Question for 10/25

2. Religious modernization in Europe differed from religious modernization among Sephardic Jews. Due to the Enlightenment and secularization in Europe, Orthodoxy emerged, as the rabbis felt modernization would interfere with traditional Judaism. Zohar writes, “The strategy of Orthodoxy, as formulated by its leaders, was to deny the legitimacy of all modernist innovations, stating that halakhah was an eternal, fixed corpus of normative directives. (Zohar, 71) In contrast to Europe, the Sephardic Jews did not create new radical forms of Islamic religious life as a reaction to modernization. Sephardic Jews kept their traditions. Furthermore, there was a separation of Jewish courts and rabbis in Europe. However, in the Middle East and North Africa, rabbinic courts were used in marriage, divorce and family cases and the use of rabbis in court increased. There was less separation of religion from social and political life in Sephardic life.