New Article: Bad Things Happen When Sephardim Do Not Control Their Own Institutions
David Shasha
Bad Things Happen When Sephardim Do Not Control Their Own Institutions
Introduction
Prior to the Shabu’ot Holiday, I re-posted, as I usually do, my article “The Ten Commandments as a Paradigm of Religious Humanism”:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/Ipo2i31JSWA
In addition, I also re-posted my elegiac and embittered article “Fear and Cowardice in the Sephardic Community: A Legacy of Human Failure”:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/-njs67l25yE
As I have come to expect, after the postings, I lost yet another SHU subscriber.
Although I have no idea who they are or why they decided to sign off, it is always clear to me that these things happen when I send out something angry and volatile; articles which seek to aggressively confront a Sephardic community that is clearly in freefall.
As I keep being told, nobody wants to hear the bad news.
Better to bury your head in the sand!
A fact that was painfully confirmed to me as I was walking to shul on the second morning of the holiday, when I encountered a member of the Brooklyn SY community, whose very successful business brings him into contact with primarily Ashkenazi bookbuyers.
The individual arrogantly recounted to me, as I continued to lament the erasure of the Sephardic heritage under the toxic pressure of the ubiquitous White Jewish Supremacy, that he had just given a lecture at the Jewish Theological Seminary on Sephardic Paleography, which was enthusiastically attended by a few dozen professors there.
I angrily responded that the JTS was founded by Sabato Morais, a Sephardi, and that the current iteration of the institution seems not only to have forgotten that history, but that it stands against the values Morais held so dear:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oJ6PrGWTGHnTnfPkBhPao3oSucPPg-k4sEKZDgCGOZc/edit
I further raised the question of how committed these JTS professors were to the actual Sephardic heritage in its living form, and offered to present the SHU to them.
I was then told that “no one listens to you,” the professors do not care about what you have to say, and that the JTS has nothing to do with Morais and his tradition.
More than this, he harshly scolded my process as reprehensible, and that he knew better how to gain the respect of the Ashkenazi racists. The idea is never to call them racist and to let them do anything they like! Never fight back, just take it on the chin and smile.
A smile will change everything.
Because that is how the Ashkenazim deal with things!
Like when Dara Horn took on Ken Burns:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SMERk-ASM6s_8cidnXXBli7ECsNo8Baw/edit
And Holocaust education:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uhUg1o6VSKWkuP8AB-O8JNebzAQFMldxqM-0oadqmcg/edit
Ashkenazim never get angry!
But Sephardim who have the temerity to vigorously speak back against the White Jewish Supremacy are evil.
Indeed, it is a sad reality that I am all too aware of, as the Jewish institutional world is totally removed from the organic Sephardic community, and that the Sephardic community is not only a stranger to its own traditions, but that it has hired contemptuous Ashkenazim to run their institutions.
On Sunday morning that racist reality became eminently clear to me yet again, as I read the following JTA article on Rabbi Arthur Green’s JTS commencement speech in praise of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and the very White Jewish Supremacy Jewish Renewal movement with its 1960s Hippie values:
I cannot think of a better example of where Morais’ Seminary is today and how the knowledge of the past does not mean Sephardi inclusion as a practical matter, or even an acknowledgement of the institution’s founding.
It is ironic that such a history is ignored in an institution that is grounded in the study of Jewish History!
The Lakewood Sephardim
I recently presented numerous examples of how the Brooklyn SY community has embraced Lakewood Ultra-Orthodoxy, which has essentially displaced the regnant YU Washington Heights Orthodoxy.
The movement is proudly led by Magen David Yeshivah head Rabbi Eli Mansour:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/gcSkgbAtk5c
And then there is MDY veteran Rabbi Joey Haber and his very passionate Yeshivishkeyt:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/bcssE3y5pqk
Which parallels the Moroccan Yiddishkeyt of Shaare Torah all-star teacher Rabbi Armo Kuessous:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/n4hYeSBDtV4/m/j5BEG9cYAQAJ
This Lakewood intrusion will surely be aided by the new ArtScroll volume Kisvei HaRambam, which promotes the values of the Ashkenazi Anti-Maimonidean tradition:
https://www.artscroll.com/Books/KRAMH.html
All of it definitively confirms the Death of the Sephardim, as Lakewood Haredism consumes our institutions and seeks to overturn our tradition of Religious Humanism in the cosmopolitan framework of Andalusian Convivencia.
The Yale Jewish Lives Series Ashkenazi (Anti-)Maimonides
I have also discussed a new installment of the White Jewish Supremacy Yale Jewish Lives series, which just issued only its second Sephardic book, after literally dozens of books on Ashkenazim:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/bv7h4S-mjNk/m/LWFgluteHQAJ
Maimonides, of course, is not only a Jewish icon, but a prime representative of the Sephardic tradition that is being erased.
Indeed, Alberto Manguel’s book is bereft of Sephardic scholars on Maimonides, while it is loaded up with many Ashkenazi Anti-Maimonideans who deny the validity of Convivencia and Religious Humanism.
As I noted in my article, the idea is to completely ignore the work of Rabbi Jose Faur and his learned presentation of the classical Sephardic heritage:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p8bgBmpENXW8UTmkkgZyOvVGZmz-UU84uyStJtO5ADA/edit
The Manguel book is effectively an academic version of the ArtScroll Kisvei HaRambam, and will help enable a Jewish bookbuying public to affirm the White Jewish Supremacy.
Ronald Reagan and Memorial Day at the Chatham Square Cemetery
As Americans mark Memorial Day, the formerly-Sephardic Congregation Shearith Israel held an event at their historic Chatham Square Cemetery featuring its intrepid leader, Tikvah Fund Trumpscum extremist Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, along with his handpicked Ashkenazi Reaganite pals:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/gbPgmrNkRIg
in case you are still not aware of it, Soloveichik is deeply committed to the Straussian political values of The Tikvah Fund:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/v6r72AVzJ2Q
He has moved the Synagogue, the oldest Jewish Congregation in America, into the Brave New World of the New Catholic Fascism and showed us that Sephardim do not count at all in today’s Jewish world.
Lyn Julius, JIMENA, and Anti-Semitism
I was going to ignore JIMENA’s Shabu’ot e-mail newsletter, but Lyn Julius sucked me back into the White Jewish Supremacy HASBARAH vortex:
Before we discuss that, I want to recall Julius’ recent posting of a truly bizarre Haaretz interview with Israeli Sociologist Guy Abutbul-Selinger, which promotes the false idea that Mizrahim control Israel and that the Ashkenazim are being persecuted!
It is always important to understand such delusions as we examine the White Jewish Supremacy and the quislings who enable it.
Here is the text by Sarah Levin from the JIMENA e-mail newsletter:
Today at the White House, President Biden’s outgoing chief domestic policy adviser Susan Rice and Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff unveiled The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. JIMENA welcomes this important development, which aligns with our vision to achieve universal recognition of Sephardic and Mizrahi histories.
JIMENA’s Executive Director, Sarah Levin was privileged to participate in White House listening sessions when they were designing this historic strategy. While there, she shared how JIMENA has seen antisemitism manifest in K-12 schools and curriculum, particularly in California, strategies JIMENA uses to counter this, and additional national strategies that are solely needed. We are heartened to see our feedback and insights included in the National Strategy released today.
Strategic Goal 1.1 of the National Strategy aims to “Increase School-Based Education about Antisemitism, Including the Holocaust, and Jewish American Heritage.” That section includes this language:
In addition to learning about the horrors of the Holocaust, students should learn about global histories of antisemitism. This should include histories of antisemitism experienced by Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews—who trace their ancestry to Spain, the Middle East, and North Africa—and their stories of exclusion, persecution, and expulsion. Students should also learn about the history of antisemitism in the United States as well as contemporary manifestations of antisemitism. Educators need readily available quality resources to enable such education.
This is a historic moment for Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish Americans as the importance of teaching our histories has now been recognized and affirmed by the White House.
As a long-standing leader in educating the public on the histories of Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries, JIMENA looks forward to continuing our work with federal and state level agencies toward achieving this strategic goal. We have experience working with the California Department of Education (CDE) in this area, and already have lesson plans prepared that address antisemitism experienced by Mizrahi Jews both in the U.S. and the Middle East and North Africa. In fact, our lesson on antisemitism in the U.S. was adopted by the CDE for its ethnic studies course and includes the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
We express our deep gratitude to the administration for including the IHRA’s definition in its National Strategy and reaffirm that JIMENA has adopted this definition as well.
Having a National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism that includes our histories is critical to our work combatting antisemitism. We look forward to helping educate and support leaders and educators around the country and we thank the White House.
We should note here that Julius qualifies her praise of Levin by citing the article against the IHRA definition of Anti-Semitism written by HASBARAH extremist Mitchell Bard:
https://www.jns.org/jns/topic/23/5/24/290442/
As we have continued to see, Ms. Levin is a very ambitious Ashkenazi climber who has garnered the attention – and money – of the White Jewish Supremacy world:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xzRZtYI1amnNyGM47ny41p_A32xToEQJPZyUUimzrbI/edit#heading=h.gjdgxs
Which gives her carte blanche to oppress Sephardim.
Indeed, it is impossible for Levin and JIMENA to fight Ashkenazi racism, because they are themselves tied to that racism.
As we again saw in Levin’s article against DEI:
https://www.jimena.org/dei-programs-can-harm-jews-but-they-dont-have-to/
Which connects to her Anti-Newsom advocacy:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/wHM5VChthrY
And to Far Right radical Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and AMCHA:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/AbKqQPgZR9g
Which explains why they remain connected to David Project Bernstein and the White Jewish Supremacy HASBARAH machine:
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/ieHrcOg_V84
Sephardim who remain independent of this toxic White Jewish Supremacy are emphatically not welcome in the institutional Jewish world and are banned from the Adult Jewish Table.
Our main problem is not Anti-Semitism, though the Trumpscum Alt-Right must be addressed (not that JIMENA or the other Tikvah Fund Jews are interested in doing that!), but the White Jewish Supremacy and the way in which the racism is destroying our cultural heritage and religious way of life.
JIMENA is run by people who know close to nothing about the classical Sephardic heritage and our intellectual tradition as they continue to dutifully serve our enemies.
It is amusing to see the laughable assertion in the Anti-Semitism fundraising announcement that JIMENA is a “long-standing leader in educating the public on the histories of Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries.”
It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry from such CHUTZPAH.
Rabbi Marc Angel and Rabbi Emanuel Rackman
Right after Shabu’ot we also received this gem from Rabbi Marc Angel:
It is not just Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik that is uppermost in Rabbi Angel’s mind, but all those Modern Orthodox Ashkenazi icons, like Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, the leader of the Bar-Ilan University.
These are his real heroes.
And, in return, they love him and have made him their token Sephardi.
It is thus interesting that the e-mail newsletter continues to with a pitch for – wait for it! – Sephardic education:
The Sephardic Publication Foundation has made a grant to our Institute to enable us to provide publications of Sephardic content to rabbis and Jewish studies teachers. If you would like to receive the list of available publications, please contact in...@jewishideas.org, including your professional position and institution.
Angel’s Jewish Ideas website has no specific information on this Sephardic Publication Foundation, but does have a section on their Education Initiative.
See if you can find the common thread in all the names listed in the 2018 program:
https://www.jewishideas.org/educator-reports/november-2018
That’s right.
All the educators are Ashkenazim!
It is unclear exactly what resources Angel is presenting to the Ashkenazi educators, though we know that his National Scholar program is led by his son – it’s all in the MISHPOCHEH! – Hayyim:
https://www.jewishideas.org/online-learning/national-scholar-updates
Rabbi Hayyim is not interested in the Sephardic heritage, and presents an important example of how Sephardic continuity is not an important value to the Angel family.
The idea is to build the brand and monetize a token Sephardi representation which has served to assist the Ashkenazim in maintaining their intellectual control and cultural hegemony in the institutional Jewish world.
While Angel continues to vainly promote his ineffective initiatives, the Sephardim find themselves locked out of that elite world of Ashkenazi educators.
The Tikvah ASF Continues the White Jewish Supremacy in The Tikvah Fund Straussian Manner
We close the discussion with our very Ashkenazi friends at the Tikvah ASF:
“Jazz Against Democracy” triumphant!
Once again, we must recall the Commentary magazine-Tikvah Fund lineage which connects to the Journal of “Free” Black Thought:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dqTxHAp38o_OwER7gEEvNDF0Ey3JYtnb/edit
“Free” Black Thought is all in with the DEATH SENTENCE PragerU version of Slavery:
https://freeblackthought.substack.com/p/was-american-slavery-unique
It is also the place where David Project Bernstein is welcome to spout his own Trumpist understanding of the New Racial Consciousness:
https://freeblackthought.substack.com/p/in-search-of-systemic-racism
Another recent example of the Constance Owens values of the group is this gem on “Being Without Race”:
https://freeblackthought.substack.com/p/being-without-race
The idea is to attack DEI and the general tenor of the movement led by Black Lives Matter and The 1619 Project.
We will recall how the Tikvah ASF ally Tikvah Tablet went after Nikole Hannah-Jones in the most vicious Whore of Trump way:
It is all part of a much larger attack on African-Americans in the RUFO DEATH SENTENCE manner, as we have seen in the relentless Straussian-Sowellian attack on Affirmative Action, led by the Neo-Con Jews:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19UwJlS-aKpFCfCt0ZIcUbPNnuQE8h596/edit
Which brings us right back to Tikvah ASF Straussian Aryeh Tepper and his “Jazz Against Democracy” program, which remains a fixture in the “Free” Black Thought world:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lHRy4s8XIPfPnDPNRLPOI2t1-YTdOc3vtMVgN90lFVY/edit
That is also against Affirmative Action:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19UwJlS-aKpFCfCt0ZIcUbPNnuQE8h596/edit
It is not for nothing that I began my article on the Yale Jewish Lives Maimonides volume with citations from the new Penguin edition of African-American historian Carter G. Woodson’s classic 1933 book The Mis-education of the Negro:
https://www.amazon.com/Mis-education-Negro-Carter-G-Woodson/dp/0143137468
Here again is the Woodson quote:
Negroes have no control over their education and have little voice in their other affairs pertaining thereto. In a few cases Negroes have been chosen as members of public boards of education, and some have been appointed as members of private boards, but these Negroes are always such a small minority that they do not figure in the final working out of the educational program.
As we continue to see not only how Ashkenazim control the Jewish institutional world, but that they seek to run purportedly Sephardic institutions, it remains incumbent on us to address the problem and how it has served to undermine our intellectual-religious heritage.
And in spite of the fact that no one wants to hear the bad news, as I continually do in an angry and strident manner, burying one’s head in the sand is not going to change what is happening right before our eyes.
David Shasha