yabia – having learned the immeasurable depth of reb akiva aiger and the gaon’s torah, when i compare it with sefardi seforim, i don’t see anything similar, i just don’t. Im sure the gedolim like the ben ish chai, chida, etc…were just as big, but by and large, every other sefer ive seen has been drush or psak halacha, or teshuvos.
i can measure the stature by the content of the seforim. for example, the words of the rishonim aren’t at face value very complex; we believe in their greatness by mesorah and by what achronim told us about them – but we dont need any mesorah to see the greatness of rav akiva aiger and the like; just reading their words shows you the indescribable greatness of torah that they had. that includes the dibros moshe, chazon ish, reb chaim, and many others. sefardim don’t have seforim like that that i’ve seen – maybe there are, but im not aware.
re data about sefardim being not very into learning after the war – syians in NY didn’t build yeshivos. they built a mixed day school and fancy ornate shuls. most of them didn’t end up keeping all the mitzvos; many intermarried with fake converts(hence the “edict”) and those that did keep more and learn more, eventually, after rav ovadia set the tone, built up communities like ateret torah, which are on par with the ashkenaz yeshiva world.
before rav ovadia, a certain gadol told me that the image of a sefardi in america was “eineh vos ken mohl nisht gelernt”
but the ones who were behind ateret learned in ashkenaz places. to this day most sefardi rabbonim in america learned in the ashkenaz torah bastions like BMG, chaim berlin, and especially mir yeshiva in brooklyn.
in eretz yisroel, that wasn’t the case; sefardi yeshivos had talmidei chachamim, so much so that when a certain gadol visited porat yosef in the 30’s he said that the bachurim were no different than in mir or kletzk.