Different Geography, Different Customs

Reading this week's reading "The Rabbi's Cat" by Joann Sfar was interesting because it opened my eyes to the fact that there are different Jewish cultures in a sense. The rabbi and his daughter are North African Jews. I never considered North Africa as a place where Jews live or lived. The differences between North African Jews and French Jews become somewhat obvious in the last section of the book when the rabbi travels with his daughter and her husband to Paris to stay with the son-in-law's family. The rabbi becomes angry on page 106 when he discovers that the son-in-law's family is not very religious. He refuses to stay in their house, saying "I just can't do that" (106). Later on after he comes around he comes to the family's house and speaks to the son-in-law's father, who is really not very religious. In fact, this man finds it odd that his son became a rabbi even though he had raised him to be non-religious (139). The differences between the two families are interesting to me because it seems that the French family is more secular and urbanized while the North African family is more religious.

The book also mentions two different types of Jews. On page 51 the rabbi is asked a question by a man with a hypothetical question concerning etiquette on different food customs. The Askenazim and Sephardim are the two groups mentioned. According to what we learned in class, Sephardi are Mediterranean Jews (technically the term should only apply to Jews of Spanish descent but it's used more broadly) and the Askenazim are European Jews. I thought this was interesting because I had never thought before about different Jewish groups based on geography and it's also interesting that they have some different customs relating to food and such because I tend to think more of similarities than differences about groups of people.