Sephardic Heritage Update 1017
David Shasha
Friends,
I would like to wish our readers a Happy Sukkot.
We begin this week’s newsletter, as is so often the case, with a whole mess of Tikvah Fund articles.
Tikvah Matti Friedman has become the Ashkenazi paternalist of all the Ashkenazi paternalists. His new book on Israeli spies adds to that paternalism, with another examination of Arab Jews from a coldly HASBARAH perspective. I was alerted to Jack Cohen’s article by Lyn Julius, so you know it has some primo racism against us in it. And, indeed, it shows beleaguered and persecuted Arab Jewish immigrants to Israel as boorish spies who largely found themselves killed off for their service to Zionism. Eight in ten did not make it! Cohen tells us that their spy failures has much to do with their ignorance of Muslim practice, which was rectified by their Ashkenazi Zionist handlers! The story shows us the transformation of Arab Jews into Right Wing supporters of the vile racist Menachem Begin. It remains the common “wisdom” that Mizrahi support for Begin, as it was for Netanyahu, was some great victory. Israel has still not had an Arab Jewish PM, and our communities remain estranged from their native culture; something that looks like it is a permanent condition. Pass the Hummus and Shakshuka!
We have discussed Tikvah SAPIR Felicia Herman a number of times. Her much-discussed Tikvah Tablet article attacking Lila Corwin Berman’s book on Jewish Philanthropy is an excellent example of the Zalman Bernstein style: a no-hold’s-barred Neo-Con fest that comes at Jewish Liberalism from every conceivable angle.
Liel Leibovitz, who apparently thinks that the Orange Pig is still president, seconds the relentless attack on the Liberals. As we continue to suffer the sickness that is Trumpism, Liebovitz like his boss the Whore of Trump, and like the White Supremacist Rufo macher Bari Weiss, is oblivious to the real dangers that are threatening our country, and continues to think that what is happening is Joe Biden’s fault. It is a prime example of the Tikvah pathology.
Tikvah Tablet macher and White Jewish Supremacist J. Hoberman, unbelievably once of The Village Voice, brings Zalman Bernstein and Ike Perlmutter to the august New York Review of Books. He adds his shrill Ashkenazi voice to the Stan Lee amen chorus, which will make Liel Leibovitz very happy. It is yet another Ashkenazi tribute to Wakanda, and to the cash machine that is Marvel Comics.
Our Ashkenazi racist friend Rabbi Jeremy Rosen, who is always complaining about Anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel, finally did his official Neo-Con White Jewish Supremacy duty on Critical Race Theory. It is more of the same in a very more of the same vein. The Bari Weiss hypocrisy is spreading like wildfire.
The Neo-Con racist Jews are quite fond of Ayaan Hirsi Ali for her debased Islamophobia and love of European Colonialism. Here we get a properly critical assessment of her latest book by Sonja Zekri that helps to put it all into context.
Apparently, David Brooks has now discovered that there is racism in America. Mazel Tov! His article though is chock full with the PILPUL moral relativism and Social Science gunk that gums up all the works. Things are bad – but they are not really so bad! It is a typical confused performance from the smartest guy in the room, who even when he tries to do the right thing, is unable to follow through completely.
In a follow-up column, Brooks does his usual confused job with the American family and its complications. As with the matter of racism, his views have been somewhat adjusted for the damage done by our dysfunctional socio-economic system that was caused by his beloved Reagan. But in the end, it is a minor revision of his previous thinking, as once again he points to Jesus as a way out of our misery.
As an excellent example of the Right Wing religious extremist process, we have Ross Douthat’s article on Liberalism and Sex. Naturally, all the problems with sexual abuse and molestation come from Countercultural values. Rather than examine the many sex abuse scandals in his beloved Catholic Church, and in the Evangelical world more generally, he focuses on Scott Stringer and Roman Polanski and Deconstruction. When it comes to sexual crimes there is plenty of blame to pass around to the different political groups, but Douthat, in true Tikvah fashion, is focused on only one side of the political spectrum. Maybe he might want to look at Opus Dei and the Ratzinger as well.
Bari Weiss gives us an article by PayPal co-founder David Sacks, one of her heroes. The article, unsurprisingly, is an attack on Corporate Wokeness and the ongoing attempt to seek Social Justice in our economic system. Though the shrill “Freedom” article does not mention his name, the real subject of the discussion is Trumpscum Peter Thiel, who has become a major player in the brave new world of the Right. It is yet another Bari Weiss White Supremacy triumph, which cements her place in the New Order.
Speaking of the New Order, we close with two more article on the Trump YEEZUS and his current desecration of his late mother and her intellectual legacy. It remains hard to understand how West continues to be a star in the age of Cancel Culture, but really nothing makes sense when it comes to Corporate Hip-Hop degeneracy in our Poptrash Idiocracy. We have seen the triumph of Stan Lee and Ike Perlmutter in such a world, and how in the end Trumpist values continue to animate mainstream African-American culture, as it degrades itself to embrace greed and malevolence rather than social activism.
David Shasha
Book Review: Matti Friedman’s Profoundly Important New Book
By: Jack Cohen
Jews With Money
By: Felicia Herman
It’s the Liberalism, Stupid
By: Liel Leibovitz
Review Essay: Stan Lee, Marvel’s Ringmaster
By: J. Hoberman
Uncritical Race Theory
By: Rabbi Jeremy Rosen
Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s “Prey”: Condemning Islam, Glorifying the West
By: Sonja Zekri
How Racist Is America?
By: David Brooks
What’s Ripping American Families Apart?
By: David Brooks
Can the Left Regulate Sex?
By: Ross Douthat
Get Ready for the ‘No-Buy’ List
By: David Sacks
Kane Unveils ‘Donda’ Album, With a Verse From Jay-Z
By: Jewel Wicker
We Still Don’t Know What’s on Kanye’s Mind
By: Mustafa Abubaker