The other within: A Sephardic Odyssey

A Sephardic Odyssey

By: Lucette Lagnado

There is a photograph of my family taken in Alexandria a couple of years before I was born. My mother is sitting at a table, her hair long and lustrous, a wry smile on her face. She is a classic Durrellian beauty, mysterious, melancholic. My father, wearing a tarboosh, the red fez that is a mark of Egyptian aristocracy, is seated across from her looking toward the camera. In between are my sister and two brothers. The children are dressed impeccably, as befits a prosperous Egyptian Jewish family even on a hot summer day.

I have always looked at that picture enviously, wishing I could crawl into the frame. I have come to believe that all that’s good about my family took place in the years before I was born and ended shortly afterward with a new Jewish exodus from Egypt.

The creation of Israel in 1948, and its subsequent wars with the Arab countries, precipitated a wholesale departure of Jewish communities that had settled in the Middle East and thrived there. Egyptian Jewry numbered 80,000, but the new dictator, Gamal Abdel Nasser, wanted them all to leave, including my family. There were also sizable Jewish populations in Iraq, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, and Lebanon, rich cultures that practiced traditional Judaism with a Levantine flavor. The political turmoil destroyed dozens of venerable communities, displacing nearly a million Jews. They left for Israel, Europe, and America.

It was here in Brooklyn, where we settled, that my family began to fall apart. My sister left home shortly after we arrived. That was the first blow: Who ever heard of a girl leaving her family before she was even married? My father, no longer able to sit proudly in his tarboosh, was forced to earn a living selling ties in the subway. One brother went away to college, as did I. My mother, her children having drifted away, occupied herself with a clerical job at the Brooklyn Public Library. In the end, both my parents fell prey to a host of maladies, succumbing to strokes, dementia, heart disease. Their children should have rallied, but instead we were at war with one another. The photograph from Alexandria was irreparably torn.

For the past 25 years and more, Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn has been a magnet for Jewish refugees from Arab countries. They settled first in Bensonhurst, then in the more upscale homes along Ocean Parkway. They tried, through their synagogues and schools, shops and restaurants, to hold on to their past. Since my parents died, I have been increasingly drawn to Ocean Parkway. I suppose I am trying in some way to repair the sundered photograph by immersing myself in the world of my parents.

Here, life carries on as if it were still the Levant of the 1920s. Girls are encouraged to marry young; 17 or 18 is the norm-by 25, you’re over the hill. Sons go into business with their fathers. The area has produced jeans kings like Jordache and electronics czars like Crazy Eddie Antar, as well as the designer Isaac Mizrahi, and, of course, Fred Harari, owner of the store that was torched in the 125th Street massacre.

Harari is both an exception and the rule. As the middle class fled New York and department stores shut down, Syrian Jews stayed put, set up family businesses, and prospered by opening bargain stores that appealed to the city’s new working class. The Wiz, Century 21, Conway, and Strawberry are all owned by Syrian Jewish families. These are adept businessmen who mastered the art of sales in the souks of Damascus and Aleppo.

There are other Sephardic communities around New York. In pockets of Kew Gardens and Great Neck, the Iranian Jews, refugees from Khomeini and other ayatollahs, also keep to themselves. They have done almost as well as the Syrians, some say even better. Life revolves around the synagogue; girls are watched over closely, lest they be sullied by Western morality, which these Jews despise as deeply as do the mullahs who forced them to leave Iran.

Then there are the grandees of the Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue on Central Park West, and the minuscule Moroccan community that has sprung up on the Upper East Side. They now have their own synagogue. It’s called the Manhattan Sephardic Congregation, and it’s a hole in the wall tucked away in the East 70s, decorated with carpet from Rabat and Casablanca to cover the plank floors. Despite its shabbiness, it draws large crowds each week, and I dare say it’s doing better than many Conservative or Reform edifices.

I have taken to going to Manhattan Sephardic since my father died. My first impression, as I sat in the women’s section, behind a lace curtain partition, was that it was the sort of place he would have liked. How different it is from the American congregations I had attended since my exodus from Brooklyn-elegant, progressive temples where men and women sit together and pray in English, and women even lead services. These were qualities I appreciated, yet they ultimately left me feeling empty and removed.

I am not alone. Despite the advances American-Jews have made, assimilation has reached epidemic proportions. Jews no longer want to be want to be Jewish. They no longer attend the grand synagogues their elders built; they no longer marry other Jews. Call the Chevra Kadisha (burial society). Judaism in America, if not dead, is close to dying.

But not in my shul. And not on Ocean Parkway.

We are living exactly the same way we lived in Egypt, says Desire Sakkal, whose family fled Cairo he was 12. Yes, we live like other Americans, we have TVs in our homes. But we do not accept whatever comes by: We analyze the consequences. We absorb from the outside only what is needed to coexist.

Desi prays at an Egyptian shul on Ocean Parkway called Ahaba ve Ahva, which means Congregation of Love and Brotherhood. It was modeled after a synagogue in Cairo of the same name, and many of its members used to worship there. They are old-timers with a lot of time on their hands, and Ahaba ve Ahva holds three early morning services each day. Recently, Desi formed a new organization of Jews from Egypt. He is trying to gather up the exiles. I knew him as a child and lost track of him after I left Brooklyn 15 years ago. But there he was when I attended a memorial psalm-reading service for my father one Saturday afternoon.

It is an extraordinary affair, this psalm reading, and it takes place every week of the year on the anniversary of someone who has died, the theory being that as each psalm is read out loud, the soul of the departed is elevated higher and higher. The men of Ahaba ve Ahva gather in the small back room of the synagogue. A long table has been laden with dried fruits, roasted hazelnut, cakes, baklava. And there they sit and munch as they take turns chanting out loud each and every one of the 150 psalms composed by King David.

There is a table on the other side of the room, equally laden, where the women sit. They don’t recite the psalms; they mostly gossip. This is where I sit, although the men have let me join their table on a couple of occasions, allowing me to recite the psalms with them, because they knew my father.

Similar tables manned by similar old men can be spotted in various Sephardic congregations up and down Ocean Parkway. Shaare Zion, the largest congregation, made news last year when its rabbi, Abraham Hecht, was quoted as saying Rabin deserved to die even before he was killed. Hecht, a Lubavitcher recruited by the community 50 years ago, when a Sephardic rabbi could not be found, was placed on leave by his Syrian bosses, who were horrified that he had brought scandal to Shaare Zion. Not that they necessarily disagreed with Hecht; this is a conservative community. But politics are discussed only behind closed doors.

A few blocks away is Ahi-Ezer, the shul the Egyptians prefer. Around the corner is a small congregation for newly arrived Syrians. Adherence to the Sabbath is central here. Saturday is the day to spend in shul, Desi tells me. You go in the morning, you pray, and then you have lunch. You rest a little, and then you come back. Your father was like that. Your grandfather was like that. Desi is getting inquiries on his organization from people like myself, who left and reside outside the community. It is more than nostalgia, he observes. It is a resurrection.

What makes the community striking is how worldly it manages to look even as it remains insular. It is a handsome community, and while wealth is of paramount importance for the guys, beauty is what matters for a girl coming of age on Ocean Parkway. A pretty girl knows from a young age that she will command a desirable mate. The families must agree of course. Often, an engagement is announced while the woman is still in high school: College is virtually out of the question.

I turn to Joanne for an explanation. She is 14 years old, dark, and serious-and pretty. She attends Magen David Yeshiva, a high school favored by Sephardic Jewry. Joanne’s parents are Moroccan; her father divorced, however, and her stepmother is Syrian. Joanne suspects she will marry a Syrian Jew. One of her 15-year-old classmates at Magen David is already engaged.

What do her girlfriends look for in a man I ask her. The first attraction is money, she replies without pausing. And what does a man want in a girl? The guy will go for looks. I am stunned at her matter-of-factness, her lack of illusions. Yet what she tells me will be borne out in interview after interview. Did I know that much at 14? I ask myself. Do I know it now? I think of the Bowery Bar and the way social life is conducted there-models barely in their teens eyeing and being eyed by rich older men. Back in Brooklyn, they prefer to be blunt about such matters.

As for a career, few of the women want one, Joanne says. They will always be in the Syrian community, and if they’re going to be rich, then what’s the point? Joanne does have ambitions, though. She wants to go to business school, but she also says she has no plans to leave home before she is married.

I ask her father whether the Syrian community is too repressive. Absolutely not, he replies. Women are protected here, he says, launching into a critique of American society. I think there is too much tolerance, he says, adding that women are its victims. A woman makes herself available, and then she is discarded. He’ll make sure this does not happen to his daughter. He will let her pursue a career, it’s okay if she becomes a doctor but with one proviso: She cannot leave home before she is married. I don’t want anyone to use her, he says. His eyes blaze with the classic judgment of Jews who live in America but are not of America it is a lost country.

On Kings Highway on Sunday afternoon, I do not feel lost. Along a narrow strip, the shops that cater to the Sephardic community are bustling. There are the oriental grocers, like Setton’s, that carry dozens of varieties of olives; shops fragrant with spices of the Middle East. There are rows of little restaurants, dives that feature shish kebab and kufta kebab, strictly kosher. I peek and see large families seated together at long tables, a rare sight in Jewish New York these days. I think of our family picture, the Lagnados, at one table in Alexandria.

The ultimate treat is Mansoura’s. This pastry shop was opened in 1961 by Isaac Mansoura, who had been a famous caterer in Cairo. In Brooklyn, Mansoura continued to act as if he were operating in his beloved Cairo, greeting customers personally, exuding Egyptian hospitality. As a child, I would go there with my dad, who loved it with a passion. He and Mansoura would chat in Arabic, inquire about each other’s health, and only then get down to business, selecting the pastries we would take home in a little white box tied up with a red string.

Mansoura died a couple of months ago, and it was with some trepidation that I entered his store. The counter was being manned by his young grandson. At the back, I could see his son and daughter-in-law, busy readying platters of pastries. Mansoura’s tradition is continuing, Josiane assures me. Yet she also says they will be expanding, that distinctly American practice the elder Mansoura had shunned.

I have already detected some disturbing compromises with modernity. A large wall-to-wall freezer has been installed, and it is now possible to buy frozen delicacies and heat them in the comfort of home. I think wistfully to the time Mansoura had set up a couple of small wooden tables where the freezer now stands. My father and I would share a bowl of foul-medammas, cooked fava beans, typical Egyptian fare that Mansoura had personally prepared for us.

My synagogue moved last fall to more luxurious digs. The net effect was to kick the women upstairs, separating us from the men even more decisively by forcing us to sit in a balcony. It was not even done very well; a tall opaque glass partition has made it hard for women to follow the prayers, to watch the rabbi or the cantor pray. Adding to the absurdity, someone has wrapped a long white sheet around the glass; apparently, it was possible for the men to look up from the sanctuary downstairs and see the women’s legs.

I argued against the change, and was amazed to discover that I was the only woman who seemed perturbed. Everyone else accepted it as the natural order. It wasn’t just the sexism of the new arrangement that troubled me. I missed the old hole in the wall, where we were crunched together in a basement. When the Torah scrolls were brought out, the women rushed to embrace them. Now, we kiss them chastely from afar. For weeks on end, I resolved not to return. I’d go someplace where men and women sit side by side. Yet, even as I set out on Saturday morning, I’d invariably be drawn back to Manhattan Sephardic, to my hypnotic rabbi, my elegiac cantor.

I turn to Liliane Shalom for answers. Elegant and witty, Liliane is one of the few Sephardic women who has managed to exist in both the traditional community and the outside world. Moroccan by birth, she married an American, divorced him, then wooed one of the scions of the Syrian community, Steve Shalom. And though she leads a rather glamorous life, jetting off to Rabat to meet with the King of Morocco, or to the South of France to celebrate Adnan Khashoggi’s birthday, most Saturdays she sits in the balcony at Manhattan Sephardic, immersed in prayer. Sometimes I see her shaking with tears under her Hermes scarf.

I feel the pain of the transplanted person, Liliane tells me. I have understood America completely, understood her and admired her. But I have a feeling America has never touched me, that it touched my head, but not my soul. I am completely Jewish, completely Moroccan.

In the early 1970s, Liliane tried to start a sort of Sephardic pride movement, helping to establish the American Sephardi Federation. Her hope was to bring the disparate communities together, but to her horror, they wanted nothing to do with one another. She was active in the UJA Federation, but her passion remained for the Sephardic world.

She seems in awe of the Syrians, though she is aware of their most damning flaws-their closed-mindedness and backward attitudes. She points out that many Syrian women don’t even have their own bank accounts. The fact that men will only talk with men, and women with women, also annoys her. Then there is their intense materialism. Yet she observes, their synagogues are packed, not only on the High Holidays but all year round. In a blizzard, they’ll have a thousand people. There is no community like them. They look modern and they work modern and they live in a modern environment, but their beliefs are what they brought with them.

Then there are the Syrian weddings that hold her in thrall. She describes glittering affairs featuring Middle Eastern dancers, Arab music, the fanciest bridal gown money can buy: The bride is 18, the mother of the bride is 37, and the grandmother is 57, and there they stand under the chuppa, all these generations. And you can’t tell who’s who, they are so beautiful.

While the sheltered life has its attractions, those who lead it can feel stymied. Suri Kasirer, a former top aide to Governor Cuomo, has tried to straddle the world of Ocean Parkway and the one beyond. Sari’s father is a Holocaust survivor from Romania, an Ashkenazi Jew. Her mother is a Syrian, who took a bold step by marrying someone penniless, from a different culture, and moving away with him to Queens.

There is a lot of conflict in me, says Suri, who admits she is both drawn to and repelled by her mother’s culture. I think the Sephardic world has a joy and an aesthetic missing in the rest of Judaism, one that you see only in the Hasidic world, except that there the women are shut out. There is an intensity that I like.

But Suri believes the community’s great points-its skill in amassing wealth, its emphasis on family life-can also make it a cruel place for those who don’t fit in, such as men who don’t make a lot of money or women who aren’t married. While her work in politics enables her to chat easily with the men, she has nothing to say to the women. They don’t know how to ask,’ How is your work?’ says Suri. When someone is a little different, they react to them funny. When there is such an emphasis on family, what happens to a woman who can’t have children?

The lure of Ocean Parkway is sometimes overpowering. There are times I think the only way to repair the sundered photograph is simply to move back. I’ll live across from Ahaba ve Ahva, stuff grape leaves, take care of my husband. Yes, two months ago, I got married, though, sadly, there weren’t several generations of Lagnados under my chuppa. Other times I think it’s impossible to go home again. Equilibrium can come only by combining my ambitions with my memories.

So Liliane and I have begun a small revolution. As the Torah reading ends, we sneak downstairs, bringing other women with us. Then, as the men carry the Torah scrolls toward the back, we rush in like guerrilla fighters on a sneak attack, embrace the scrolls passionately, fervently, and then run back to the women’s section.

It is a gesture of integration. But in the end, I suspect, my Durrellian angst will follow me wherever I go. A torn photo can be mended but never taken again.

Lucette Lagnado is the senior editor of The Forward.