Newsletter Special: Haym Soloveitchik "Rupture and Reconstruction" and Sephardic Primitivism

[David Shasha]

Friends,

 

            I was just alerted by Orthodox propagandist Rabbi Gil Student that Haym Soloveitchik will soon be publishing a book on his essay “Rupture and Reconstruction” in the Littman Library series:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Rupture-Reconstruction-Transformation-Modern-Orthodoxy/dp/1906764387/?

 

The book will be dealing with the many responses to the essay, as we saw presented in Tradition magazine’s 2019 symposium on the work:

 

https://traditiononline.org/editors-introduction-rupture-and-reconstruction-reconsidered/

 

https://traditiononline.org/category/2019-issue-51-4/

 

In regard to Soloveitchik and his responders, I once again present my own response to his racist White Jewish Supremacy “Sephardim Have No Modernity” thesis, as well as Rabbi Joseph Dweck’s pusillanimous reinforcement of the Washington Heights racism, which I have addressed in my “Idiot Sephardim” article:

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fUx-B5XHPIrr7b_7xS4ZpmiEmvo_qBy0pKqOAtmJ5WI/edit?usp=sharing

 

Here is the original Soloveitchik article:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RAKy9ek6rd-SvtND_OMlJxGiNvQh1Qj0/view?ths=true

 

And here is the Dweck response, which was not included in the printed issue published by Tradition:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BOrUXGLCx9GUx4jpQER9pqSyVgMMe3Sw/view?ths=true

 

Dweck, a proud exponent of the Washington Heights tradition, was also feted by Tradition with a special podcast to promote his subservient Modern Orthodox views:

 

https://traditiononline.org/podcast-a-sephardic-response-to-rupture-and-reconstruction/

 

I have also written an article on Dweck’s Sephardi Habura that illustrates the way Anti-Maimonideanism and the battle against Jewish Humanism has crept into his group via the new movement of Analytic Jewish Theology with its deep roots in Ashkenazi culture, represented by figures such as Samuel Lebens and Moshe Halbertal:

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pFWVQTzB3GLzpYLhl8YCF2Q5d9c8yrlYu-yHxWyf38E/edit

 

I have recently been informed that Dweck has of late quoted from the late Rabbi Jose Faur’s classic work Golden Doves with Silver Dots, so it is appropriate to show our readers what his actual views are as he engages in the usual subservient manner to the White Jewish Supremacy.  Never be fooled by ambitious Self-Hating Sephardim doing their own version of the Okey-Doke Gaslight.

 

As we can clearly see from his Tradition article, Dweck’s views are fully in line with Soloveitchik’s dismissal of Sephardic Modernity, in stark contrast to the innovative approach of Faur who worked diligently to show how Sephardim were not only Modern, but that their Jewish Humanism was contrary to the Ashkenazi atavism that both Dweck and his mentor Soloveitchik are at pains to reify.

 

            In closing, it is worthwhile to note that in his acknowledgements to the new book, Soloveitchik thanks Leonard Levin; a name that should be familiar to SHU readers:

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mjPboUYJIFK3e5HeU0xUzvMcdlpcLxoQdRwqFI3guuw/edit

 

In my article “Modern Jewish Philosophy as White Jewish Supremacy,” I expose the fallacy – checked by the work of Faur – that only Ashkenazim produced Modern Jewish Philosophy.

 

            It is a canard that is repeated by Haym Soloveitchik, as it is confirmed by Self-Haters like Joseph Dweck.

 

            And as Sephardim continue to be erased from the Jewish cultural landscape, the argument that we do indeed have a place in the Modern world is more important to articulate than ever before.

 

 

David Shasha

 

 

Haym Soloveitchik: Rupturing and Reconstructing Ashkenazi Jewish Dysfunction in a Racist Key

By: David Shasha

 

Rabbi Joseph Dweck: More Ashkenazi “Rupturing and Reconstructing”

By: David Shasha

 

Noble Savages: Rabbi Joseph Dweck’s Unenlightened View of the Jews of the Arab World

By: Yoel Pimentel