Stillman’s Sephardi Religious Responses to Modernity is a small volume, scholarly but accessible, intended for the educated lay reader. My sense is that its style and general approach would be very suitable for HUC students – it is not overly specialized or detailed, and is written in a lively style. The book is divided into four chapters of roughly twenty pages each.

Stillman’s first chapter provides the reader with a broad historical background of Sephardic Jewry, a very helpful “lay of the land” which focuses on the first Sephardic encounters with the modern world in the early twentieth century. It opens a window onto a world almost completely unknown to the vast majority of our students: the relatively cosmopolitan and multicultural environments in which Jewish culture flourished in cities such as Alexandria, Casablanca, and Baghdad, and the ease with which Jews once moved in these cultures (before the onset of nationalism and the fixing of national/religious boundaries).

His second chapter explores the relatively open-minded, tolerant worldview of important Sephardic halakhists of the early twentieth century, examining their views on gender, particularism vs. universalism, relations between Jews and non-Jews, autopsy, women wearing wigs, etc. In almost every case, Stillman highlights the more lenient, flexible approach of Sephardic poskim, in contrast with their counterparts in the Ashkenazi world; they simply inhabited a different halakhic universe than figures like the Chatam Sofer (“all innovation is forbidden”), since they did not face the Enlightenment and Haskalah directly and felt far less defensive and “under siege.”

Stillman’s third chapter focuses on the “proto-Zionist" character of Sephardic culture and the openness and enthusiasm with which they greeted the modern Zionist movement. This chapter strikes me as the weakest of the four; he selects his sources rather narrowly, ignores or neglects the considerable opposition (and indifference) of many Sephardic Jews to Zionism, and conflates traditional notions of “ahavat Tsiyon” with the modern (secular) national movement. Notwithstanding these objections, this chapter does provide an important perspective on a little-known subject, and as noted above, could be useful in a history of Zionism course (provided the instructor gives the caveats I just mentioned).

Perhaps the most interesting chapter is the fourth, which examines the experience of Sephardic Jews in Israel during the last three decades. Stillman cannot be accused of starry-eyed idealism; he recognizes that in a country that presented its inhabitants with two primary options – secular nationalism or Ashkenazi religiosity – the unique Sephardic perspective was neglected and even repressed. After offering the reader a history of Sephardic immigration to Israel in the 50s and early 60s, and a survey of the many difficulties and obstacles Sephardic Jews faced upon arrival, he traces their various and fascinating responses to these conditions: the veneration of holy men, pilgrimages to their graves, a variety of ceremonies and celebrations (hillulot, Mimouna, Sahrani, etc.), and perhaps most important, the “ashkenazification” and “haredizification” of Sephardic religious life through the creation of the Shas political party and associated religious, social, and cultural institutions. This chapter explores the decline of Sephardic religious tolerance, and calls into question the ostensibly hawkish, “pro-Zionist” stance of the Shas leadership, if not its supporters.