Newsletter Special: The Jewish and Christian Enemies of Post-Modernism
David Shasha
Friends,
As those who follow the Right Wing Neo-Con world know well, Post-Modernism is seen by the reactionaries as Moral Relativism and a dangerous form of nihilism.
We just received word that Mechon HADAR, a hotbed of Neo-Con Judaism, will be presenting a course with someone named Rabbi Goldie Guy that has prompted me to collect my articles on the Jewish and Christian enemies of Post-Modernism:
https://www.hadar.org/virtual-beit-midrash
Here is the course description:
This class will explore the writings of Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (1949–2007), known by the acronym Shag”ar. Rav Shagar was a leading Israeli thinker, Torah scholar, and teacher and in his work he aimed to address current spiritual, cultural, and intellectual issues. His approach weaves together hasidut, mysticism, and modern and postmodern philosophy. In this class we’ll touch upon the role and place of halakhah in a postmodern world, developing faith and ideology with self-awareness, and how to think about divine providence among other themes. Rav Shagar has a unique and uniquely sensitive approach to deep and deeply vexing philosophical and theological questions of our day.
As you will see in this special newsletter, I have already addressed the issues being presented by Rabbi Guy in a way that exposes the fraud of such Post-Modern Judaism.
Given that my earliest study of academic Judaism was with Rabbi Jose Faur, whose seminal book Golden Doves with Silver Dots was – on the heels of Susan Handelman’s Slayers of Moses, which I had read prior to meeting Faur – a vigorous attempt to bring the classic Rabbinic tradition into the Post-Modern orbit:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1NQdm28qvvXQnNIeEJ3aGdSSjQ/view?ths=true
https://www.amazon.com/Slayers-Moses-Emergence-Interpretation-Literature/dp/0873955773
It was, seen in hindsight, a failing proposition.
Indeed, I have prepared a special newsletter addressing Faur’s Cancellation, as the White Jewish Supremacists continue to erase his legacy:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T5hwSK5C4N8Vd50UYMptCy1jmk5LSyJbIUEh-Lq6_s8/edit
In 2003 I published an article on Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ Dignity of Difference in the Modern Orthodox EDAH Journal which sought to connect Faur’s ideas to the work of a figure who was far more respected in the YU world:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10PB65T0j5KCtYVuRDffdThuTUWdKksCt/view?ths=true
That too proved to be ineffectual.
In the end, absurd as it might sound, Ashkenazim like William Kolbrener have found a way to turn figures like Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who he arrogantly calls the “Last Rabbi,” into “Post-Modernists.”
But it was the introduction to the Anglo-Jewish world of the writings of the man they call Rav SHAGAR that has so conveniently served to provide a “Kosher” Washington Heights version of Derrida:
I have written a number of articles about how SHAGAR is not at all a Post-Modernist, but a Religious Zionist figure beloved by the Messianic Settlers, whose thought is rooted Hasidic atavism and mystical obscurantism; the polar opposite of the Open Text of Post-Modernism and its close relation to Rabbinic Midrash and its hermeneutical system.
Robin Ridless presents a Fundamentalist Christian rejection of Post-Modernism that is far more open and honest than the Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews who are pretending to be open-minded and progressive. Ridless reminds us of Christian closed-mindedness and its residual monolingualism, rejecting textual multivocality and multiple interpretations of Scripture. The article also connects to Christian antinomianism as we can relate it to the pluralistic Halakhic process of the Talmud.
For those who would like to learn more about the subject of Jewish Post-Modernism, I have prepared an extensive reading list that provides many important resources in Midrashic studies that I hope will be useful to the student who would like to learn more about what is happening in Judaic Studies at present. The current trend has been to turn back the bold ideas of Jose Faur and Susan Handelman in the name of a reactionary Orthodoxy, seeking to clothe itself in Post-Modernist garb while remaining loyal to the same old Ashkenazi atavism and closed-minded Judaism that has sought to reject the classical Sephardic heritage.
David Shasha
The Fraud of Ashkenazi Post-Modernism: Joseph B. Soloveitchik as the “last Rabbi”
By: David Shasha
Fake Ashkenazi Modern Orthodox “Post-Modernism” and the Impossibility of Midrash
By: David Shasha
The Fraud of SHAGAR Settler Zionist Post-Modernism Continues Unabated
By: David Shasha
Christian Fundamentalists and Post-Modernism: Law, Hermeneutics, and Textual Multivocality
By: David Shasha
“The Plural Text” and the Death of Legal Meaning
By: Robin Ridless
Midrash and Jewish Post-Modernism Resource Sheet
By: David Shasha