Weekly Items of Note (5/8)
David Shasha
New Article Posted On-Line: Joyce Zonana, “A New Covenant”
Our dear friend Joyce Zonana has just published a very personal essay on the meaning of Passover on the website Feminism and Religion:
https://feminismandreligion.com/2016/04/29/__trashed-2/
The essay addresses the issue of Egyptian Jewish nativity and presents the figure of Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff in the context of Passover and personal identity.
Another New Article Posted On-Line: Yaelle Azagury in Lilith Magazine
Our brand new friend Yaelle Azagury’s latest article “Choosing Which Language to Live In” has just been published in the new issue of Lilith magazine:
http://lilith.org/articles/choosing-which-language-to-live-in/
It is another very personal meditation on Arab Jewish identity at the present moment.
Ashkenazim Once again Deny the Tragedy of the Yemenite Babies Scandal
On Thursday Haaretz posted the following review of a new novel on the Yemenite Babies affair:
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/books/.premium-1.718070
The review denies the extent of the scandal and for good measure puts into question the character of Ashkenazi racism in Israel:
“The novel is a grave indictment, replete with stereotypes and prejudices, of the Ashkenazim and the crimes they allegedly committed against the Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern or North African origin).”
The rest of the article fits into this pro-Ashkenazi model, asserting that the findings of the 2001 Knesset committee on the matter closes the door on the issue; no more than 100 children were abducted – over 700 died.
Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber has provided excruciating detail on the sham of those Knesset hearings which did not even give the so-called investigators subpoena power.
For those who have still not read her book, it remains the final word of the scandal:
It is quite clear that what we are seeing in Haaretz, a bastion of the Ashkenazi Israel Left, is that Ashkenazim will do whatever they have to in order to cover their crimes. They do stick together and continue to defend a racism which they now claim never existed.
It is another pathetic example of how the Arab Jews continue to be persecuted in Israel.
Zionists Seem to Be Confused over what Judaism is – and is not
We have recently seen Tablet magazine’s Liel Leibovitz attack Anti-Zionists as Anti-Semites:
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/199847/anti-zionism-is-anti-semitism
In that very emphatic article the matter seemed to be closed: Zionism is Judaism – that’s it.
Last week – just in time for the end of Passover – we got the following equivocation:
Where the first article equating Zionism and Judaism was absolute, the second article seems to acknowledge that “Secular” Judaism is something of a paradox.
My sense here is that when Ashkenazi categories are deployed in a strictly exclusive manner as Leibovitz does, the situation of Judaism is something confused.
Here is how the article ends:
“Instead of clowning with or clawing at Judaism, then—like Abbi and Ilana, like Ber Borochov—why not really grapple with it? Pick up a Bible and read a few chapters; if you fail to be moved by the moral transformation of Abraham or the wise stoicism of Kohelet you would, at the very least, find more than your share of amusing anecdotes involving genitalia. And if you go even further and read a page of Talmud, you’ll find that much of it is the account of arguments, of points and counter-points, of divergent answers to the same questions, the ones that truly matter.
This coming together in learning shouldn’t be too hard to pull off. Our denominations, for the most part, are already dead or dying, in part because the distinctions that they offer no longer hold up, if they ever did in the first place. And even our most young and prodigious and rebellious are telling us that they care enough about our traditions to mock them in hilarious two-part season finales. Let’s do something, anything, with this energy, and live up to the most profound of history’s directives to the Jews: Argue better.”
Whether it is the Zionist writer Ber Borochov or the Millennial Slacker comedy “Broad City,” what we see is the perennial Ashkenazi confusion over what it means to be Jewish.
This problematizes the whole Zionism is Judaism issue as Zionism is, as Leibovitz admits, a form of “Secular Judaism.”
The Sephardic tradition does not limit itself to such categories and the “secular” is often fused with the “religious” in our literary history.
But more than this, the problem is that contemporary Ashkenazi Jews have rejected the Religious Humanism construct:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/yct/davidshasha/JPZFturnQkQ/FX8HLC0KgtoJ
History in this context is a moot point as only the Jewish categories recognized by Zionism and its hegemonic Ashkenazi racism are allowed to be part of the conversation.
So an older form of Jewish culture cannot be presented as part of the discussion; thus leaving us with the contradictions and paradoxes that continue to fuel an essentially dysfunction Jewish civilization.
PORAT: More Whites-Only Ashkenazi Modern Orthodoxy
I received the following announcement this past week from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah’s e-mail newsletter:
Join PORAT for "Modern Orthodoxy in the 21st Century: What Should It Look Like and How do We Get There?," featuring Rabbi Benny Lau, Ms. Blu Greenberg, Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, and Ms. Ann Pava, Dr. Steven Bayme, and Rabbi Avi Weiss.
I have been advised that PORAT is another attempt to resurrect the failed Modern Orthodox system along the lines of Rabbi Saul Berman’s defunct EDAH.
The New York Jewish Week published some propaganda for the new organization by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg:
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york/can-modern-orthodoxy-be-new-center
What we see is once again that Sephardim are not welcome; that only Ashkenazim can represent the movement.
Dreaming of an “Inclusive” (Ashkenazi) History
An article by Judith Rosenbaum in eJewish Philanthropy shows us what the word “inclusive” means when applied to Jewish History:
It means a continuation of White Jewish Supremacy:
“The options for expanding the examples that Steinhardt listed are vast and could include Nobel Prize winners Gertrude Elion and Rosalyn Yalow; musicians Carole King and Regina Spektor; justices Justine Wise Polier, Elena Kagan, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg; poets Adrienne Rich and Maxine Kumin; entrepreneurs Beatrice Alexander, Ida Cohen Rosenthal, and Ruth Mosko Handler – and so many more.
As JWA’s collections and resources demonstrate, there are many ways to integrate secular figures into Jewish learning; for example, combining an exploration of the leadership styles of Queen Esther and Congresswoman Bella Abzug, or Jewish family recipes as a lens onto the immigration experience and domestic holiday practices. The role of Jews in the 20th century American Labor Movement and Civil Rights Movement invites compelling conversation about identity and social responsibility through a distinctly Jewish lens combining both text and historical experience.”
Ms. Rosenbaum heads the Jewish Women’s Archive, so all the names she mentions are female.
None of the names are Sephardic.
Michael Steinhardt is yet another Ashkenazi ethnocentrist who has used his financial influence to control the Jewish discussion and impose his “secular” vision on Jewish education.
Once again, this is a world completely closed to Sephardim as it promotes the values and identity-formations of Ashkenazi Jews only.
1. The Left Wing British politician Ken Livingstone got into all sorts of hot water for making comments about Adolf Hitler’s purported support for Zionism.
When pressed on the issue last week Livingstone cited recent comments by Benjamin Netanyahu which placed blame for the Holocaust on the Palestinian Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini and appeared to exonerate Hitler who was said to only want to deport the Jews:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36177333
What Livingstone missed was Netanyahu’s ties to Revisionist Zionism which through figures like Vladimir Jabotinsky and especially Yitzhak Shamir sought to emulate the Fascist model. Netanyahu’s father Ben-Zion was very much a believer in the Right Wing nationalist model that infected Europe. And it is always to be remembered that this Right Wing extremism held to the idea that Sephardim were faulty Jews as only the Ashkenazim held to the “authentic” Judaism which was rooted in blood and nation rather than cultural assimilation and religious pluralism.
2. The elitist New York Times columnist Charles Blow – a fervent supporter of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ New Black Nihilism – surprised us in his Monday column with a full-blown defense of President Obama and a vigorous assertion that Blacks and other ethnic minorities believe that their lives have gotten better in the last 50 years:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/opinion/a-trump-sanders-coalition-nah.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
I must say that with all the Coates-style discontent about America and the place of Black people in it, I was truly taken aback by this relentlessly positive assessment of things.
Perhaps it is an indication of Mr. Blow’s disdain for both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump and the manner in which their respective presidential campaigns have been marked as addressing “White Discontent.”
Even in these perilous socio-economic times, for people like Blow the idea of race trumps the actual reality created by a failed presidency which has refused to properly address the issue of working Americans.
The great Robert Reich provides a more rational analysis of the problem which speaks to the powerlessness of many racial minorities when it comes to wealth acquisition:
In his chilling words:
These structural disadvantages have built up to the point where the median net worth of white families is now more than 10 times greater than that of African-American or Latino families.
Blow sadly provides an explanation for why Black people in such large numbers are supporting Hillary Clinton; a figure who is completely beholden to Wall Street and Corporate interests, and who, like Obama, will do little if anything for working people in this country.
Blow remains a vile partisan ideologue who will twist the truth whenever he deems it to be convenient for his ideological purposes.
3. Israel’s Minster of Justice Ayelet Shaked wants to apply Israeli law to the West Bank Settlers:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4798296,00.html
It is crucial to see that Israeli law is not being offered to the Arab inhabitants of the West Bank, and that Shaked is intent on circumventing the High Court’s rulings in an attempt to instill a hard Right Wing system in place of what the extremists believe is the more liberal approach of Aharon Barak and the Israeli justice system.
The duplicitous move would appear to signal the ongoing transition to a more formal Apartheid system and a refusal to establish a One-State democracy in Greater Israel.
It can only lead to a further intensification of anti-Israel sentiment all over the world.
4. The Jewish media was set ablaze this week with the vehement anti-BDS statement of Bruce Springsteen sideman and “Sopranos” star Steve Van Zandt:
The item was the lead article in Tuesday’s JTS e-mail newsletter.
It is rather ironic that Van Zandt attacks the BDS movement, as he was a vocal proponent of the South Africa Boycott:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_City_(song)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artists_United_Against_Apartheid
Van Zandt is of course free to do as he likes, but it is rather interesting to see him attacking people for BDS when he was once attacked for his support of the Boycott against South Africa.
5. In more Rock Graveyard news, there is this announcement of a Classic Rock festival:
Now the filthy rich 1%-ers can see all their Rock legend heroes in one place!
It is yet another triumph for Wall Street and the new Oligarchy.
6. In Uri Avnery’s Friday column on the current mess in England over Hitler, Zionism, and Anti-Semitism there is a paragraph worth recounting:
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1462546026/
Here is the paragraph in question:
I want to stress again that nothing of this sort happened in Muslim countries. When I mentioned this recently, some professors of Oriental Jewish origin attacked me furiously. They brought up some half a dozen instances of Muslim rulers mistreating Jews – half a dozen in 1400 years! It seems that some Orientals envy the European Jews for their suffering and want to compete with them in this, too.
In the midst of the discussion Avnery takes a brief detour to note that European Anti-Semitism was not a factor in Arab-Muslim history.
In this citation he points out that when he stated this publicly he was attacked by Mizrahi academics who pointed to a small number of Anti-Jewish persecutions on the part of Arab rulers.
The anecdote shows us once again just how Sephardim want to be more Ashkenazi than the Ashkenazim and how they have chosen to distort their own history in order to make HASBARAH points.
7. Renowned Jewish Historian Benjamin Netanyahu will be hosting a seminar for UN representatives on the subject:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4800173,00.html
The representatives will likely be getting an earful of the anti-Sephardi racism of the late Ben-Zion Netanyahu who believed that Spanish Jews were inferior to the Ashkenazi “martyrs.”
David Shasha