By: Jewish Voice News

In contemporary discourse—particularly on social media platforms where historical nuance is often flattened into ideological slogans—accusations of “racism” between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews have become common currency. Individuals with limited exposure to Jewish history, halachic development, or the lived experience of diaspora Jewish life confidently pronounce that these two ancient branches of the Jewish people are fundamentally antagonistic, even hostile, to one another. The charge is reductive and often deeply ignorant, but more importantly, it fails to reckon with one of the most extraordinary episodes of humility, unity, and shared destiny in the entire history of Jewish scholarship: the creation of the Shulhan Aruch and the Rema’s decision—nearly unparalleled in the annals of religious literature—to merge his own monumental project into that of another.

It is a story worth telling now, precisely because its message presents an unambiguous rebuttal to the claim that Ashkenazim and Sephardim are locked in some immutable ethnic hierarchy. Instead, the story reveals a 500-year tradition of mutual respect, intellectual collaboration, and a profound recognition that the Jewish people, dispersed across continents and shaped by radically different cultures, remain bound by a single covenant and a shared destiny.

Our story begins with Rabbi Yosef Karo z”l (1488–1575), arguably the most influential Sephardi halachic authority since the Geonic period. Born in Toledo, he experienced the cataclysm that reshaped the entire Sephardi world—the 1492 Expulsion from Spain—at the age of four. With his family forced into perpetual motion, wandering through Portugal, then the Ottoman Empire, young Yosef Karo grew into adulthood amid dislocation, trauma, and the reconstruction of Sephardi life in Istanbul, Adrianople, and eventually the mystical mountaintop city of Tzfat (Safed).

Through these wanderings, he conceived a monumental dream: the creation of a comprehensive, clear, and authoritative halachic code that would unify the scattered Sephardi diaspora, whose communities—from Salonika to Fez to Aleppo—were striving to reestablish stability after the seismic upheavals of the 15th century. His work, the Beit Yosef, consumed thirty years of relentless labor and scholarship. It would eventually form the basis for the shorter, more accessible Shulhan Aruch, published in 1565—a work so elegant, concise, and intellectually rigorous that Sephardi communities embraced it almost immediately.

Simultaneously, in the bustling intellectual center of 16th-century Kraków, another figure was rising: Rabbi Moshe Isserles z”l, known to the Jewish world as the Rema (1530–1572). Unlike Karo, whose life was shaped by displacement, the Rema was born into stability, wealth, and the intense scholarly tradition of Polish Ashkenaz. He was educated by the greatest poskim of his day and emerged as the preeminent guardian of Ashkenazi minhagim that stretched back to medieval Rhineland sages—the Chachmei Ashkenaz.

He, too, recognized the need for a unified halachic guide for his community. With the same ambition and intellectual audacity that drove Karo, the Rema embarked on his own code, the Darkhei Moshe, a vast and meticulous work aiming to do for Ashkenazim what the Beit Yosef sought to do for Sephardim. By the time the Shulhan Aruch arrived in Poland, the Rema was already years into his project.

And this is where history takes a turn so astonishing—so antithetical to the ego, rivalry, and factionalism that often mark human endeavors—that it still defies modern imagination.

When Rabbi Karo’s Shulhan Aruch reached Poland, Ashkenazi scholars were impressed, even awed, by its structure and clarity. But it was also unmistakably Sephardi in orientation, reflecting Sephardi rulings, customs, and legal tendencies. The Ashkenazi reaction was essentially: A masterpiece—but it is not our masterpiece.

Then the Rema did something almost unthinkable. He did not trumpet competition. He did not assert regional pride. He did not claim that Ashkenaz needed its own code to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Sephardi one. Instead, he shelved his life’s work.

He looked at Karo’s achievement and declared: Rabbi Yosef Karo has set the table for all of Israel. I will not build a rival table. I will bring the Ashkenazi dishes to his table.

This was not simply humility. It was visionary statesmanship. It was a recognition that the Jewish people—exiled, fragmented, linguistically and culturally divided—needed unity more than duplication. The Rema would not fracture the halachic universe. He would enrich it.

Thus was born the Mappah—the “tablecloth”—a set of glosses, written in the distinctive Rashi script, that provided Ashkenazi rulings, customs, and commentaries directly alongside Karo’s original text.

To this day, when a student of halacha opens a standard edition of the Shulhan Aruch, the visual metaphor is unmistakable. In bold square letters, the Sephardi voice of Rabbi Karo. Surrounding it in flowing Rashi script, the Ashkenazi voice of the Rema. There is no hierarchy. No subtext of superiority. No claim that one tradition overwrites another. It is a conversation—two voices, equal in dignity, jointly defining the contours of Jewish law.

For nearly five centuries, this shared table has formed the backbone of halachic study. It has shaped the daily Jewish life of communities spanning Morocco to Lithuania, Baghdad to Berlin, Bergen County to Buenos Aires. The very structure of modern halachic literature, responsa, and rabbinic discourse rests upon this fusion.

This is not the story of rivalry. It is the story of synthesis. It is not the story of Ashkenazi dominance or Sephardi marginalization. It is the story of two worlds coming together in one book.

Claims of deep-rooted “racism” between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews are, in many respects, a projection of contemporary Western racial frameworks onto a civilization whose internal dynamics have never fit neatly within those categories. Differences in custom, tradition, and halachic nuance exist—of course they do. They are the product of a millennium of diaspora life across radically different cultural environments.

But difference does not imply denigration. Divergence does not equal animosity. And history offers no better refutation of the racism myth than the Rema’s willingness to integrate his Ashkenazi corpus into Karo’s Sephardi code.

Those who insist that the Jewish people are internally divided beyond repair ignore that the greatest halachic unification in Jewish history emerged not from coercion or rivalry, but from mutual respect.

They ignore that the most authoritative Ashkenazi halachic voice of the 16th century subordinated his ego for the sake of Jewish unity.

They ignore that Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews have spent centuries studying the same texts, living by the same laws, and praying from the same siddurim—all while preserving the rich diversity of customs that define each community.

The merged Shulhan Aruch stands as a quiet but powerful rebuke to modern narratives of division. On every page, it declares that unity does not require uniformity, and that scholarship enriched by multiple voices becomes not chaotic but complete.

If there were ever a model for how a people scattered across continents can remain spiritually and intellectually united, it is this: a Sephardi sage setting the table, an Ashkenazi sage laying the tablecloth, and generations of Jews—Moroccan, Polish, Yemenite, Hungarian, Persian, Syrian, German—sitting together at the same halachic feast.

So the next time someone claims that Ashkenazim and Sephardim are irreparably divided—or worse, that they harbor racist animus toward one another—tell them the story of the Rema, who shelved his life’s work so that a Sephardi giant’s code could become the inheritance of the entire Jewish world.

It is a story of humility, unity, and the recognition that the Jewish people, though diverse in melody, remain one in song.

Have a blessed week.