David Bernstein REALLY Wants You to Know that His Mother is Iraqi and that He is Very Anti-WOKE!
David Shasha
David Bernstein REALLY Wants You to Know that His Mother is Iraqi and that He is Very Anti-WOKE!
I once again apologize in advance for the overkill, but as a Sephardi my obligation, unlike what we see from the racist Ashkenazim, is to tell the truth as best as I can and provide SHU readers with the greatest possible transparency as I can.
I posted my response to David Bernstein’s one line e-mail to me:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/4XXWvb997WM
Then I received another one, with even fewer words!
What?? I write about it a lot!
The complete article follows this note.
“A lot” apparently means two articles from 2021, after a long career in the White Jewish institutional world, where he has said nothing about the Sephardic heritage or addressed the issue of Ashkenazi racism. He has remained absolutely devoted to HASBARAH White Jewish Supremacy, in spite of his vain protestations regarding his family background.
Like so many of his Neo-Con Tikvah allies, he appears to know precious little about Jewish History and the intellectual-literary tradition of that past, which never seems to show up in either his writings or in his public institutional work. It is all just more Right Wing extremist agitprop.
Indeed, even after being exposed to a sliver of Jewish History and intellectualism as it applies to his own work, he chose to blithely ignore my response to him; showing how little actual concern or curiosity such people have for the richness and depth of our Jewish heritage and the complexities of the Sephardic/Ashkenazi binary.
Such knowledge is apparently not a prerequisite for employment in the White Jewish institutional world!
More than this, his two insulting e-mails, to which, Sephardi idiot that I am, I am devoting reams of words and intricate arguments, do not at all address the basic issues of my critique: His resolute promotion of Cancel Culture, his Jewish WOKENESS, his deployment of HASBARAH racism to distort Sephardic History in the service of Islamophobia and a deep-seated hatred of Arabs, and his duplicitous use of Open Debate and Free Speech, as he emphatically denies it to others.
It is all presented in the form of an abject hypocrisy laid out as a Projection; accusing others in classic Troll the Libs fashion of the very thing he has been doing since “Columbia Unbecoming.”
And I notice that he does not like to mention “Columbia Unbecoming.”
After reading his contemptuous e-mails to me, I now assume that with the single exception of my unintentional oversight about his mother’s family, a product of his own ambivalence over his identity, he otherwise completely agrees with all the things I said about him, and that I will not have to address his anxious responses ever again.
But back to the task at hand, as it will be the final time I respond to his direct provocations.
As far as his second article, to be quite honest, I was not really expecting an Iraqi Jewish spiel in an attack on WOKE. But that is of course my own naivete, as it does in hindsight make perfect sense that a hardcore Straussian Neo-Con like Bernstein would use his mother’s identity as a shield to deflect from his obvious racism as a member of the larger Tikvah Neo-Con world. It is a common trick of all Uncle Toms.
But in this case, I cannot even call Bernstein an Uncle Tom because he does not present any real sense of being a Sephardi, as is the case with a real Uncle Tom like his Jewish Journal publisher David Suissa:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c1l0_eK349whup0o6s-Gy_dtWeVCZVQOZC3Q-UFwSQM/edit
Bernstein’s Ashkenazi ethos has not at all absorbed any substantive aspect of the traditional Sephardic mentality, as it is full of PILPUL twists and turns.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-is-pilpul-and-why-on_b_507522
In my response to Bernstein’s first e-mail, I made it clear that I had not at all been aware that his mother was born in Baghdad. It was important for me to correct this, while at the same time make note of the fact that Bernstein, whose surname provides no indication of this maternal lineage, has been extremely careful in his biographical information for Jewish institutional websites not to provide the information.
It continues to strike me that Bernstein is loath to accept who he really is, pathetically presenting his family history as exculpatory, as if that can make the difference when it comes to dealing with Sephardi exclusion and White Jewish Supremacy. He refuses to come to terms with the Jewish complexities of the two sides of his family history.
He has not understood what I have called the “Broken Frame” that now plagues Jewish identity:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TjFku-0Z8bD2BD4QuDxv6OWK5Lubd8Uj/view?ths=true
Rabbi Marc Angel fully understands!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZZLhopNWNnqMb0GW2OQGcripP8SnZojsmxamctBLDzU/edit
I was especially taken by this echt “Bourekas and Haminados” passage from the Jewish Journal article:
I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, to an Iraqi Jewish mother who came directly to the United States in 1963 and to a U.S.-born, third-generation Ashkenazi father. When I was three, my grandmother came from Baghdad and moved in with us. Three years later my grandmother’s sister and her 14-year-old son moved in with us from Iraq and took my brother’s bedroom for three years. The house was bustling with high-pitched laughter and arguments laced in colorful Arabic swear words and a screeching parrot named Bibi. My father, who spoke no Arabic, often took refuge in the bedroom. I spoke to my grandmother and great aunt in a Jewish dialect of Arabic. It always struck me as odd and not a little exclusionary that American Jews thought all Judaism was Ashkenazic. Why was corned beef a “Jewish food,” I wondered, but not Kubbah, the farina dough dumplings filled with meat eaten by Iraqi Jews? Every Sunday morning, the smell of searing cumin woke me up as my grandmother made kitchry, the Jewish rice and red lentil delicacy. I appreciate the dish now more than I did then.
Indeed, if it has “always struck” him “as odd and not a little exclusionary that American Jews thought all Judaism was Ashkenazic,” why is it that he has chosen to ignore the Tikvah Fund racism, led by Bret Stephens and Alana Newhouse, that surrounds him?
Maybe he hid in the bedroom with his father!
In my previous post, I referred to perhaps the best-known and most egregious example of this racism – Bret Stephens’ infamous “Jewish Genius” article:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m94er1fxTBO2L3jClvnNgWaS2OFZcxWvRFthT0nUOkc/edit
I would insert here two relevant examples of where the Tikvah Neo-Cons are at the moment.
The first is the usual Anti-Vaccine Lysol propaganda that has become the specialty of Alana Newhouse and her Tikvah Tablet cabal:
https://mailchi.mp/20df06be4fb1/what-happened-today-june-16-810125?e=4b6f9b46a8
Indeed, it is one more attack on the outgoing New York City Mayor, who has long been the whipping boy of the Tikvah extremists:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/uFhuGVvR9Ko/m/qGoRJZBGAwAJ
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/i8ZF-UUVpUg/m/EMmGrAQwAwAJ
Perhaps even more troubling is the UnHerd article from Tikvah Tablet senior writer Jacob Siegel, the very giddy Insurrectionist MAGA tribute “The Rise of Rittenhouse Republicans”:
https://unherd.com/2021/12/the-rise-of-rittenhouse-republicans/
As the Tikvah crowd continues to obsess over Cancel Culture, WOKE, and BLM, we are seeing a slow-motion destruction of American Democracy. It is not a wonder that the Tikvah machers have made their choice, given Leo Strauss’ contempt for Democracy, but it is a truly sad moment in American Jewish History, as we see a debased lack of concern for the actual dangers we face as a culture and as a society. It is a very devious way of conforming to the Trump model and its subversion of the Liberal idea.
You see, Bernstein read my article, and in classic PILPUL fashion, he continued to fixate on the Born-in-Iraq issue to the exclusion of all else. His priorities are quite clear, as we can see when we read his articles and look at his institutional work.
The Sephardic tradition does uphold these values, as can be seen in the history of Religious Humanism and its pluralistic tolerance for the larger world.
By adopting the Ashkenazi Straussian model, Bernstein has sought to effectively undermine the Sephardic heritage, and has suppressed his dual family history from his public website biographies. I attribute that to the fact of White Jewish Supremacy in the Neo-Con Jewish world he lives in.
It thus remains – regardless of whatever else he might be able to pull out of his hat that I might have missed – a fact that he lives inside a world where Sephardim are not wanted and where Sephardic intellectual-literary culture does not exist. The public record is clear, and he knows it well.
Moreover, we all understand that it is career suicide for anyone to actually criticize the Neo-Con Jews for their Anti-Sephardi racism and live to tell the tale. Even if he was inclined to do so, he would never dare risk his career in that way.
I was thus struck by the following passage on Inclusion:
When I first heard about the identity category of Jews of Color that included Mizrahi Jews like me, I was puzzled. It never occurred to me to see myself as a Jew of Color. One Black Jew told me, much to my horror, about her experience in synagogue when an older lady presumed she was “the help.” It was not the first and only time it happened. Certainly nothing like that ever happened to me. We do have a responsibility to be a more inclusive and welcoming community.
There is much wrong with this paragraph, not the least of which is the fact that the “Jews of Color” construct hides the fact that the African-American converts to Judaism are nearly all Ashkenazim in their Jewish identification. I have yet to encounter a single Jew of Color who identifies with the Sephardic tradition.
The problem Bernstein is talking about is a more general White Supremacy, rather than a specifically White Jewish Supremacy.
It is thus clear – and could be a result of the fact that he grew up in Columbus, Ohio and not New York or Los Angeles where the Jewish institutional system, particularly the school system, is indeed quite racist and exclusionary – that he is oblivious to the primacy of such racism in the world he operates in.
He then emphatically defends WOKE White Jewish Supremacy against the New Racial Consciousness in the most vociferous terms:
Today, much of the established Jewish community has been swept up by the woke tsunami. Jewish organizations have short circuited the usual deliberations, a hallmark of Jewish civic life. Seemingly overnight they have changed the language they use in describing the power dynamics of American society. Advantages became “privilege.” Equality became “equity.” Dominant culture became “supremacy.” Emotional hurt became “harm.” Each of these terms carries ideological connotations beyond their literal meanings.
It is a classic Troll the Libs move.
Again, I am not sure what planet Bernstein is living on, but Ashkenazi racist discrimination in the Jewish institutional world is clear, as I presented it in the following Ynet article included in SHU 335:
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3594809,00.html
The strange thing in these “Sephardim Want to Be Haredim” stories is that the very “inclusion” process leads to a complete loss of the Sephardic heritage in the student. These Haredi schools are not going to change their curricula to reflect the Sephardic Jewish religious tradition, but it still seems that the SHAS-addled self-hating Mizrahim want in to that corrupt system.
It shows the absurd lengths that Sephardim will go in order to become Ashkenazim, and lose their unique Jewish heritage.
Even more to the point is my recent article on Rabbi David Eliach and the racist Yeshivah of Flatbush High School:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fvgd94a2OB84vBnKwa8M8ams-vhm1x2vaXoMl8f3jA0/edit
Though I do not have the exact dates in his bio, I assume that it has been some time since Bernstein left Ohio for the more densely-populated Jewish urban centers of the Northeast.
At the very least, by 2021 he should be aware of them, as he canvasses the Jewish institutional world in which he works.
His anti-WOKE article is fully in line with his close ally, and David Project protégé, Bari Weiss and the rest of the Neo-Con Jewish mafia.
It has become very big business, as we can see in Weiss’ Substack page goldmine:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/17/media/bari-weiss-newsletter/index.html
Indeed, we have seen many Self-Hating Sephardim do the same Neo-Con dance, as continues to be the case with Dr. Mijal Bitton:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Rp2kwRQcny_KeF1X24JQav3-an2edAl7lySF8nwv6w/edit
Indeed, Dr. Bitton has long been on the anti-WOKE bandwagon – looking to get herself a solid foothold in that Neo-Con Tikvah world – which she has! – with her attack on Julia Salazar and Identity Politics, published by The Forward in 2018:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/L267qR8lPqE/m/tztAITSGBAAJ
It is certainly no coincidence that Bernstein has amped up his anti-WOKE attacks just in time for him to transition into a new White Jewish institutional gig at the Illiberal Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (JILV), which I discussed in the following article:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U5AbVQpUOkMZyhzuNMoLrSUPdO8Q7vTmsfQuLjKqqpY/edit
A flurry of activity was set into motion by Weiss’ resignation from The New York Times:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SxkLo73G_WmdoQeRsZbS0ZCKOOSDPUl5yl6BxOaxObQ/edit
And then with the coronation of Bret SAPIR Stephens as the New King of the Jews:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aTALXUv5we9c8vzIejU8Xm32i5OnKky_jVwGMlMpdNg/edit
Quite conveniently, Bernstein was making his own career moves, as we have seen in his Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_L._Bernstein
After The David Project and its utility to the White Jewish Supremacy institutional world, he moved from the AJC to the JCPA, and now he was fully in to begin JILV as the context was ripe for a Neo-Con Jewish resurgence on the heels of the great success of Trump in the Right Wing world.
In the end, Bernstein has not sought to refute any of my charges of WOKE hypocrisy or of being in the pay of the White Jewish Supremacy cabal as a loyal foot-soldier.
Lord knows what other PILPUL tricks he still might have up his sleeve, but it will be clear to all that his mother’s Iraqi identity has no practical relevance to the larger project that her son has long been involved with.
For many decades he has sought to Cancel those who do not agree with his Neo-Con values, and more than this he has sought to elide the Sephardic heritage in favor of the White Jewish Supremacy that has, as I have shown, turned into a deeply disturbing McCarthyite snitch culture where Owning the Libs means more than adhering to the enlightened Torah values of Sephardic Jewish Humanism.
Bernstein has hidden from his Arab Jewish identity in order to make his way in a world of White Jewish racism which fits him like a glove. It is a world of narrow-mindedness, ignorance, and bullying which exposes the zealotry and cruelty of the Tikvah Neo-Con Straussians.
It is a world where, as I have repeatedly said, lying and prevarication becomes a way of life and where those who are not of the Platonically chosen elite have no say and no role to play in what is in effect a closed world.
David Shasha
My Cheshbon HaNefesh for Cowardice in the Face of Wokeness
By: David Bernstein
The first time I remember hearing the term “woke” was at a gathering of Black and Jewish activists in New York City in the fall of 2016. It was also the first time I encountered Black Lives Matter activists in person. I was the head of a Jewish organization that builds bridges with other ethnic and religious communities and advocates for a more just society. And this was a moment of great turmoil in race relations. In 2014, the streets of Ferguson, Missouri erupted in response to the killing of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer. During those protests, three women coined the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which spread like wildfire and sparked the civil rights movement of our time.
In August 2016, an offshoot of the loosely-knit movement, the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), issued a platform, which, among other things, denounced Israel for committing genocide. Jewish leaders accused the authors of anti-Semitism, and Black lives activists countered by accusing Jewish leaders of “decentering” the Black experience and distracting attention from their claims (a charge I would hear over and over again). Even as we reeled in response to the rising tensions, many of us were intensely curious. Who were these unnamed Black Lives Matter activists? And could we unite behind a common cause?
When a group of Black Jews organized the meeting with Black Lives Matter activists in New York, I jumped at the chance to join it. I was initially denied entry because of an article I had written earlier that year that was critical of intersectionality, the theory that various forms of discrimination interact in ways that create specific and compounded problems. But after lengthy discussions with a proxy for one of the organizers — in which I was told I needed to “do the work” — and me issuing a mea culpaas the price of admission, I was finally allowed in. This was the first of several compromises I made to my own liberal values and for which I now make amends.
The white Jewish leaders who attended the meeting were told in advance that they were expected to come and listen, to be seen and not heard. There would be a time to ask questions in small groups, but we were not allowed to challenge anything we heard during the main discussion. They were authentic voices of the marginalized, and we were to behold their words.
There were many firsts that evening. It was the first time I heard Black Jews say white Jews had benefited from white supremacy and needed to “shed your whiteness,” or the cultural identity that afforded whites advantage. White Jews, they told us, had taken full advantage of white privilege and their proximity to the white power structure. I later came to understand that like other privileged ethnicities, such as Asian Americans, many Jews were “white adjacent.” We were expected to acknowledge our complicity in white supremacy.
Many American Jews define white supremacists as racists who parade around with tiki torches and white hoods. For the Black activists at that meeting, however, white supremacy describes the fundamental organizing principle of America and the West, a system meant to uphold white domination. Many of us at the meeting were unfamiliar with this use of the term white supremacy. But I didn’t dare ask questions, let alone challenge what I heard.
Our role moving forward, we were told, was to acknowledge our own guilt, “make space” for and “lift up” Black voices. This was not your father or mother’s civil rights movement. It was certainly not a dialogue, and I doubt the organizers would have described it as such. We were complicit in the oppression of Black people in America and of Black Jews. We “had work to do” on ourselves and in the larger society.
At the end of the meeting, one of the organizers drew the Black participants into a circle. She preached “I was blind but now I am woke.” The participants repeated the chant and proclaimed Amen. I have always been moved by the spiritual effusiveness of the Black church. It feels to me that through gospels, hymns and professions of faith, churchgoers possess a deep, authentic connection to the divine spirit that I myself could not access. But I was initially confused when witnessing that same fervor during what was understood to be a political program.
What I later concluded was that the call to be woke was, in fact, a profession of faith. To be woke was to see the light of racial domination and all that it entailed. It felt like I was witnessing a religious revival in service of a new spiritual, political and social movement. Wokeness sees itself not merely as a social movement to end racism but as a complete worldview that supersedes the existing white supremacist order. It has its own internal logic. Its own vocabulary. Its own history, philosophy and conception of morality and law. And it carries, like all religions, a dogma that is not to be questioned.
I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, to an Iraqi Jewish mother who came directly to the United States in 1963 and to a U.S.-born, third-generation Ashkenazi father. When I was three, my grandmother came from Baghdad and moved in with us. Three years later my grandmother’s sister and her 14-year-old son moved in with us from Iraq and took my brother’s bedroom for three years. The house was bustling with high-pitched laughter and arguments laced in colorful Arabic swear words and a screeching parrot named Bibi. My father, who spoke no Arabic, often took refuge in the bedroom. I spoke to my grandmother and great aunt in a Jewish dialect of Arabic. It always struck me as odd and not a little exclusionary that American Jews thought all Judaism was Ashkenazic. Why was corned beef a “Jewish food,” I wondered, but not Kubbah, the farina dough dumplings filled with meat eaten by Iraqi Jews? Every Sunday morning, the smell of searing cumin woke me up as my grandmother made kitchry, the Jewish rice and red lentil delicacy. I appreciate the dish now more than I did then.
When I first heard about the identity category of Jews of Color that included Mizrahi Jews like me, I was puzzled. It never occurred to me to see myself as a Jew of Color. One Black Jew told me, much to my horror, about her experience in synagogue when an older lady presumed she was “the help.” It was not the first and only time it happened. Certainly nothing like that ever happened to me. We do have a responsibility to be a more inclusive and welcoming community.
Raised by an immigrant who practically worshipped the United States, I embraced the narrative of an America that is constantly striving to live up to its ideals. The America I grew up in was not racist but had racism in it. I still hold by that narrative today. The woke claim that America is white supremacist strikes me as both wrong and dangerous. For all its faults, America is the most successful experiment in pluralism in world history. Immigrants with black and brown skin still flock here, and my eccentric family was proof of the opportunity that lies at its doorsteps.
Five years after the meeting in New York, I am astonished to see how the woke faith has insinuated itself into mainstream opinion and institutions. Its appeal grows out of the profound (and rightly felt) collective guilt of white society. From what I saw, wokeness insists that only Black people have the right to enunciate their experiences and claims against society, and that everyone else must abide by their pronouncements. It asserts the same about Jews and other minorities as well. Anyone who wants to be in the good graces of the Black activists, it seemed, would have to adopt these pieties. It turns out that many progressives are eager to be in their good graces.
Five years after the meeting in New York, I am astonished to see how the woke faith has insinuated itself into mainstream opinion and institutions. Its appeal grows out of the profound (and rightly felt) collective guilt of white society.
While I was initially bewildered by the gathering in New York, I came to understand that beneath the power play was deep-seated resentment at the way some Black Jews felt about their place in the Jewish community. The Jewish community had not been nearly as inclusive of Jews of Color as we should have. We had not lived up to our moral billing. We do have cheshbon hanefesh —an accounting of the soul —to do for our lack of awareness and sensitivity.
But does such a recognition disqualify us from having an opinion on race and racism that differs from what I heard at the New York gathering? Must each of us now outsource our views on racism to those with first-hand experience?
As wokeness initially worked its way through college campuses and corporate diversity seminars, few mainstream liberals took the threat of it seriously. Wokeness seemed at worse a trifling annoyance, confined to late night dorm room discussions and occasional company retreats. Few challenged the intellectual underpinnings because… why bother? At that time, people were not getting fired for refusing to adhere to the faith.
But some fringe fads eventually escape into the mainstream. The kids graduate from college and go from being interns to professionals to managers to CEOs to elected officials. They insist that their workplaces take their woke sensibilities seriously. No one wants to look like they are against diversity, and their superiors bend to their will. Unopposed, the idea metastasizes. One day the quiet skeptic wakes up and finds that wokeness enjoys the enthusiastic support of a critical mass of progressives.
Today, much of the established Jewish community has been swept up by the woke tsunami. Jewish organizations have short circuited the usual deliberations, a hallmark of Jewish civic life. Seemingly overnight they have changed the language they use in describing the power dynamics of American society. Advantages became “privilege.” Equality became “equity.” Dominant culture became “supremacy.” Emotional hurt became “harm.” Each of these terms carries ideological connotations beyond their literal meanings.
Seemingly overnight organizations have changed the language they use in describing the power dynamics of American society.
I’m not suggesting that Jewish organizations shouldn’t use any of these terms. Rather, before adopting them, they should gain an understanding of what they mean in the context they are used and deliberate, openly, on whether they agree with those meanings. So far that hasn’t happened. All three non-Orthodox denominations have enunciated their support for critical race theory. No one bothered to ask rank and file members if they believe America today is a white supremacist state. Perhaps the leaders of these movements are scared of the answer they might receive from their own members.
At the altar of woke ideology, not only have some made a mockery of the deliberative tradition, some have even ditched their moral compass. In the name of racial justice and “Jewish values,” Jews, even rabbis, bully other Jews. These “kindly inquisitors” shame and ostracize others for daring to think differently. Some proclaim that we need “to get everyone on the same page on racial justice.” They accuse white Jews of having “privilege” for uttering non-woke perspectives. The normal laws of civility don’t apply. The activist Rabbi Michael Adam Latz informs me that “Civility is the elixir of the privileged… But while Black and Brown people continue to get shot and choked to death in alarming numbers, civility must take a back seat to justice.”
It’s not unusual to hear in spaces I recently travelled in that Jews must perform cheshbon hanefesh for their complicity in white supremacy. I recently left my position heading a national Jewish advocacy organization. And I have some cheshbon hanefesh to do, not over my complicity in our supposed white supremacist state, but for failing to stand up for my friends when they faced bullies and for my cowardice in not standing up for my own liberal principles early or decisively. I now plan on using my voice to right that wrong and defend the liberal values that have been central to the security of Jews and to a free society.
David Bernstein is the former head of Jewish advocacy organizations and currently the principal of Viewpoint Worldwide. Find him on Twitter @DavidLBernstein
From The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, March 26, 2021