Word: ashkenazy
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...writer's capital is his childhood, Singer is a literary Rothschild, still retailing anecdotes he heard swirling through the streets of Bilgoray and Lublin. Many stories contain transsexual themes-oblique references to his mother and father; Isaac's older brother, Novelist Israel Joshua Singer (The Brothers Ashkenazi), called his parents' marriage "a tragedy, due to the fact that fate transposed genders in heaven." His father, a rabbi, was "soft," his wife was "sharp"; he was "more a creature of the heart than of intellect," she was "totally devoted to reason and logic...
...Aviv, Haifa and Jaffa, Jews are throwing rocks and shooting at...other Jews. These violent confrontations are not just the product of discord over Lebanon and the refugee camp massacres. More long term problems--such as the fate of the occupied territories and tension between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews--have also engendered passion. But the events of this summer were surely the catalyst for the Israeli malaise...
...ugly outbreak of anti-Semitism in the U.S. or Western Europe? Not at all. It was part of an unusually severe flare-up of ethnic tension in Israel between Sephardic Jews, who came from North Africa and other parts of the Arab and Oriental world, and Ashkenazi Jews, whose roots are in Europe. Though the Sephardic community now forms a majority in Israel, according to most authorities, and was largely responsible for bringing Prime Minister Menachem Begin to power, the more affluent Ashkenazim have long dominated the country's institutions...
...hastened the cease-fire-it was the air raid on Beirut. On July 17, aiming at Palestinian guerrilla offices in a crowded neighborhood, Israeli warplanes killed some 300 Lebanese and Palestinians and wounded another 800. Even many of Begin's own countrymen, especially those from the Western-oriented Ashkenazi community, were shocked. Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin declared that the Palestinian command posts and offices had been in Beirut for years but that, because of the political price involved, previous governments had felt that Israel could derive little benefit from attempting to destroy them. Said Rabin: "Israel used...
...predominantly a working-class constituency in the new immigrant cities of Beersheba and Qiryat Shemona and the grimy slums of greater Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, rejected the traditional socialism of the Labor Party in favor of the radical right-wing nationalism of the Likud. In turn, the more affluent Ashkenazi Jews from northern Europe backed Labor. Ironically, Begin, an Ashkenazi from Poland, was idolized by his more extremist Sephardi followers, who proclaimed him "King of Israel" in campaign slogans and songs...