Sephardi and Mizrahi are often presented as simple ethnic categories. In practice, both words carry overlapping religious, geographic and political meanings. Sephardi may describe descendants of Jews expelled from Iberia, communities that adopted Sephardi religious law or families whose local histories predate the Spanish exile. Mizrahi is a more recent umbrella for diverse Jewish communities associated with the Middle East and North Africa.
An Iraqi Jew, a Moroccan Jew, a Persian Jew and a Yemenite Jew did not share one uniform culture. Their languages, music, clothing, legal customs and relationships with surrounding societies differed. Grouping them can illuminate shared experiences, including marginalization in modern institutions, but it can also blur the communities that actually existed.
The most respectful approach begins with specificity. We should learn the names communities used for themselves, the cities and regions that shaped them and the traditions they preserved. Broad categories are useful maps, but they are not the landscape.
Jewish diversity becomes more powerful when it is not used as decoration. Inclusion means allowing the intellectual, religious and cultural traditions of these communities to shape the center of Jewish learning rather than appearing only during special programs or heritage months.