Sephardic Heritage Update 1015
David Shasha
Friends,
This week we will begin our second High Holiday season under the deathly specter of the COVID. It is thanks to Donald Trump that things are still not back to normal, as Synagogues face the unenviable task of determining how to conduct services at this busy time. The Zombie Murderer-in-Chief is now responsible for some 500,000 American deaths because of his criminal malfeasance and abject incompetence. More than this, we have seen his pathetic followers refuse mask mandates and vaccines, as they threaten violence against those working to protect us. Even after his defeat at the polls, the Orange Pig remains a clear and present danger to our democracy.
And as we ponder the High Holidays, it is also worthwhile to note the very bad year that Sephardim have had. We have seen the very brutal consolidation of White Jewish Supremacy in the Jewish institutional world; our own putative institutions not excepted. The Pew Research Report on Jewish Americans showed us that we are not relevant, and that the radical Neo-Cons represented by The Tikvah Fund and the radical Orthodox represented by the Schneersohn-Christers are in the ascendance. It is a Judaism bereft of humanity and tolerance, a Judaism that has alienated the majority of Jews.
Like the Trumpism that there radical Jews have embraced, whether vociferously or silently, it is all about nihilism and destruction. Who would want to be a Jew under this toxic regime?
Living as a Sephardi has thus never been more difficult or more dangerous. In most, if not all, cases, Sephardim have turned against their heritage, and in so doing have turned our communities into a cesspool of ignorance, malevolence, and corruption along the lines of Ashkenazi TOSFOS PILPUL.
All in all, there is little to celebrate this New Year, and in the New Years to come. Jews have abandoned the Torah and celebrated racism and intolerance.
And as always, we have a newsletter that speaks to this corrosive malaise in excruciating detail.
In a week that finally saw the US withdrawal from our longest-ever war, we begin with my article on the vile Chickenhawk Neo-Con Elliott Abrams, who was just appointed to lead The Tikvah Fund. Abrams not only represents everything that is wrong with institutional Judaism today, he also represents the malignant tradition of Reagan and the Bushes in promoting hate and violence rather than peace and love as the primary American values. He is very much a prince of darkness who would, if he had the power, continue to send American military personnel to all those parts of the world that affect his benighted HASBARAH vision.
Tikvah and its many supporters should be proud of their new leader.
One of the lingering pieces of corruption from the Lysol Administration is the Gulf 666 HASBARAH scam. We continue to see the subservient role played by Token Sephardi Rabbi Elie Abadie, as the White Jewish Supremacy continues to control the process. In my article I point out the sacred status of Gefilte Fish in this historical breakthrough.
Added to the mess is one of the real powers behind the Gulf Jewish throne, far more powerful than Abadie, the disgraced adulterer Rabbi Marc Schneier. He tells us what the New Convivencia is all about. It is yet another nail in the Arab Jewish coffin.
Matti Friedman provides us with yet another example of Ashkenazi co-optation of Arab Jewish culture. Here he profiles the Israeli musician Kobi Oz as part of his ongoing revision of Sephardic civilization, now made amenable to the Right Wing HASBARAH vision and its political aims.
And one of the most prominent exponents of that vision is Islamophobe Daniel Pipes. Here we see him discuss Muslim converts to Christianity, as he vigorously defends the murderous Christian civilization against the Arab-Muslim world.
James Hannaham discusses the fascinating case of William Gardner Smith, one of many African-American writers and artists who found a safe haven from Jim Crow America in France. What is interesting about this particular case is that Smith understood that the welcome he received as a Black man was not at all the experience of the many victims of French Imperialism, like the Algerians, who continued to find themselves on the losing end of a very toxic racism. While the common image of France as an anti-racist haven, some of us know better than to believe the hype.
The Jewish Book Council is not much on Sephardim and Sephardic literature, but here they provide an entry on Egyptian Jews by ASF favorite Jean Naggar that provides a concise review of the matter, without ever referring to the work of Sephardic scholars like Jose Faur and Ammiel Alcalay as a guide to understand the way this literature is part of our larger heritage. The very brief article does discuss major figures like Jacqueline Kahanoff and Edmond Jabes, but in the usual lachrymose style that we have become familiar with in the benighted writings of Lyn Julius.
And that leads us right to the racism of Charles Murray, who is apparently still beloved in the Right Wing White Supremacy world. R. Shep Melnick defends his hero in the pages of the reactionary Law and Liberty, reminding us that the New Fascism is not limited to Trumpworld Seditionists, but can be found in some sectors of the academy as well.
Speaking of those Right Wing White Supremacists, we have an excellent piece on the execrable Ayn Rand by Andrew Cheng. The article attacks the Randian White Snowflake culture that now permeates the Trump Alt-Right, and its many Rufo warriors, who are beating back against Critical Race Theory and the New Racial Consciousness.
No better example of the Religious Reactionaries doing their part in the ongoing Trump Culture War is New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, a man who is surely ecstatic about the SCOTUS acquiescence to the anti-Abortion law in Texas; an ominous sign of things to come. This particular attack on Liberal Catholicism was published in the Trumpist First Things with which Douthat shares many Fascist values. It is a far deeper dive into the Ratzinger Opus Dei abyss than his NYT articles, as it reaches into Church history to elevate the most abysmal understanding of Catholicism possible. It is the Douthat way.
It is thus appropriate to close with two articles on Douthat’s SCOTUS heroes, John Roberts and Sam Alito, who must be celebrating the painful loss of our Democracy. Indeed, let us not be fooled at all by Roberts’ fake “reasonable” exterior; he is just as reactionary and dangerous as Alito is, maybe even more. Both men are now part of a Trump-induced Super-Sick Conservative Majority that is primed to undermine our Civil Rights and basic constitutional protections. That majority is very much in lockstep with Trumpworld values, and will exact its revenge on America come hell or high water. And I mean that quite literally!
David Shasha
More Trumpist Whataboutism: Let’s Play Connect-the-Dots with Tikvah Fund Chairman Elliott Abrams
By: David Shasha
“Gefilte in the Gulf”: The Ashkenazi ASF and YU Rabbi Elie Abadie Tell Us that the Next Chapter of Jewish Life in the Arab World is White Jewish Supremacy!
By: David Shasha
Abraham Accords About People, Not Politicians
By: Marc Schneier
Kobi Oz: Israel’s Country Music Wizard
By: Matti Friedman
The Perilous Path from Muslim to Christian
By: Daniel Pipes
William Gardner Smith: A Black Writer Found Tolerance in France, and a Different Racism
By: James Hannaham
The World of Egyptian Jewish Literature
By: Jean Naggar
Book Review: Charles Murray is Telling the Hard Truths about Race
By: R. Shep Melnick
Facts Don’t Care About Ayn Rand’s Feelings
By: Andrew Cheng
Catholic Ideas and Catholic Realities
By: Ross Douthat
The Revenge of John Roberts
By: Andy Kroll
Samuel Alito’s Boundless Contempt for Democracy
By: Matt Ford