Sephardi, Not Oriental

Little is known about Ben-Sion Behar. By his own account, he was an immigrant from the Ottoman Empire (in his words, “Turkey”) living in New York around 1915, and a member of the local Sephardic “colony” with connections to Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He may be the same Benzion Behar who appears in ship manifests and censuses from the period as a printer who arrived in New York from Jerusalem in 1913. In his contribution to the Ladino press of New York, Behar proposed that Ladino-speaking Jews should distinguish themselves from other Ottoman immigrants by emphasizing their medieval Spanish heritage and identifying as “Sephardi” instead of “Oriental.” He published these remarks in the midst of heated debates over the proper racial classification of various immigrant groups, including Middle Easterners, in the United States.