Adah Siegel

Honors 394B
Winter 2022
1
Whiteness as a Positive Self-Concept: Ashkenazi Prejudice

Growing up as an Ashkenazi Jew, I never thought about Jewish multiculturalism too

much. Even though I grew up next door to a large Sephardic Jewish community, we did not cross

paths. To me, the signifiers of the Jewish religion were the signifiers of my Jewish culture, like

Matzo Ball soup and the Yiddish language. Societal perceptions and reflections of Judaism

confirmed that for me. Being a part of the majority of the 66% of Jews in the United States who

identify as Ashkenazi, 1 one doesn’t have to think about Jewish diversity; many Ashkenazim are

unaware of Jewish multiculturalism.2 I also think of myself as white. These are aspects of my

self-concept, a “schema consisting of an organized collection of beliefs and feelings about

one-self.” 3 However, not all Jews are white; there is much diversity within the entirety of the

Jewish culture. When Sephardic Jews began immigrating to the United States from the former

Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, they complicated the race of the Ashkenazim: if

Sephardim were also Jewish, but not white, how could Ashkenazim remain white in the eyes of

the American racial hierarchy?

It would only make sense for Ashkenazim across the United States, and specifically in

Seattle, to capitalize on the ability to bend the concept of what the white race is, because race is a

social construct. Therefore, in order to establish a positive self-concept in a society where the

status of white is at the pinnacle of the social hierarchy, both Ashkenazim and Sephardim spun

their narratives to prove themselves as white. As Ashkenazim are the majority grouping of the

Jewish peoples in the United States, they “othered” Sephardim by distinguishing them as a

1
A Portrait of Jewish Americans
2
Ben-Ur, Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History
3
Baron, Byrne, Social Psychology: Understanding Human Interaction
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different group. Sephardim, on the other hand, reflected their ancestral histories as western

European, rather than of Ottoman origin.

This is confusing: why would Ashkenazim further prejudice against a group of people

who are Jews, like themselves? This leads me to the exploration of how people form their ethnic

identities from a psychological standpoint. Ethnic identity is “developed as children become

aware of other groups and of the cultural/ethnic differences between themselves and others, and

attempt to understand the meaning of their ethnicity within the larger setting.”4 Therefore, this

process is not possible without social interaction, and has implications for intergroup relations:

“Because one has a need for a positive self-concept…there will be bias in social comparisons

with other groups to look for ways in which one's own group can be favorably distinguished

from other groups.”5 Self-concept includes the understanding of one’s material self, intrapersonal

self, and interpersonal self.6 In other words, it is the image a person has of the things in their

lives, their desires and personality, and the views that other people and groups hold about them.

A negative self-concept predicts health problems, substance abuse, and antisocial behavior; 7 it is

plausible to imagine that there is an evolutionarily adaptive advantage to having a positive sense

of self, which points to a scientific explanation as to why it is so important. Ashkenazim

favorably distinguished themselves from Sephardim, two groups which were already very

distant, in order to retain a positive “self-concept.” Self concept is inherently influenced by the

way a group is viewed as people understand the way in which their identity fits into the broader

societal view. In the case of the United States, whiteness is better.

4
Liebkind et al., Ethnic Identity, Psychology Of
5
Liebkind et al.
6
Epstein, The Self-Concept Revisited: Or a Theory of a Theory
7
Bachman et al., Adolescent Self-Esteem: Differences by Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Age.
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Only relatively recently have Ashkenazi Jews “become white.” In the late 19th and early

20th centuries, the Anglo-Saxon population in America did not accept Eastern European Jews as

fully white. They were “oriental,” and had “kinky hair” and “thick lips”8. however, according to

William Z. Ripley, they were “‘more Aryan than Semitic’”. 9 As Ripley was very influential, this

categorization effectively put European Jews “closer to the white end of his racial spectrum”.10

European Jews began to become classified as “Hebrews.” Many prominent arguments claimed

that Jews, or Hebrews, were close to white, especially by distinguishing them from groups that

were especially non-white. For example, in 1904, Nathaniel Shaler, the dean of Harvard’s

Lawrence Scientific School wrote that Hebrews are “‘nearer to ourselves than the people of any

other stock,’ and that feelings of disaffection toward Jews ‘should certainly be much less than

that which we experience in meeting Africans or American Indians’”. 11 An additional significant

argument was that Jews could easily assimilate into whiteness: Shaler also wrote that Jews “‘will

blend in such a measure as will make a safe common element of population’”.12 Essentially, Jews

are not completely white, but have the potential to become white.

Ashkenazi Jews developed a self-concept of whiteness before many Sephardim began to

immigrate to the United States, as “Americanization,” or assimilation into whiteness, was a high

priority for the German Jews13 who immigrated to the United States in the 1840s and 50s. For

example, in 1881, The Union of American Hebrew Congregations warned that new Jews

immigrating to the United States: “if there should grow up in our midst a class of people not

imbued with American ideas…prejudice and ill judgment will hold us responsible for evils of

8
Tobin et al., In Every Tongue: The Racial & Ethnic Diversity of the Jewish People
9
Ripley, The Races of Europe; a Sociological Study
10
Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity.
11
Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity.
12
Goldstein
13
Seltzer, The Americanization of the Jews.
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Winter 2022
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which we none may be guilty”. This indicated that the Ashkenazim already living in America

already felt a self-concept of whiteness, and a need to assimilate new Ashkenazi immigrants.

Even the name “Union of American Hebrew Congregations'' implies that the Ashkenazim saw

themselves as white, because America, from 1790 up until 1906, only granted naturalization to

“free white persons.” American Hebrews meant white Jews.

One of the aspects of both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic self-concept is having

physically dispersed many times. The Jewish people have been a diasporic group for thousands

of years, accumulating vast differences in geographical origin, language, and culture. It does not

come as a surprise that the Ashkenazi and Sephardic cultures are vastly different, having

developed in physically separate places—Ashkenazim in Central and Eastern Europe and

Sephardim in Spain and the former Ottoman Empire. Despite their shared religion, historically

the two groups have viewed themselves as completely separate. In documented cases of different

diasporic groups being brought together, the “reunions were characterized by a reluctance or

refusal to participate together in religious rites or communal matters, to intra-marry, to identify as

members of the same group, and in some cases to support immigration”.15 The United States saw

a similar pattern.

Around 1910, Ashkenazim living in New York City’s Lower East Side petitioned the

Mayor to remove the “Turks” causing disturbances in the neighborhood. When finding that the

“Turks” were actually Sephardic Jews, the Ashkenazim decided “to settle the matter ‘among

themselves.’”16 The fact that Ashkenazim and Sephardim do not explicitly associate each other

as members of the same group, until informed otherwise, exemplifies the fact that the two

14
Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership
15
Soomekh, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in America
16
Ben-Ur
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Winter 2022
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cultures have distinctly diverged. In Seattle, the first two Sephardic Ottomans, Solomon Calvo

and Jacob Policar, did not establish a connection with the pre-existing Ashkenazi community

“because Ashkenazim doubted Policar and Calvo’s very Jewishness because of their Ottoman

origins”.17 This is to say that up until the major immigration of Ottoman Sephardic Jews, the

tensions between Ashkenazim and Sephardim were simply distinct and separated into a majority

and minority. Not only were the cultures of the two groups different, they saw themselves as

being of different ethnic origins, especially on the Ashkenazi side: they saw themselves as

Jewish, and Sephardim as Ottomans. When Sephardim from the formerOttoman

Empire—around 60,000— arrived in America from 1900-1924, 18 it became clear that what was

once only coethnic recognition failure19 as a result of diasporic differences had shaped into

prejudice.

With the Quota Law of 1921, “the influx from any one nation was reduced to 3 percent of

the number of foreign-born persons from that country living in America in 1910” The census

numbers of 1910 reflected “deliberate calculations to favor the influx of Northern and Western

Europeans, who dominated America’s population”. 20 This meant that not only was a smaller

quota of Sephardic Jews granted naturalization, they were a part of the intentional exclusion of

non-white immigrants. In fact, while Ashkenazi Jews were classified as Hebrew on immigration

processing records, Sephardic Jews were classified by their country of origin, despite being

Jewish. “Hebrew” had become synonymous with “Jewish” which inherently left out many

Sephardim, as they spoke Ladino, not Hebrew.

17
Lewis, Precarious Whiteness: Reimagining the Seattle Sephardic Origin Story
18
Ben-Ur, Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History
19
Ben-Ur, Aviva. Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History
20
Ben-Ur, Aviva. Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History
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Winter 2022
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For example, see Figure 1. Avraam Maimon, a Sephardic rabbi who eventually ended up

in Seattle, sailed on a ship called La Fayette, from France. On the ship’s manifest, his race is

labeled “Turkish.” The passenger right above him is from Romania, and is labeled as Hebrew.

Because the race of “Hebrews” became the same as “Jewish,” and “Hebrew” already had the

connotation of white, Ashkenazim had achieved their white-spectrum status in America, and

were further separated from the non-white Sephardim.

In a country built on the pillars of white supremacy, being seen as white holds great

power and privilege. White people in America, especially in the early 20th century, had

privileges that no one else did. They had more open access to schools, jobs, land, and, of course,

the right to vote. Jim Crow laws were at the height of their existence, many landowners adopted

restrictive racial covenants, only selling to white homeowners, and barriers like poll taxes,

literacy tests, and the “grandfather clause” prevented many people of color from voting. It is

important to explicitly note here that race is a social construct, and not rooted in any biological or

scientific evidence, which is now supported with much research. For further convincing, take the

1909 New York Times article “Is the Turk a White Man”, which declared that the Turk’s mind is

“barbaric,” and he therefore isn’t white (Figure 2). This once again labeled Turkish peoples,

including the Sephardic Jews who were, non-white.

With the immigration of non-white Sephardim who also claimed the Jewish identity

threatening their hard-earned social status and self-concept, Ashkenazim began “other” the

Sephardim. Notably, while German Ashkenazi Jews and Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews had

tensions within their own subgroups, they carried a shared negative attitude toward the newly

naturalized Sephardim—the “shared other.” In the 1910s and 20s, they advocated for the

“expansion of the boundaries of whiteness to include not only those from Western European
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21
Protestant countries, but rather from all of Europe”, lumping Ashkenazim in with whites, and

excluding Sephardim. More blatantly, in 1913, Maurice Hextor, a member of the National

Conference of Jewish Charities declared that “Oriental Jews ought to be treated in manner

completely differently from ‘our’ Jews—the already established ‘European’ Jews. So great was

‘the psychic and psychological difference,’ Hexter emphasized, between the ‘Levantine Jew’ and

his European coreligionists that ‘there seems to be little in common.’ Another commentator

disparagingly insisted: ‘The Levantine Jew is as human, or almost as human, as any other’”.22

Similarly, in 1926, social scientist Louis Hacker asserted that Sephardim are “almost as alien to

their [Ashkenazic] kinsmen as are the negroes to the average white Southerner”.23 This statement

again aligns Sephardim with African Americans, who were unanimously seen as non-white. Both

statements simultaneously separated Ashkenazim from Sephardim, insisting that there is no

commonality between the two groups—even humanity—and kept Ashkenazim on the white

spectrum.

Seattle specifically attracted a high number of Sephardic Ottoman immigrants; the

geography of the city was similar to those of the places that many immigrants came from, and

once they established a community, more and more people made the journey. The first Ottoman

immigrants to Seattle “reportedly took a deep breath and expressed satisfaction that the climate

was sufficiently similar to that of the eastern Mediterranean and that Mercer Island, in Lake

Washington, resembled the island of Marmara”.24

Because Ashkenazim in Seattle had already developed a self-concept of being white,

intra-Jewish prejudice when Sephardim began to immigrate was significant. In 1928, The Jewish
21
Naar, Sephardic Trajectories, Archives, Objects, and the Ottoman Jewish Past in the United States
22
Naar
23
Hacker, Louis. The Communal Life of the Sephardic Jews of New York City.
24
Naar, Sephardic Trajectories, Archives, Objects, and the Ottoman Jewish Past in the United States
Adah Siegel
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Transcript, a prominent Seattle-based (Ashkenazic centered) Jewish newspaper, wrote a scathing

opinion piece regarding the Sephardim: “Sephardic Jews in the United States are slower in

adapting themselves to the customs of the country than the Eshkenazim. The process of

assimilation with the new way of life…obtains to a much smaller degree with the Sephardim

than with us. For example, fewer of them hasten to learn the English language as speedily as we,

and the process of Americanization is much slower among them…We, the Eshkenazim have a

greater measure of vitality, more energy, more will-power…and become Americanized more

quickly.”25 This excerpt illustrates the us vs. them dichotomy that was present between

Ashkenazim and Sephardim, signifying the need of Ashkenazim to socially compare to enforce

their self-concept. It also exemplifies the need Ashkenazim felt to prove they were

“Americanized,” or in other words, white—an argument that others had already made about

them. Additionally, it is interesting to note that there is no mention of Jewishness in the piece.

The pride the author felt was not based on his practice being better, or more sophisticated, or

“more Jewish.” This further shows how Ashkenazim othered Sephardim by race, not religion,

showing that they did not even recognize Sephardim as Jewish, as well as the fact that the

distinction of “more white” was more important than “more Jewish.”

This act saved a positive-self concept for the Ashkenazim because it favorably aligned

them with whites and distinguished them from Sephardim. Self-concept is influenced by

interpersonal relations, the way a social hierarchy works, and where a person’s self-concept fits

into that hierarchy. Fitting their race narrative into one of whiteness made the Ashkenazim’s

self-concept more positive. In other words, the Ashkenazim felt better about themselves when

they were sure of their whiteness because of the way others viewed the racial hierarchy.

25
Cohen, Are Sephardic Jews in This Country Indifferent to Jewish Community Life?
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Many Seattle Sephardim, like Marc Angel, internalized the Ashkenazi’s claims:

“Convinced to believe Sephardic history and memory could never match that of Ashkenazic

Jews, Angel began to regard his own culture as socially, historically, and intellectually

inferior”.26 Others turned to proving themselves, either as white, or as Jewish. For example, in

his 1939 Master’s Thesis, Albert Adatto, a Seattle Sephardic Jew, aimed to turn perceptions of

Sephardic Jews’ origins to its “Spanish and Western European nature” 27—more Western, and

more white. More pertinently, see the response to the previously mentioned Jewish Transcript

article, written by Seattle Sephardic Jew Robert Benveniste: “Of universal interest are the Jewish

philosophers in Spain, stars of striking brilliancy in the philosophical firmament whose influence

on medieval thought was on the highest…such is in brief the baffling history of the Spanish Jews

whose descendants today are the living witnesses of those ancestors of immortal fame and sacred

memory.” The author even goes on to describe Turkey as an “adopted country,” a place “so

stagnant and…away from the civilizing influences of European countries”.28 By dissociating the

narrative of his ancestory away from the Ottoman Empire and reflecting it as a European story,

Benveniste twists his narrative to be a more white one in an effort to save himself from future

discrimination, the subconscious hope being that the societal narrative surrounding the

Sephardim would become more accepting and see them as a more white group, affirming their

self-concept as one that is not “below,” in a hierarchical sense.

Perhaps, my experience of living physically close to a Sephardic Jewish community and

never taking note of it was a result of this historical exclusion and separation of subgroups.

Perhaps, the narrative of Ashkenazim being the superior, more white Jews has been so pervasive

26
Lewis, Precarious Whiteness: Reimagining the Seattle Sephardic Origin Story
27
Lewis
28
Benveniste, Local Sephardic Leader Answers Charges of Inactivity Made Against Group
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that it has infiltrated the modern group relations between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Thinking

about my own place in the Seattle Jewish community, I spoke with Albert Maimon, who is the

grandson of Avraam Maimon. Albert served on the board for The Samis Foundation in Seattle, a

non-Sephardic specific philanthropy for Jewish education. In talking with him, he described his

experience of the Jewish community to be very Ashkenazic centered, almost to the exclusion of

Sephardim. He talked about realizing that he was participating in centering Ashkenazi voices

only when having meetings or planning events, even while being a Sephardic Jew himself.

Perhaps he had been acculturated to exclude the Sephardic Ottoman story, to fit in with the

majority, to appear more white and save a positive self-concept.

Psychology is an incredibly interdisciplinary field. It deals with people, why they think

what they think, and how they interact with each other. The role of self-concept is important to

take into account when analyzing the relationships of different groups because it is often a

motivator for different interactions. This is because when a person’s self-concept does not align

with what happens in real-life, incongruence occurs, which affects how much a person values

themselves29. Therefore, self-concept is a very strong motivator. Because this is the way that

humans think and act, it is not possible to imagine a scenario where self-concept is not a factor. If

we could change this history, the mechanism by which it would have taken for Ashkenazi Jews

to be accepting of Sephardic Jews would have to be a systematic change in how “race” became a

concept. Of course, time travel is not possible (yet). In order to fix pervasive issues of prejudice

today, we must deploy the tools already accessible to us. I know that moving forward, I will be

aware of how I interact with the Jewish world as an Ashkenazi Jew, and how others’ voices may

29
Argyle, Michael, and Janet Dean. “Contributions to Social Interaction.” Social Encounters, 2017, 173–87.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315129501-17.
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be dampened. By becoming educated, always approaching interactions with empathy and

awareness, and advocating for issues of those with less power in our racial system, we can move

towards being less prejudiced.

Figure 1:
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Figure 2:
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and M. Brent Donnellan. “Adolescent Self-Esteem: Differences by Race/Ethnicity,
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JEWISH PAST IN THE UNITED STATES. Koç University Press, December 29,
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