Vienna—The Cradle of Sephardic Sephardism

Abstract

This article explores the rise and development of ‘Sephardism’ among Sephardic Jews in Vienna. Sephardism was originally a cultural phenomenon among the Ashkenazic Jews of Germany and Austria in the early nineteenth century. Based on the ‘Myth of Sephardic Supremacy’, they used it as a paradoxical emancipatory attempt to simultaneously stand out and integrate within the non-Jewish majority culture. Sephardic intellectuals in Vienna, living in a predominantly liberal Ashkenazic milieu, turned out to be highly receptive to some of the variants that German-Jewish Sephardism had to offer. Thus, during the second half of the nineteenth century, the Viennese Sephardim developed their own ‘Sephardic Sephardism’ with the aim of celebrating their own Sephardic (i.e. ‘Spanish’) heritage within a predominantly Ashkenazic environment. In the process, Sephardic Sephardism redefined the Viennese Sephardim’s self-image as Sephardic Jews, especially within the Eastern Sephardic Diaspora, where most Jews previously had little to no awareness of their Spanish origin.