sephardic-Ashkenazic Relations in Indianapolis1 Jack Glazier Jack Glazier places the relationship between East Mediterranean Sephardim with their East European Ashkenazic neighbors in the context of local Jewish-Gentile interaction in a Midwestern city. Added to the assumption that the Ashkenazic way defined Jewishness, the East European Jews of this middle-sized community were under great pressure to conform to a presumed American way of life. Glazier stresses the relationship of assimilation to social and economic forces in the environment. His study of stigma can be compared to the relationship of recent Soviet Jews to American Jews in Brooklyn by Markowitz and to the study of Yemenite Jewish identity by DahbanyMiraglia , as well as to the development of the Lincoln community as described by Gradwohl and Gradwohl. Introduction The fate of Jewish identity in the United States has historically represented an important concern of both the American Jewish community itself and of social scientists who have closely observed American ethnic groups during this century. But regardless of popular or social scientific pronouncements about the state of Jewish religiosity and ethnicity, the American Jewish experience has been represented almost exclusively in terms of Ashkenazic Jewry. The Sephardim of America usually constitute little more than a passing remark or an occasional footnote in the array of books and articles documenting Jewish life in the United States. And then of the two major Sephardic migrations to the New World-the Jewish passage of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the immigration of the twentieth century -it is the former, celebrated in such popular accounts as Birmingham 's The Grandees (1971), which receives the greater emphasis. As a result, our collective understanding of Sephardic life in America during this century is severely limited. The much larger body of writings on the earlier wave of Sephardic migration during the 43 44 Stigma, Identity and Sephardic-Ashkenazic Relations formative years of the United States provides no insight into more recent events. Of course, the emphasis on Ashkenazic Jewry reflects their vastly greater numbers since only about 25,000 Sephardim emigrated to America from 1899-1925 (Angel 1974:87), and that number has not been substantially augmented in the ensuing years. Still, the lives of four generations of Sephardim present some distinctive aspects of Jewish cultural life and the struggle for ethnic identity in America. The midwestern context of the present account also includes some unique features which would not be found in the larger ethnic centers of the United States. Moreover, in discussing the stigmatization of twentieth century Sephardic immigrants and their relationship to Ashkenazic j'ews, the present article takes up an important but heretofore neglectE!d aspect of Sephardic experience in America. The problem at hand reprt~sents a paradox. Simply put, the unique qualities of openness and freedom in American society, which have enabled Jews to flourish and prosper, have profoundly transformed the very communities seeking to use this freedom to maintain themselves-to practice a way of life threatened and beleaguered in other times and places. Halpern phrases the problem as a question: "How can the Jewish people survive in the face of hostility which threatens to destroy it, and, on the other hand, in the face of a friendliness which threatens to dissolve group ties and submerge Jews, as a whole, by absorbing them individually?" (1974:71). Both Ashkenazim and Seph21rdim confront the paradox, although the experience of Sephardim, particularly in Indianapolis, assumes an added dimension. Specifically, the immigrant generation of Sephardim and their children faced more than the challenge of adapting to the very alien parochial culture of midwestern America with its periodic expressions of anti-Semitic sentiment. They also confronted a broad spectrum of Ashkenazic: opinion openly skeptical about the authenticity of Sephardic Judaism. These attitudes are an important aspect of Sephardic life and figure very prominently in the way the Sephardim think about themseJ.ves and the particular character of their community. Slow to give way to a rational understanding of Sephardic custom, Ashkenazic 21ttitudes stigmatized Sephardic identity , thus limiting for more than two generations Sephardic participation in a broad range of Jewish communal activities. Many Sephardic narratives of the first dt~cades in the city thus elaborate the theme, "They didn't believe WE! were Jews." My use of the term "stigrna" follows Goffman's reference to lithe situation of the individual who is disqualified from full social acceptance" (1963:preface). This lack of social acceptance ranged [3.145.111.183] Project MUSE...

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