Throughout the 19th century the entire structure of the Ashkenazi world crumbled. What remains of Ashkenazi Jewry today is split into irreconcilable religous camps on one hand, and a large body of secularized Jews of greater or lesser ethnicity on the other. The Sephardi Oriental Jews, which form the other great branch of world Jewry, had a very different encounter with the forces of modernity. This work examines some of their repsonses to its challenges. The Sephardi religious leaders, who had been historically more open to general culture, reacted with neither the anti-traditionalism of Reform Judaism nor the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox's uncompromising rejection of everything new. Their response was rather one of active and creative halakhic engagement coupled with a tolerant attitude toward the growing secularized elements of their communities.