Live Breaking News & Updates on Avraham Alfos Alfasi

I’ve always been interested in the formation of various Jewish diasporas and how they rarely fit a lineral and neat narrative. I am particularly interested in how the labels “Sephardic” and “Ashkenazic” have become set in stone relatively recently (a similar phenomenon can be observed in the Medieval period for Karaites and Rabbanites, but that’s a separate article).
Back in 2009, I contacted the renowned Israeli historian of the chasidic movement Dr. Isaac Alfasi. Growing up and always being interested in history, I had come across his many books on the history of the chasidic movement. I always assumed that his decidedly non-Ashkenazic sounding surname was a hebraization or perhaps he really wasn’t an Ashkenazi. When I discovered that his family has deep roots in Poland and were members of the Gerrer sect, I was intrigued and wanted to find out more. I took a bus to Tel Aviv where he resides in a pretty hard-to-find neighborhood. Alfasi is a throwback to the da ....

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