Sorry to post another controversy here, but I feel like the issue needs to be dealt with if this group is going to move anywhere:The few WS communities that are left, are slowly disappearing. This is partly because of people adopting foreign customs *out of plain ignorance*. When I ask people why they do X in the Ashkenazi way, they have no answer......Then there is a small group of people who study the traditions, and study Tora *lishmah*, just like our Hakhamim did in the great yesiboth in Amsterdam and other places. Sometimes they come to a conclusion that a miswa is to be performed in a way that is not like "the custom".And these are the people that are told to "go to another synagogue"! Is this anti-intellectualism the way of Sephardic Judaism? Are those people -that drive in their cars on Sabba to Esnoga where they chat away during the reading of the Law, but faithfully adhere to the "custom" (of which they don't even know the source)- going to save the Western Sephardic Tradition?