Sephardic Heritage Update 1016
David Shasha
Friends,
This week we mark the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, as the Sephardic Jewish heritage continues to evaporate into thin air. When I heard Sara Watkins perform the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein song “Edelweiss” with her very young daughter, it brought me to consider the problem of cultural transmission and the failure of Sephardim to inculcate their children with our moral values. My article turned into a wide-ranging meditation on the ways in which such cultural continuity is affirmed and broken off, as different people take different paths to dealing with their identity and what that identity means in the larger context of our societies and communities. Using “Edelweiss” as a barometer of socio-political commitment, I have tried to illustrate the massive dilemma that we as Sephardim face today in the face of cruelty in our own communities and from the White Jewish Supremacy.
And part of the dilemma is the persistence of Ashkenazi racism against us. The Wexner Foundation is a key player in the institutional White Jewish Supremacy that has cut us, and our culture, out of the Jewish process. Here I look at the celebration of the “Jews of Color,” a majority African-American group that identifies Jewishly as Ashkenazi; once again showing how Sephardim have been erased, and how our culture is being ignored.
In addition to Wexner there is, of course, The Tikvah Fund and its Jewish embrace of Trump racism. Through its prize pupil Bari Weiss, Tikvah Tablet has linked up with The Rufo Institute and thus with the Right Wing racist world of Charles Murray. Weiss and Whore of Trump Alana Newhouse have given us more than just guilt-by-association; they have remained silently complicit with the horrible damage that Trumpism has wrought to our democracy. By continuing to whine about the loss of White Privilege, Tikvah Tablet has set out to implicitly condone the Alt-Right violence and COVID denialism that continues to ravage this country. It is my suggestion that both of them take a trip down to Tennessee where there is no Woke, no Critical Race Theory, and no belief in the dangers of COVID. And very few people vaccinated. Let’s see how arrogant they are when they come out of David Duke land!
It is therefore interesting that Newhouse brought on “New Talmudist” and Dennis “Jews for Jesus” Prager ally Daniel Boyarin as a Tikvah Tablet contributor. Like Shaul Magid, Boyarin identifies as Leftist, but in reality, his work is more in line with Jimmy Swaggart and the Pauline radical Christian antinomians. It is another way to see how the New Convivencia works, and how the Talmudic heritage is being eviscerated, much as the German Anti-Semites, led by Julius Wellhausen and his Documentary Hypothesis, wanted it to be. Boyarin joins his disciple Rabbi Richard Hidary in the Tikvah Tablet stable, and here he gives us his best take on what it means to be a White Jewish Supremacist.
Speaking of undermining the classical rabbinic heritage, we have a Right Wing ultra-Zionist version of it in a Lehrhaus article by Shimshon haKohen Nadel, which contemplates the abolition of the Tish’a be-Ab fast. As we know, the Zionists chose to bypass God in their conquest of the Palestinians, and yet, deploying the occult irrationalism of Ashkenazi primitivists like Abraham Isaac Kook and his rampaging Settler heirs, they have marked Zionism as the beginning of the era of Redemption. And that means no more fasting for the lost Temple! Nadel ponders the matter, but in the end serves to undermine his own case by falling into the “It is not quite the Redemption Yet” PILPUL. They are indeed a little pregnant.
We close with the vile Matt Taibbi, once a Progressive hero, and now a Glenn Greenwald FOX News Trump acolyte. His latest articles read very much like Bari Weiss, and here I present his classic defense of Alt-Right White Supremacist hero, Tucker Carlson. As is the case with Weiss and The Rufo Institute fanatics, Taibbi ignores the massive damage being done by Trumpism, and focuses laser-like on defending the White Snowflakes, who continue to whine about losing their ability to lord it over the rest of us “undesirables.” Taibbi is yet another example of how the Left has become Right. And it is all about the Hate America ideology, which apparently makes for some unique alliances on both sides of the political aisle.
David Shasha
Fear, Cruelty, and Cowardice: Sara Watkins Sings “Edelweiss” with Her Daughter, Chris Thile Turns His Back on Nashville, as the Slow and Painful Death of the Jewish Future Continues
By: David Shasha
The Wexner Foundation Anatomy of White Jewish Supremacy: Let’s Play “Jews of Color” Connect-the-Dots
By: David Shasha
Tikvah Tablet Channels the Charles Murray Racism: Can Someone Book Tickets to Tennessee for Alana Newhouse and Bari Weiss?
By: David Shasha
Gemoro Loshn: The Lullaby of Jewland
By: Daniel Boyarin
Can We Cancel Tishah Be-Av? The “Four Fasts” in Light of the Miracle of the Modern State of Israel
By: Shimshon HaKohen Nadel
Spying and Smearing is “Un-American,” not Tucker Carlson
By: Matt Taibbi
On the Difference Between Smearing and Arguing
By: Matt Taibbi