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Why do more Ashkenazy religious Jewish communities in general dress in traditional Ashkenazy clothing. Were as very few religious Sephardic Jewish communities in general dress in traditional Sephardic clothing..
Traditional Sephardic clothing would encompass a robe and a turban (for the head covering.)
Sephardim don’t want to be attacked by racists.
Would you advocate abandoning traditional dress due to potential racial mocking by idiots?
It goes deeper than that.
Both Ashkenazim and Sefardim mostly live in Western societies today, and their clothing reflects that; this style is closer to traditional ashkenazi cloting (whatever that means) than traditional sefardi style clothing.
Eretz Yisroel isn’t a Western society.
Western as in cultural, not geographical.
Secular Israeli culture is, indeed, westernized. Frum Eretz Yisroel culture is not. So I’m not sure your point is applicable to frum Sephardim in Eretz Yisroel.
Even frum sefardim in E”Y don’t live in a third world country. Culture may have been a bad choice of words- I was not thinking of music entertainment and sporting events. More like the economics, the technology, the world-class universities, medical centers, the form of government, infrastructure- these things are commonly found in western societies, but not, say, in sub-Saharan Africa or the majority of the Mid East. Frum people are affected by these factors, whether they fully participate in general society or not.
Maran zatzal wore the traditional clothing. But very few others did as well. Most of the Sephardic Torah elite were educated in Ashkenazi Yeshivot with few exceptions like Porat Yosef. Effectively what has happened is that the major Sepharadi poskim are wearing the traditional hard as a sign of their importance (this is Halacha for those who don’t know) while the intermediary level, i.e. Roshei Yeshiva etc, and the rest of the Sephardi world wear traditional western Yeshivish suits and hats.
*garb
traditional garbknafaym- did R’ Ovadya wear the traditional garb before he became the Rishon L’tzion? I was under the impression that the clothing was associated with the title, and not with being a major sefardi posek.
All Ashkenazi and Sefardi clothing with a few exceptions are copies from the goyim. We have are own fashion sense, but it is largely based on the goyim’s. We take what meets our needs. No one today dresses like people did 500 or 1000 years ago. Even such “Jewish fashions” as a streimel, or a black fedora, or a white shirts, are goyish fashion items that we co-opted for our needs.
The only exception is the tallis, and there is every indication that our tallesim look just like those of our ancestors (though they wore it a bit differently, especially when goyim wore cloaks all day, and we wore our tallesim which were our cloaks – but cloaks dropped out of style a long time ago).
Not sure what is meant by “traditional ashkenazay clothing”….most yeshivish dress today is best described as loosely fitting dark business suit, white shirt sans tie with black borsalino/fedora hat. Add the tie and a bit of tailoring to the suit and you couldn’t distinguish a kollel yungerleit from an investment banker. In either event, nothing really that are readily traced to the alte heim or czarist Russia or wherever….sephardeshe and chassidish lvush cut a more striking sartorial statement
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