Abstract EN:

The present work focuses on the ideological mechanisms that have masked or altered the Sephardic and Oriental Jews' historical reality. Three paradigms are examined, the Sephardic paradigm, the colonial paradigm, and the Zionist paradigm. The research demonstrates, through historical sequences, how the "image of the Sephardim" has been shaped by ideology or myth, and how the historiographical discourse concerning them has undergone distortions of ail types. The image of Sephardic Jews has evolved. A valued mythical image of the Sephardic Jews was first used for ideological ends in a pseudo-encounter between the two components of the world Judaism. Next it was used when a real encounter between them took place in two different geopolitical contexts: in the Moslem countries colonized by the European powers and in the post1948 Israel after their immigration. In the process, the image has undergone a devalorizing alteration that goes beyond the inversion of the Sephardic myth.