Word: ashkenazim
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...process, Israel's melting pot has, on occasion, become a cauldron of hostilities. The Ashkenazim have lampooned what they see as the less disciplined and sophisticated Sephardim, and the Sephardim, in turn, have scorned the standoffish Ashkenazim. In a few particularly ugly instances, the Sephardim have been dubbed "Khomeinis"; they have responded by calling their antagonists "Aske-nazis." Even Prime Ministers, including European-born David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, have spoken darkly of the dangers of "mob rule" and sweepingly written off "the primitive Arab mentality" of the Sephardim...
...coffeehouses of Vienna and Budapest and filled with Hapsburg-era music. Raised on couscous, they had no taste for gefilte fish. Even their religious customs differed from those of the Europeans: at Passover, for example, the Sephardim are allowed to eat rice and legumes, which are forbidden the Ashkenazim. They also sometimes indulge in exuberant rites, energetically re-enacting the Exodus and slapping each other with onions as a reminder of the Egyptians' lashing of the Jews...
...Arab positions or the Negev wilderness. The more fortunate families that managed to stay in Jerusalem did well to find single rooms, in abandoned Arab houses. There was little work to be found and little food. Often young boys lived off what they could pick from the pockets of Ashkenazim...
...founders of Israel hoped that children from both Sephardic and European families could be taught together, and in the process learn togetherness. In practice, however, classrooms only increased the sense of separation. Run in the main by Ashkenazim, Israeli schools concentrated on Western poetry and European history; their liturgies were the Ashkenazic ones. Not surprisingly, students from Ashkenazic homes with book lined shelves easily outperformed Sephardic children. "We achieved nothing," says Yehuda Amir, director of the Institute of Integration at Tel Aviv's Bar-ilan University. "The Sephardic children came from large families, lived in crowded quarters and could...
...recently as December 1983, when a policeman shot a Sephardi in a rundown area of Tel Aviv, local Sephardim ran riot, painting swastikas all around. Two months later, when the Peace Now movement, dominated by Ashkenazim, took to the streets of the capital to call for the retirement of former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, his supporters, mostly Sephardim, stormed the rally, screaming obscenities and tearing up placards. One demonstrator was killed. In explaining why he forsook a career as a distinguished archaeologist to enter politics, the late former Deputy Premier Yigael Yadin of the Likud coalition said, "I thought...