Talk:Sephardic law and customs

message: Hardly, Morrocans Use velvet,Turks used velvet,Greeks used velvet, sure tiqs are NOW popular in israel with morrocans etc but cmon traditionally moroccan jews used a velvet mantle that is even more like that of ashkenazim than the dutch sephardim have! 
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_keBbQIFTQtw/RorgIeXB0vI/AAAAAAAACgc/BNS6S_bfmnY/P2070136.JPG  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.72.241.193 (talk) 07:19, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks.  I've corrected the article accordingly.  --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 08:44, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  A TIQ FOR SEPHARDI TORAHS? 

message: The prayer books used in Istanbul in the 1950s and 1960s were invariably printed in VIENNA, I believe at the end of the 19th century. Some were falling apart but carefully preserved and repaired, the kind of thing people would give as a gift to a son-in-law. Afterwards books printed in Israel started arriving but people did not like those, because their format and pagination were different (even if the text was the same). Later some Israeli publisher came up with reprints of the Vienna editions, in the same format, except that the Ladino explanations and notes interspersed were replaced by Hebrew ones, but still set in the Rashi script to differentiate them from the prayer text. The old men did not like that but accepted these reprints (certainly better than the new format texts). The ability to read Ladino in the Rashi script was already disappearing and the new generation did not mind the exclusion of Ladino from these new prayer books. These Sephardic Vienna editions are not in the list of editions of the article, an important omission.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.212.157.173 (talk) 07:18, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Very good point.  So if you know any of the Vienna editions, add them (I think there was one published by Schlesinger).  The body of the article also needs amending to say that there were Vienna editions after the Livorno ones (this is already mentioned in the corresponding section of Syrian Jews). --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 08:56, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Now done! --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.25.109.195 (talk) 16:13, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: BOOKS

message: The article needs a list of prominent Sephardic rabbis by century and country.  Can someone else have a shot?  --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) 14:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This minidiscussion points up two problems.  (1) Nowhere have we ever made a sound definition of who is/n't "Sfaradhi"...whether Wikipedia follows the real meaning (descendants of the expulsees of Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1497, respectively) or the modern Israeli [aka "Ashkenazi definition of "Sephardi" as the "other"] definition... and (2) that this is a discussion page for the article at hand, not a "thread" in a chatroom.  TIA, Tomertalk 04:55, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rabbis 

message: Some days ago I deleted some recently added sentences on flexibility in halachah and white talletot. I note that another editor (or perhaps the same editor from a different IP address) has since reinstated them.
In my edit summary, I gave full reasons for my edit. Fuller reasons are as follows:
On the whole I agree that Sephardim do tend to a more lenient and "centrist" view of halachah, but there are exceptions: Zimmels, in his Ashkenazim and Sephardim, lists examples of "Sephardic strictness and Ashkenazic leniency" as well as the reverse. The more important point is that section in question was a list of specific customs and usages. It was not intended to set out the general intellectual methodology of the different communities, which would require an article in itself. (On the talk page of the article I did raise the question whether there should be a separate article on "Sephardic Judaism" about the intellectual approach of the communities.) Or if it is to go in this article, there should be a separate section, with full discussion and citation of sources: Zvi Zohar, "He'iru Pene Ha-mizraḥ", might be a good place to start. Just saying "Sephardim are more reasonable" or words to that effect, without discussion or substantiation, is unencyclopaedic (and being reasonable is not a "custom"!).
On talletot, I know that plain white talletot are recommended by the Ovadia Yosef school. Also, many people wear "white on white" striped talletot on Rosh Hashanah and Kippur for Kabbalistic reasons, but some Ashkenazim do this as well. Traditionally, Spanish and Portuguese Jews wore silk talletot (which did have blue stripes); the Ben Ish Hai holds that wool is halachically preferable but says nothing about colours. Similarly, Spanish and Portuguese Jews wear them like a shawl with all four corners in front, while Syrian (and I believe Moroccan) Jews fold the two back corners over their shoulders like the Ashkenazim. All in all, the picture is too diverse to allow any meaningful statement about what "Sephardim" do about talletot.
I would welcome further discussion to improve the article; and I shall hold off reinstating my edit till we have tried to resolve it. But I would rather not engage in an edit war. --Sir Myles na Gopaleen (the da) (talk) 10:32, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Halachic flexibility and talletot 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Sephardic law and customs. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20061113134147/http://www.orvishua.org.il/heb/books/dif.php to http://www.orvishua.org.il/heb/books/dif.php
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 02:31, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I don't know how this article ever made it past the preliminary stages of fact checking but anyone remotely familiar with an academic understanding of sephardim would take offence to this obviously biased and factually ignorant page. It needs an absolute overhaul, or to be removed entirely and written by a more qualified individual. Almost every section in this written page is misleading or factually incorrect. If the general keepers of this page cannot identify these obvious flaws then I will take more stringent action in regards to this page. 173.167.55.77 (talk) 11:58, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The IP above is being very gentle. This article is a terrible claptrap, mainly a huge bibliography and some nonsense at the top. It needs an AfD, not an overhaul. I suspect many Sephardi-related articles, such as Sephardic Bnei Anusim etc., were written by the contributor responsible for this. AddMore-III (talk) 21:36, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  This Article Needs An Overhaul 

message: This article needs to choose a focal point. Although it does provide information about Sephardic law and customs, as the title suggests, it also provides an extensive review of Sephardic liturgy. Seeing as Sephardic laws and customs are influenced by the liturgy, it would make more sense to expand on these connections rather than creating separate categories and confusing the reader. I would suggest that the title should be changed to "Sephardic liturgy and its impact on Sephardic law," or something of this sort. The customs aspect of the article is already lacking and could be incorporated in another article regarding Sephardic culture, where it would fit better.  
Furthermore, the article often compares and contrasts Sephardim and Ashkenazim, which takes away from its focus on Sephardim. It would create more fluency and cohesion if the article stuck to explaining Sephardim on its own, not in relation to Ashkenazim. Additionally, to maintain objectivity, phrases like "the most important theological motive for harmonization" should be avoided. This phrase makes it seem like the author favors the teachings of Isaac Luria and Hayim Vital. 
Lastly, the secondary sources are a little outdated. There is only one within the past five years, and, with the exception of this source, there aren't any within the past decade. I understand that this is an historical topic, but modern views on Sephardim are always important to include to develop a broad, unbiased view of the topic. I also have a particular problem with using the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals as a reliable source. Upon looking into the website, it has a paying membership who clearly influences the topics included on the website. This inevitable bias should be taken into consideration when including information from this source. 
Overall, the article mainly has logistical and structural problems that can be easily solved.
Haleigh1212 (talk) 06:06, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shifting Focus, Avoiding Biases, and Checking Sources 

message: This is an issue prevalent among Sephardim around the world, and I will try to shine some light on this briefly for the purpose of getting better content on Sephardim through Wikipedia. 
Sephardi Jews are not primarily Jews from Spain. Before the establishment of Israel, all Jews from Morocco to Afghanistan were called Sephardi, and one of the reasons for this was to differentiate from Ashkenazim. Ashkenazi Jews hold very markedly different traditions that arose within the last 800 years or so, where as Sephardim follow the rulings of many poskim and hakhamim from Spain, whose teachings spread rapidly across all of the Umayyad Empire due to the relative tolerance the empire had for Judaism, known as the Golden Age for Sephardi Judaism. 
I am proposing a major edit to this page to reflect that Sephardi Jews are any Jews who inhabit the traditional regions of Jewish influence, I.E., the regions Jews inhabited before the destruction of the second temple and the areas inbetween, which includes (but is not limited to) Morocco, Egypt, Pre-Israel Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq, etc., and whose traditions were changed to reflect the teachings of the Spanish Rabbanim.
This is important because Ashkenazim, who take some Spanish Rabbis' teachings under consideration (mostly Maimonides), do not actually hold the same traditions, teachings or beliefs as those in the "old world" of Jewish residence. Ashkenazim for example, study primarily European rabbinical commentaries on traditional texts, which no other communities hold as authoritative, where Sephardim study the texts themselves, directly, without revision or change. Of course Sephardi Jews read rabbinical commentaries, but the commentaries themselves reflect the traditions of the communities and do not facilitate the kinds of corrections to the basic laws as Ashkenazi rabbinic texts do.
 This is a very nuanced discussion that the majority of Jewish People are not completely educated in, or mostly even aware of, unless they study rational Sephardi Jewish halachah and tradition from a Sephardi educational institution, as nearly all Ashkneazi educational institutions will teach that all Jews are the same and there are no significant differences between traditions other than those which are cultural. Fortunately it is easy to fix, and unless I receive any complaints pertaining to changing this, I will go ahead and fix the page. --Cakiva (talk) 16:24, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inaccuracies about Sephardim