Sephardic Heritage Update 1028
David Shasha
Friends,
We have been hearing a good deal about Cancel Culture from the Tikvah Neo-Con Jews. Digging into my own memory, one of the most striking examples of the Cancel Culture back in the day came from David Project Bernstein who, in one fell Cancel swoop, decided that he would try to remove professors he did not like from Columbia University’s Middle Eastern Studies department, while at the same time help to inaugurate the spurious Arab Jewish Refugee issue on behalf of the Israeli government in its war against Palestinians.
We begin this week’s newsletter with a fascinating piece of Bernstein Cancel Culture CHUTZPAH that seeks to tell Jewish Day Schools what they must think and teach. Indeed, as Sephardim we have not only been assaulted by The David Project, but have learned how Bernstein has sought to dominate putatively Sephardic institutions like JIMENA and more recently the Tikvah ASF, as he participated in Aryeh Tepper’s monumental White Jewish Supremacy “Jazz Against Democracy” event. Bernstein is a danger to Sephardim, as he is a danger to the world at large.
In yet another fascinating example of the Ashkenazi CHUTZPAH Projection, we have an excellent piece courtesy of Tikvah Bari Weiss on the WOKE threat. The article is by the very confused David French, who thinks that the Anti-Woke Right, which includes Weiss and her entire crew, is a danger to us. Indeed, he is correct, but apparently does not realize that Common Sense has been designed as an Anti-Woke Right religious institution. PILPUL is indeed a wonderful thing!
Keeping with the Tikvah Tablet sickness, we have a post from the excellent Tikvah Tablet The Scroll by someone named John Pistelli that, of course, is an example of the Anti-Woke Right, as it attacks “elites” in a way that echoes the usual Lysol line. That all of these Right Wing radicals are elites themselves; Pistelli himself being a novelist and college professor. It is the Ashkenazi Tikvah CHUTZPAH writ large.
Yet another example of this hypocrisy is newly-elected almost-but-not-quite-Trump Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. This sharply-argued piece from The Economist cuts through all this “elitist” fog to show that the whole Right Wing show is a scam meant to curry favor with the New Fascism, as the anti-CRT culture warriors continue to pine for the old Confederacy.
Which naturally leads us to David Brooks, the most confused smartest guy in the room. Channeling the “Hillbilly Elegy” blather nonsense of Trumpscum J.D. Vance, Brooks here throws his hat in the Troll the Libs “privilege” scam. Brooks has reveled in his, and his Marie Antoinette AEI Reaganite allies’, “privilege” and never once sought to examine it. Brooks continues to struggle mightily, as we have just seen with his Atlantic article on the National Conservative convention, with the harsh reality of Trumpism and how it is really the logical outcome of his own toxic Neo-Con ideology. It remains a question where he will land when the apocalypse comes.
Aviva Bar-Am reminds us that the founders of Israel were Orientalist racists who demanded that Arab Jews relinquish both their culture and native language. Her article on a new Arabic language initiative in Abu Ghosh shows us how the loss of our language has become fodder for the current crop of Zionists to take it over. The basic problem is that the Ashkenazim in charge of such initiatives are not heir to the organic Sephardic culture, and will inevitably bring their European biases to the situation.
Which leads us right back to Tikvah Tablet and the self-hating Arab Jews. Here we get a deeply loving tribute to someone named Ariel Helwani, who is apparently not only a hardcore Arab-hating Mizrahi, but a journalist covering the MMA. Helwani shows us in real time the lessons of the Bar-Am article: Mizrahi Jews have been forcibly stripped of their language and culture by the Ashkenazi Zionists, and now they have become a big pile of racist mess. We will recall that Arabic was indeed permitted when it came to Israel’s Secret Services and the “investigations” bleeding into torture that helped turn Mizrahim into Arab-haters. And that is just the way the Whore of Trump at Tikvah Tablet wants it!
As if Helwani was not enough, we have Rabbi Sholom Mimran and his Haredi Gateshead Ashkenazi radicalism. As I have written in my “New Sephardic Jewish Binary” article, we have the Zionist extremists like Helwani on the one side, and then we have the Lakewood extremists like Mimran on the other. What we do not have is actual Sephardim.
David Horovitz takes a trip to London, where he interviews our dear friend Rabbi Shalom Morris and his Washington Heights “Dead Sephardim are Best” advocacy. Morris works for Ashley Madison Rabbi Joseph Dweck, and is a proud exponent of the YU philosophy, where Sephardim are just idiots.
According to her Forward bio, Maura Lee Bee is a LatinX Queer writer – who apparently has converted to Judaism because of “Fiddler on the Roof”! We have recently been bombarded with “Fiddler” articles and tributes as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. Ms. Lee Bee might be Latinx, but she knows nothing about the Sephardic heritage. Which is as it should be!
We close with Ross Barkan’s excellent takedown of the Trump Useful Idiot Matt Taibbi. Like his BFF Glenn Greenwald, Taibbi has intrepidly taken the leap into the Alt-Right and is smiling as he joins with Bari Weiss and the other Whores of Trump to Troll the Libs and plan the next Capitol Insurrection. It is a sign of the demented times we live in, as the Hate America Left morphs into the Hate America Right.
David Shasha
Cancel Culture, Jewish Educators Style
By: David Bernstein
An Open Letter to the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School
By: Dr. Brandy Shufutinsky and David Bernstein
The Threat From the Anti-Woke Right
By: David French
The Real American Elite
By: John Pistelli
Glenn Youngkin and Ivy League Populism
By: The Economist
Democrats Need to Confront Their Privilege
By: David Brooks
Immersive Arabic Program Invites Israelis to Blend into Life in Abu Ghosh
By: Aviva Bar-Am
Ariel Helwani Won’t Back Down
By: Elie Bleier
The New Rabbi in Charleston, S.C. is Stuck in Gibraltar
By: Helen Chernikoff
UK’s Oldest Continually Used Synagogue Emerges from the Shadow of The Gherkin
Bu: David Horovitz
How ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Convinced Me to Convert to Judaism – Really.
By: Maura Lee Bee
What Happened to Matt Taibbi?
By: Ross Barkan