Sephardic Heritage Update 1086
David Shasha
Friends,
Before we begin, I would like to recount my trip to the Book Culture on 112th Street (down the block from Tom’s “Seinfeld” Diner) in Manhattan. It has been some time since my previous visit, and I noticed that one of my favorite recent books, Karen Armstrong’s The Lost Art of Scripture, was on one of the sale tables for $10.98:
https://www.bookculture.com/books/sale-books/9780451494863rm
I checked the book on-line and found that Labyrinth Books had the paperback edition on sale for $8.98:
https://www.labyrinthbooks.com/product/9780525431923
I will be re-posting my special newsletter in honor of Armstrong and her compassionate Religious Humanism with today’s newsletter, and encourage all of you to purchase the The Lost Art of Scripture, if you have not already done so. It is essential reading in these perilous times.
And on the other side of the ledger, we have the continuing descent of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ legacy.
This time we have a Bar-Ilan conference that puts yet one more proverbial nail in the coffin of enlightenment:
https://www.rabbisacks.org/news/bar-ilan-launches-its-international-conference/
H-Judaic has posted the full conference program:
Naturally, it is all White Jewish Supremacy, but more than that it ignores Rabbi Sacks’ Jewish Humanism, which I presented in my EDAH Journal article on his Dignity of Difference:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10PB65T0j5KCtYVuRDffdThuTUWdKksCt/view?ths=true
I was particularly struck by the final presentation by Shalom Hartman Institute’s Michah Goodman, pitting Sacks against Post-Modernism; a polemic that further confirms the cleavage being made between Sacks and my teacher Rabbi Jose Faur.
For those who might have missed it, I have reviewed the Sacks Modern Orthodox “rehabilitation” in a special newsletter:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T95UtKqVQrTZWObnxgTYMxrBYvc-6SzTpQM668sKoj4/edit
Indeed, the Sacks/Armstrong binary shows us how the Washington Heights mentality has sought to take complete control over Jewish thought in our time. More on that mentality later in this cover letter.
We begin this week’s newsletter with my article on the Tikvah ASF “Jewish Nakba” Grift, that has been designed to cash in on HASBARAH racism, rather than affirm the classical Sephardic heritage. The Grift is being perpetuated by the many putatively Sephardic groups, all run by Ashkenazim. Indeed, I also discovered in my trip to Book Culture, that our dear friend Jewish Fascist and Ken Burns-hater Dara Horn has her own personal connection to the Tikvah ASF. I picked up a copy of her massively successful People Love Dead Jews, and turned to the Acknowledgments section at the very end of the book. And, no surprise, I saw the Tikvah ASF namechecked, as both Jason Guberman and my former student Eddie Ashkenazie were praised for their help to Horn’s Tikvah Straussian project.
It made me recall Horn’s SY community appearance last summer with fellow Tikvah macher Rabbi Richard Hidary:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k1NebkmJYheC9WnK5HeEfDSQbDQ4fSZK/view?ths=true
Just to make that SY Intersectionality clear, Hidary cites Horn on Rabban Yohanan Ben Zakkai (!) in his latest article for The Lehrhaus:
It does seem, especially for a New Talmud expert, a rather gratuitously brown-nosing Tikvah reference.
Naturally, it was immediately re-posted by his friends at Tikvah Mosaic:
When it comes to The Tikvah Fund, brown-nosing Dara Horn is certainly the way to go!
Even more than this, there is the case of Settler Messianist Rabbi Yakov Nagen, whose latest Times of Israel column is all about praying on the Temple Mount, and how the Muslims should just go along with the Kahanists:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-house-of-prayer-for-all-humanity/
The larger picture here is of a Vladimir Jabotinsky Jewish Fascist Mussolini Intersectionality.
In addition, I decided to re-watch the entire Burns documentary, beginning with the first episode on Wednesday night, with especial concern to see it out of Horn’s eyes – which had not been the case on my first viewing. And as I was watching it again, it dawned on me just how agitated a Tikvah Fascist like Horn would have been to hear the profound words of W.E.B. Du Bois, see the African-American scholar Nell Irvin Painter and hear her WOKE eloquence on American racism, and come to realize that the strongest FDR defender was actually Deborah Lipstadt. It became that much clearer to me how illiberal and intolerant Horn and her Tikvah allies truly are.
And how deeply antagonistic they are towards Sephardic Jewish Humanism.
The Intersectional case of Horn, the Brooklyn SYs, and the Tikvah ASF reminds us that this is what happens when Sephardim are removed from the Adult Jewish Table, and their institutions turned over to the hateful White Jewish Supremacists. The “Jewish Nakba” Grift is a key part of this transformation.
Which leads us to the White Jewish Supremacy CLAL, an institution which has locked Sephardim out, and their Rabbi David Markus, whose article encourages Ashkenazi rabbis to study Arabic. In my communication with Rabbi Markus I learned the hard way how Ashkenazim have contempt for Sephardim. In this case, it is the way in which Markus has divorced Arabic from the Jewish people as a living language. It is a yet another way to eliminate Sephardic Jews from the Adult Jewish Table.
Mustafa Akyol, a regular New York Times Op-Ed contributor, has written an article on Islamic Philosophy that makes no reference to Convivencia and to the Jewish Philosophers who were so deeply involved in the process. It makes sense, given that Akyol is dealing with a White Jewish Supremacy world, with no sense that Sephardim once lived in the Arab-Muslim world. My communications with him have had no impact at all.
Matan Shor’s article on the elimination of the Humanities in Israeli education reflects not only an erosion of the knowledge of Jewish History and Classical Hebrew Literature, but more specifically teaches us how the Sephardic contribution to Jewish Civilization has little meaning, as technology replaces wisdom in Zionist culture.
As I continue to show, The Tikvah Fund has no use for Sephardim – unless the Sephardim have some HASBARAH role to play, as in the “Jewish Nakba” Grift. Tikvah die-hard Ruth Wisse, one of the most shrill voices in that Straussian world, heaps praise on the writings of Haim Sabato. Which makes sense, given that Sabato patterns his work after Agnon, rather than Jose Faur and Edmond Jabes.
Tikvah has brought some other “Good Sephardim,” like Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, to discuss Sabato, thus squaring the Neo-Con HASBARAH circle:
https://mosaicmagazine.com/dawning-of-the-day-subscribe
https://mobile.twitter.com/tikvahfund/status/1601305910118227968
Again, it is all about Tikvah dogmatics which reject the classical Sephardic heritage and Jewish Humanism.
Keeping with the Tikvah Neo-Con mentality, we have another attack on Ken Burns, this one from the not-FAIR Substack. The article is related to the Dara Horn attack, as it confirms the Right Wing Intersectionality in the Neo-Con institutional world.
In a “lighter” vein, we have Tikvah Tablet Pitbull Liel Leibovitz praise Tolkien in First Things. For those who might not know it, Tolkien’s lame fantasies are very much welcome in the Catholic Fascist world. And Leibovitz connects Tikvah to that Catholic Fascist world. It is yet more Intersectionality.
Speaking of the Catholic Fascists, we have an assessment of “Protestant” Neo-Con David French, also from First Things.
Just in time for French’s new gig at The New York Times, which has occasioned much comment:
https://www.nytco.com/press/david-french-joins-the-times-as-an-opinion-columnist/
https://reason.com/volokh/2023/01/03/david-french-to-the-new-york-times/
Ralph Nader has written an excellent piece on the deleterious transformation of the NYT, which the French hire has made that much worse:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/01/03/the-new-york-times-is-diminishing-itself-2/
French has become a lightning rod of Christian controversy, and the First Things article provides a way to understand the internal contentiousness.
We close with Avi Ciment’s three-part Haredi attack on Modern Orthodoxy. The articles are of a piece with Ben Shapiro similar polemic:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/RYFZb7_67wA/m/0Q9f5gAZAQAJ
Once again, it is a sign of the death of Modern Orthodoxy and the emergence of a new hybrid which is controlled by Bnei Brak and 770.
For those who are interested in the issue, I again recommend the following book which makes the connection even more forcefully:
https://www.amazon.com/Thriving-Our-Yeshiva-Maximizing-Yeshivas/dp/B0B92NQ4L4
So, for those Sephardim who have abandoned their heritage, pace Rabbi Marc Angel and his followers, and gone Washington Heights, the belief that Modern Orthodoxy is either Modern or Moderate, is an idea whose time has long passed. As we can see with the Sacks Legacy, the idea is to abandon Jewish Humanism in toto and to replace it with Haredi Yeshivish values.
David Shasha
Give Me the HASBARAH Gelt: The Tikvah ASF JIMENA “Jewish Nakba” Grift
By: David Shasha
Erasing Sephardic Jews in Real Time: CLAL’s Rabbi David Markus Learns Arabic
By: David Shasha
Why This Rabbi is Learning Arabic
By: David Markus
Islam’s Conscientious Thinkers: The People of Reason vs. People of the Hadith
By: Mustafa Akyol
The Slow Death of Humanities in Israeli Education
By: Matan Shor
Haim Sabato: The Sage and Scribe of Modern Israel
By: Ruth R. Wisse
The Missed Opportunity in Ken Burns’ “The U.S. and the Holocaust”
By: Gabriel Brown
Epic Failures
By: Liel Leibovitz
David French and the Future of American Protestantism
By: Carl R. Trueman
The Modern Orthodox Conundrum (3 parts)
By: Avi Ciment