Notes on the "Idiot Sephardim": The Rabbis Who Hate Us
David Shasha
Notes on the “Idiot Sephardim”: The Rabbis Who Hate Us
The problem of anti-Sephardi racism coming from the Ashkenazi Jewish institutional world is not a one-sided matter. There are sadly many Sephardim who have acquiesced to this state of affairs, as I have tried to show in numerous articles on the self-haters:
Sephardim today have no idea where they come from and who they are, and there have been a number of significant rabbinical leaders in our community who have accepted the Ashkenazi hegemony and militantly support it:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/labaton/davidshasha/ASZ9YE5oJSE/fCqSmRp4PN8J
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/flatbush/davidshasha/UZ9tN7Z2TAY/8pk5tGyNP4sJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topicsearchin/davidshasha/cardozo/davidshasha/E5wnHtkjttY
Prominent rabbinical figures in our community such as Marc Angel, the late Ezra Labaton, Nathan Lopes Cardozo, and Raymond Harari have not only accepted Ashkenazi hegemony but have fully adopted its values and culture.
I was recently forwarded the following 2009 paper by a young member of the Brooklyn Sephardic community that adds yet one more upsetting element to the mix:
http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/pub/departments/bcurj/pdf/harari.pdf
The paper ostensibly seeks to elevate the Sephardic thought of Rabbi Ben-Zion Uziel when in reality it expresses deeply conflicted views of our heritage.
I point specifically to the following passage that begins on the bottom of page 7:
Rabbi Moshe Shamah, who, like Rabbi Uziel, perceives the Jewish tradition as adaptive, commented in an interview on the condition of the Kettab (the schooling system used to teach children Judaic studies in Middle Eastern communities) in the Syrian community of Brooklyn during the late 1930’s through the early 1940’s. Having been one of the students of this system during those years, he claims that the system had deteriorated immensely and was not effective in educating its students. The teachers were not sufficiently trained nor did they use any of the new teaching methods being used in American public schools (they were probably unaware of them). The facilities were dark and unimpressive compared to the beautiful, large classrooms with big windows of the public schools. The students were already worn out from a full day of secular studies in public school. The Kettab did not adapt well to the new way of life in America nor did it inspire any of the children to stay connected to their heritage. The situation for the Jewish-Aleppan heritage in New York was looking as bleak as the Kettab’s classroom, until Magen David Yeshiva came on the scene in the late 1940’s and renewed the community’s commitment to the Jewish tradition. However, there were some community members who were not happy with Magen David’s vision, as it was not the accepted way of educating the children. Yet, had Magen David not refreshed the tradition, there may not have been any surviving tradition to maintain.
What we read in this passage can be clarified by the work I have done which presents the life and work of Hakham Matloub Abadi, the founder of the Brooklyn “Kettab,” the Magen David Talmud Torah:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/abadi/davidshasha/dpebJezm5Ic/rvQ82UnIALkJ
With the ongoing Haredization of the community there have been a few attempts at trying to reclaim the legacy of Rabbi Abadi; none of them actually approaching his Sephardic Jewish Humanism and its moral values.
Rabbi Abadi came to Brooklyn in the hope that he would be able to create a pedagogical system for the young people that would usher them into the classical Sephardic Jewish heritage. He was prevented from doing so, as I write in my introduction to the special newsletter, by Isaac Shalom who replaced the older rabbis with others who were more attuned to the Ashkenazi Orthodox system.
In his 2009 paper Salomon Harari quotes from an interview he did with his grandfather Rabbi Moshe Shamah, a prominent member of the YU Sephardi contingent, to the effect that the old system was “broken” and needed to be replaced.
Indeed, this replacement did happen, but the idea that the old system brought from Syria was faulty is itself a product of the Ashkenazification process that has taken place among the vast majority of community leaders and rabbis.
Without ever mentioning the names of either Abadi or Shalom, the quotation from Rabbi Shamah insists that the new Magen David Yeshivah day school that Shalom founded after he removed Abadi from his job as an educator helped to “preserve” our Sephardic heritage.
This contemptuous statement is not merely an insult to Rabbi Abadi and his teaching staff, but is deeply misleading as it does not acknowledge the damage that has been done to the Sephardic heritage by the Ashkenazi-based system of Modern Orthodoxy. It also does not identify the problem of Haredi Orthodoxy that has sprung up in reaction to the Modern Orthodox model, as these new Ashkenazi factions in our community do battle with each other.
Beyond this, what we also see in the Harari paper is the usual attempt to align our rabbinical heritage with that of the Ashkenazim. Rabbi Uziel is presented as “modern” and “enlightened” just as the old Kettab system is seen as mired in darkness and ignorance.
In truth, there has been no attempt to engage the overall legacy of Hakham Matloub Abadi or Ben-Zion Uziel as what is currently being presented is but a single facet of their thought; the legal-ritual Halakhic aspect rather than the philosophical-intellectual one.
Sephardic Jewish Humanism has been attacked from all sides, so it is critical for us to see how the very rabbinical leaders in our community remain committed to seeing its destruction.
The destruction of our noble heritage is not limited to the Ashkenazified Sephardim in our midst. We can also see the erosion of the Sephardic tradition by Ashkenazi radicals taking over pulpits in our community. The union of Ashkenazified Sephardim and Ashkenazim has become a consistent feature in all our religious institutions.
The example of Rabbi Meir Soloveichik at Congregation Shearith Israel is perhaps the most egregious:
http://www.strauscenternyc.com/america-israel-and-the-future-of-the-free-world/
Where once we had giants like David de Sola Pool and Henry Pereira Mendes, we now have extremists like Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal and Joshua Muravchik who was formerly a “fellow” at the George W. Bush “Institute”:
http://topics.wsj.com/person/S/bret-stephens/5463
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Muravchik
Where once there was Jewish Humanism, today there is Right Wing political fanaticism that has little if anything to do with the Sephardic heritage. It is truly shameful that this is happening in our community.
For those who would like to understand just how radical Rabbi Soloveichik really is, here is an article he wrote attacking both Hermann Cohen and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch for being too “Liberal”:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1NQdm28qvvXZnZzQUdPQWZ5RVk/edit
While we are well aware of the problems created for us by the Ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazim, Rabbi Soloveichik presents us with an equally disturbing Modern Orthodox vision that is completely antithetical to our tradition and its value system.
For those who would like to learn about what has been lost, I have presented the details of Jewish Humanism at the same time that those values are being destroyed:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/humanism/davidshasha/ex4MG4ZV_uY/sd0LToTm8kwJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/humanism/davidshasha/S0EqezQkLgo/XgJUaYbIIksJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/yct/davidshasha/JPZFturnQkQ/FX8HLC0KgtoJ
Until we come to realize that our heritage is being wiped out we will continue to see the breakdown of our Sephardic community and be forced to deal with the dysfunction that is a product of this cultural erasure.
David Shasha