Happy New Year from the American Sephardi Federation: Celebrating Many Decades of Erasing the Sephardic Heritage!
David Shasha
Happy New Year from the American Sephardi Federation: Celebrating Many Decades of Erasing the Sephardic Heritage!
As I wrote in the cover letter to SHU 1015, it has been a very bad year for the Sephardim:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/BvmMLb6JPDM
We learned from the Pew Research Report on Jewish Americans that we count for nothing demographically, which means our culture counts for nothing:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aumJU1VzaWupahVJvRlpp6iICo48MiETuFDFw0qtUfQ/edit
As an example of that cultural destruction, I have published two pieces on the Brooklyn Syrian Jewish community and its assimilation into the Ashkenazi Haredi world:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/Zp7U_fGi7_Q
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/N9azX1SKhFk
The posts show the continuing dominance of the execrable autocrat Isaac Shalom and his historic evisceration of the community’s rabbis, once led by the late, lamented Hakham Matloub Abadi.
Rather than remaining true to the Sephardic heritage, Shalom preferred to install a bunch of lackeys who would grovel before the Ashkenazi Orthodox Yeshivah world.
As a recent example of this process, I present the just-issued Holiday Reader from Congregation Beth Torah, the shul I grew up in and in which I presented many lectures, from Rabbi Jose Faur to James Kugel and Lawrence Schiffman to Maria Rosa Menocal and Ross Brann and Peter Cole to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HfKMA_tg7zgnzud058I_BEcuf_lvs4aB/view?ths=true
The Synagogue is filled with many Rabbis of Ashley Madison, leading a group of Pious Degenerates; those who care more for religious ostentation than for the basic values of kindness and human decency.
A quick perusal of the Holiday Reader will reveal no substantial Sephardic content, save the ubiquitous Maimonides and two brief mentions of Se’adya Gaon in the usual Yeshivish Dvar Torah manner. Sephardic Humanism is an unknown quantity to the rabbis and teachers of BT.
The single “Sephardic” contribution, tucked into the very end of the text, written by my old friend Sheldon Goldman is unfortunately based solely on Washington Heights-approved Self-Hater Rabbi Marc Angel.
The Sephardic community is clearly a mess, as it has fully acquiesced to the White Jewish Supremacy.
We have seen this betrayal in nationally-recognized “Sephardic” institutions like JIMENA and Congregation Shearith Israel.
JIMENA is itself a direct product of the White Jewish Supremacy, and very dutifully caters to its many HASBARAH needs:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tXd9HrTpRUm3oOkegJtKAw3MMuD-jt-mume90yyTvMg/edit
It has recently been at the forefront of attacking the current California governor over the state’s Ethnic Studies Curriculum:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SBkVBFplCWMowuOs6V_0aJ1ZDh6JQd8vtwz22A_xdvA/edit
It has embraced the Anti-Convivencia and toxic Islamophobia of Lyn Julius:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WXmmPlo2S1YQ7zpKkW8pbTqssJKkbEA7B78aRITmY1o/edit
https://www.harif.org/event/women-founders-in-conversation/
Its laughable “Journey to the Mizrah” curriculum is replete with the ignorant Orientalist exotica that we would expect from those who have no real understanding of the moral complexity and intellectual depth of our heritage:
https://www.jimena.org/introducing-jimenas-journey-to-the-mizrah-curriculum/
And then there is Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who has turned America’s Oldest Congregation into a division of The Tikvah Fund:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1inwIdB46odydf4p-7ahzdzqmiBcJz4KT9wNMiY-TJWw/edit
In that spirit, he has brought the militant Anti-Maimonidean Ashkenazi primitivism of the late Michael Wyschgrod to replace the Sephardic Humanism that was the template of the Synagogue:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vkNZusv09KazmHUp3BNcBGIe9TEZEMcKsZXfbBFMm4Q/edit
For those who have still not seen it, here is once again Soloveichik’s disgusting paean to Wyschogrod, written under the supervision of his fellow Tikvah star Leora Batnitzky at Princeton University:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytYVvsu-He-LACFKWcSsYGguR5uX33u9/view?ths=true
And this naturally brings us to our dear friends at the Ashkenazi-run ASF, also part of the extended Tikvah Strauss network.
Just prior to Rosh Hashanah, they sent out the following “Leadership Statement,” which explains a good deal about why the Sephardic heritage is in the process of collapse:
https://mailchi.mp/asf/statement5782?mc_cid=aa228930b8&mc_eid=9f39c396e1
The complete Statement follows this note.
Before you look at it, please recall my previous discussions of the myriad ways in which the ASF has set out to encase the “Dead Sephardim” in aspic, and limit our culture to music and food:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14cKispiXs6t14GfQlUw764iNnX6XZTdc9YzMU8LhwHc/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jkws0yY4GqDLXTeGt04TGOjB2GFlpuFlO7kkwpRlmNE/edit
Unlike other groups in the Center for Jewish History, the ASF does not do active scholarly research, as is the case with YIVO in the promotion of Yiddish culture and Ashkenazi history:
A perusal of their website unveils a very extensive program of public education, a wide-ranging presentation of resources and publications, all presented within the context of a true research institution, completely lacking in the ASF:
There is also the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, which supplements such research to create a truly robust scholarship on Eastern European intellectual culture:
https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/
Out of this impressive complex of Yiddish scholarship comes the work of Rokhl Kafrissen; one of the most prominent young writers promoting this heritage:
https://forward.com/author/rokhl-kafrissen/
https://www.tabletmag.com/contributors/rokhl-kafrissen
In true Tikvah fashion, she even denies White Jewish Supremacy, at the very same time that she practices it!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cA7u3WnrqmKf9PZiyjPfOvNXkCChLdcqvAZQFCHLzzA/edit
It is impossible to think of any Sephardic analogues to such cultural richness in Jewish academics and the Jewish media. And this is something directly related to the many failures of the ASF and other putatively “Sephardic” institutions. The incestuous Ashkenazi networking has made it truly impossible for such forward movement.
Keeping this burgeoning Yiddish continuity in mind, the ASF leadership, professional and lay, are apparently unaware of current trends in Jewish Studies that have removed Sephardic Studies from the academic curriculum.
We have recently seen this in the emerging field of Analytic Jewish Theology, an Anti-Maimonidean subject if there ever was one, which I discussed in the following article:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WLhcxbkdXlzTGuhmINX7R8TI_GIvugH00iC3t9Znrfs/edit
In the article I point to a number of books and anthologies on the subject, perhaps none more important than the much-ballyhooed tome by Rabbi Shai Cherry, Coherent Judaism:
https://www.amazon.com/Coherent-Judaism-Constructive-Theology-Halakhah/dp/1644693402
An entire issue of the journal Zeramim was devoted to it:
https://zeramim.org/current-issue/vol-v-issue-3/
Cherry’s work is a very detailed synthesis of current trends in Jewish Religious Studies that speak to the attacks on Sephardim and Sephardic culture, in favor of Ashkenazi occult irrationalism, as I have discussed in the following Huffington Post articles:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/killing-off-rational-juda_b_498846
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dangerous-mystic-motifs-i_b_637535
We must also include in this academic discussion the work of the “New Talmudists” and their reframing of the classical Talmudic tradition against the Geonic and Maimonidean modes of rational understanding:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LPbxxP_kkV536tPTvMpsUE9feBgoBSa7QEP8iXXDHIk/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qihywNGjZbuPEY4-cbQ1g02-nOoaCL2Ug0G2qZ12t64/edit
In the Modern Orthodox world, there is the much-feted article of Haym Soloveitchik “Rupture and Reconstruction,” which marks Sephardim as lacking Modernity:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NBCYyz07l0iTs34hfKZuCZ9croAiB8Mb-JK4Gx9BOFE/edit
Ironically, or perhaps understandably, given the penchant of Sephardim for self-contempt and ignorance of their heritage, Soloveitchik’s offensive Orientalist thesis was affirmed by London’s Rabbi Joseph Dweck, who claimed that, indeed, Sephardim are not part of Modernity:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d9D5dXU_9WgFa2Chna1m_byzPUe1WaW3VbR1Qk_zQWs/edit
Yoel Pimentel has sharpened Dweck’s links to the degrading Orientalism presented by Soloveitchik in the following article:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LUsZA48zpKtgkOB2YWRtjC4R0Y2Nt6tw4KHlbe2rRpE/edit
Dweck, who moved to England from Brooklyn, where he was a dutiful Rabbi of Ashley Madison in the cynically opportunistic SY manner, has initiated a group called the Sephardi Habura, one of whose members, Sina Kahen, has his own ASF link:
https://americansephardi.org/event/new-works-wednesdays-with-sina-kahen-2/
Kahen and the Habura are mired in the Washington Heights Kookist ideology, as I discussed in the following article:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pFWVQTzB3GLzpYLhl8YCF2Q5d9c8yrlYu-yHxWyf38E/edit
These are indeed the “New Sephardim”: quite different – and very often antagonistic – to the Old Sephardim with their Religious Humanism rooted in the Arab-Islamic civilization.
Rounding off the racist attacks on Sephardic history and culture is the New Jewish Social Science movement that seeks to paint Sephardim as primitive cheats and boors, rather than as Cosmopolitan Modernists:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_k1I5KoFmIK0Qk7Zfd6HvTPo3iYaWL6YpuRp3VY3tgA/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l4GaqfTjcBkotDfzurNs8unp9sRA374FLKOmeEBcOkU/edit
Former ASF Fellow and PhD in Jewish Social Science Mijal Bitton has rapidly advanced in the White Jewish Supremacy, just as she has advanced in the Tikvah world:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Rp2kwRQcny_KeF1X24JQav3-an2edAl7lySF8nwv6w/edit
I addressed her lack of knowledge of the Brooklyn SY community in my article included in the special newsletter devoted to the imperilled legacy of Rabbi Jose Faur:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T5hwSK5C4N8Vd50UYMptCy1jmk5LSyJbIUEh-Lq6_s8/edit
Because she has been trained n what is in effect a racist Jewish Social Science system, her assertions are inextricably tied to the very problematic of White Jewish Supremacy and how Sephardim have capitulated to it.
So, when we read her article on the “Jews of Color” and Trumpian Conservatism, we must keep in mind that she is not taking into account that Sephardim are not Sephardim anymore, but have integrated into specific sectors of the Ashkenazi world.:
I have addressed the matter in my article “The New Sephardic Jewish Binary: Between Meir Kahane and Moshe Feinstein”:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EyglybEAkHmQ35sIU6XubsU92mLCM1FGO90ENj_NE-w/edit
Bitton’s identity-confusion, of which she and her family are a part, has produced a distorted and misleading view of a Sephardic community that has ceased to reflect its traditional values, as we have seen in the rejection of Faur’s scholarship and the ongoing attempt to erase our heritage of Religious Humanism from the mainstream Jewish discourse.
This plague of Sephardic Self-Hatred has been affirmed by the manner in which our Ashkenazi institutional “leaders” have manipulated the system’s food chain and doled out the plentiful financial largesse to those best adept at catering to the White Jewish Supremacy.
As is the case with the ASF smoke-and-mirrors Fellowship program that aims to affirm institutional White Jewish Supremacy rather than seriously challenge it:
With this in mind, it is interesting to see the ASF Leadership Statement, which begins with the usual empty schnorring platitude:
We affirm that “the wisdom and warmth of the Sephardic
tradition has much to offer to humanity. In these challenging times, we need
that resilient spirit that has been passed down through the ages in the form of
Sephardic poetry, philosophy, music, food, and spirituality” (Josh Benaim/ASF Sephardi
House). The Jewish tradition is full of beauty,
depth, diversity, and vitality.
It then quickly moves on to the usual Tikvah-style Shtetl paranoia on Anti-Semitism and Zionism and Jewish “unity,” which is occasionally peppered with some dead Sephardic rabbi’s name.
What one will not find in the text is any appreciable understanding of the problem of Ashkenazi racism in the White Jewish Supremacy, especially as we see it in our educational institutions; from the earliest grades to advanced graduate programs in universities.
In addition, this lack of understanding creates a void of serious thinking about our literary-intellectual heritage and its place in the world of the Iberian and Middle Eastern civilizations.
Indeed, the very notion of Religious Humanism and of the firm anchoring of Sephardic culture in Arab-Islamic civilization, what I have called “The Levantine Option,” has been replaced – as is now common – with a HASBARAH essentialism that places the ASF in the larger racist framework, as so many other mainstream Jewish institutions.
I have presented the classical Sephardic heritage in its proper cultural and historical framework in the following articles:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1NQdm28qvvXVFhBSjh3eVdIU0E/view
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-jewish-voice-left-silen_b_487586
In the current Trumpist framework of the Gulf HASBARAH Accords, it is little wonder that it is Ashkenazim that are in full control of the process:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iAZ1KWsN_Kf_Rx7wFdypgvJo7FCcQUfPZerYFypH-bw/edit
It is thus not at all surprising that in addition to Rabbi Marc Angel, who has his own issues with Convivencia and Sephardic Humanism, the ASF proudly includes Gulf Rabbi Elie Abadie as one of its most prominent board members:
https://americansephardi.org/projects/asf-council-of-sephardic-sages/
Like his fellow ASF members, Abadie is all about Ashkenazi subservience, and very little about the classical Sephardic heritage, a subject that is largely alien to him.
And like Angel he is all about the Washington Heights cabal and its contempt for Sephardim:
We are indeed just “Idiot Sephardim”:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fUx-B5XHPIrr7b_7xS4ZpmiEmvo_qBy0pKqOAtmJ5WI/edit?usp=sharing
For so many decades the ASF has been an impediment to Sephardic continuity; a history that has led us into the institutional cul-de-sac that we are now living in.
Our young people know nothing of their history, and less about the many books and trends that have made Sephardic Judaism what it is – and will likely never be again.
It is worth noting that at a time when the matter of Abortion has become a matter of urgent discussion in our country, that the seminal Halakhic view of Rabbi Yehuda ibn Ayyash has not been cited in our very own community, or from institutions like the ASF and JIMENA.
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/MMXsqjbzDBk
These institutions are too busy doing the work of the White Jewish Supremacy, and the Right Wing Jewish echo-chamber.
In closing, it is worthwhile to note that in the case of the Beth Torah Holiday Reader the name of Rabbi Jose Faur does not appear; a sad fact given that he spent many years attending the Synagogue.
It should come as absolutely no surprise that the Synagogue’s leader, Rabbi Ari Azancot, worked diligently with his close friend Rabbi Yosef Bitton, father of Mijal, to make sure that Faur would never be able to teach in the shul.
Indeed, Faur’s name has been erased from the annals of the Brooklyn Syrian Jewish community.
And we should recall that in spite of publishing the work of Mijal Bitton which first appeared in Tikvah Tablet, the ASF closed its doors to Faur when he was alive, and worked especially hard to make sure that a proposed lecture series which included him as a speaker would not be brought to the Center for Jewish History.
I presented that proposal to the CJH’s then-director David Myers, who soon found himself pushed out by Right Wing Jewish radicals, led by – who else? – the ASF:
https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/09/05/new-ceo-of-center-for-jewish-history-holds-radical-viewpoints/
The ASF is not just ignorant of Sephardim and Sephardic History, preferring instead the insulting humiliation of “Bourekas and Haminados” Sephardischkeit, but it has taken an active role in suppressing the voices of so many Sephardic activists, whose visions have taken on Ashkenazi racism and the White Jewish Supremacy; scholars like Faur, Maria Rosa Menocal, and Nissim Rejwan.
It is not just a bloated monolith that does nothing to address the actual needs and problems of the Sephardic community, but actively blocks any possible progressive movement by those who might actually make a difference in helping to promote Sephardic continuity by working for positive change in the current status quo.
David Shasha
American Sephardi Leadership Statement
The past year was challenging for our community and country. The upcoming new year presents promise but also profound uncertainty. Antisemites are targeting Jews on campus and in the streets, while the pressures to conform to outside influences, to compromise our traditions and love for the people and State of Israel, are intensifying. The American Sephardi community is coming together at this critical moment to affirm and embody the principles for which we stand now and always.
The American Sephardi Federation invites all individuals, communities, and organizations who share our vision and principles to join us on the eve of Rosh HaShanah in signing the American Sephardi Leadership Statement.
- We affirm that “the wisdom
and warmth of the Sephardic tradition has much to offer to humanity. In
these challenging times, we need that resilient spirit that has been passed
down through the ages in the form of Sephardic poetry, philosophy, music,
food, and spirituality” (Josh Benaim/ASF Sephardi House). The Jewish tradition
is full of beauty, depth, diversity, and vitality.
- We recognize that antisemites
do not discriminate among the types of Jews they hate, but rather hate all
Jews.
- We stand as one with Jewish communities across the country and around the world against:
- The increase in verbal and physical assaults on Jews
- Attempts to weaken the Jewish people by dividing us into identities that deny the history and value of Jewish unity
- Defining Jews only by antisemitism rather than our achievements; and
- Reducing Judaism to a
political abstraction and the Jewish American experience to a narrative
of victimhood.
- We affirm the Jewish people’s
shared rootedness in the Land of Israel, and the centrality of Israel throughout
Jewish history and in contemporary Jewish life. Remembering Zion and
Jerusalem and practicing Ahavat Israel are natural and positive
aspects of Sephardic life, and the safety and well-being of Israel is a
core communal concern.
- We are committed to
remembering that our ancestors came to America as refugees
in search of freedom and its blessings of peace and prosperity. Benjamin
Franklin contributed to Philadelphia’s Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue,
Mikveh Israel, an expression of the philosemitic views of many of the
Founders. Indeed, Sephardic Jews have served
and sacrificed for America in every generation since its founding.
- We “support that [American]
government which is founded upon the strictest principles of equal liberty
and justice” (Gershom
Mendes Seixas) even as Jews remain the most likely minority to be
victims of hate crimes. Antisemitism has no place especially in America, a
nation of immigrants and ideas that are a force for good in the world.
- We believe that antisemitism
cannot be confronted unless it is first identified. The International
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition
with its examples of antisemitism is essential to recognizing,
measuring, educating against, and confronting the world’s oldest
hatred. We accordingly affirm the Combat Antisemitsm
Movement Pledge to do our part “in order to build a more just, free,
and civilized world” without antisemitism.
- We revere our elders and work
with them to ensure their memories,
books,
documents, and artifacts are preserved for future generations.
- We particularly support
our young people, the future of our community, and work to ensure that
they have the intellectual and moral strength, knowledge, and commitment
to overcome any of the challenges they face.
- We affirm that, as Hakham
Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel, Israel’s 1st Sephardic Chief Rabbi, wrote: true
learning improves understanding of different cultures & means adding our
“own blessings to the cultural treasury of humanity” (e.g., at least 12
Jewish Noble Laureates are Sephardi).
- We urge scholars, educators,
and organizations to both recognize and study the much-neglected tragic
impact of the Holocaust on Sephardic communities, especially in Greece, the Balkans,
North Africa, and the Middle East.
- We are committed, moreover,
to preserving, perpetuating, and promoting the full diversity of Greater
Sephardic cultures and histories through an array of projects, events, publications,
and contemporary advocacy, such as our campaigns to secure justice for Dr.
Sarah
Halimi, HY”D, free Levi
Marhabi, and raise awareness about the Yemenite Jews who are the
forgotten refugees being forgotten in real time.
- We must work with total devotion to elevate, amplify, and empower Sephardim of all ages and backgrounds to articulate the teachings of Classic Sephardic Judaism. For too long Sephardim have been underrepresented and both Sephardic culture and concerns have often been overlooked within the broader Jewish community to the detriment of all Jews. We need to “bring all Jews, without distinction, together around our shared Sephardic traditional, intellectual, and cultural roots.” (Rabbi Elie Abadie/ASF Council of Sephardi Sages)
As Enrico Macias said at the ASF’s 18th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival: “We have to unite our energies together. All Jews, together…. If we are united, all Sephardim and also Ashkenazim, together... we will see the light!”
Our best wishes for Sweetness and Light in the New Year!
Dulce lo vivas and Tizku l’Shanim Rabot!