New Article: Are There Any Sephardim Left at the Oldest Jewish Congregation in America?
David Shasha
Are There Any Sephardim Left at the Oldest Jewish Congregation in America?
In the 4/11 edition of “This Week in Sephardi-Eraser Rabbi Meir Soloveichik,” I began with a note on his very enticing Congregation Shearith Israel lecture series, “Providence & Politics: Zionism from Herzl to Begin”:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/03ioVCYC06Y/m/EBssKhelCwAJ
White Jewish Supremacy eschatological HASBARAH at its very best!
But no Sephardim at the Adult Jewish table.
As Rabbi Jose Faur once told me: “Sephardim are not allowed to cry.”
I just received the following announcement from the Synagogue, a fully-owned subsidiary of The Tikvah Fund:
Our Providence and Politics commemorative booklet is about to be printed. This limited edition will include special content by Rabbi Soloveichik with beautiful images, based on his inspiring lecture series.
These keepsakes are being created as a thank you gift to
our Spring Fundraiser sponsors.
Make sure to sponsor here and submit your tribute text to SM Rosenberg,
or let us know if you'd like to increase your sponsorship level and
upgrade the size of your ad and number of books you are eligible to receive:
Full page, up to 10 books - Visionaries ($3600)
Full Page, up to 8 books - Dreamers ($1800)
Half page, up to 5 books - Leaders ($1000)
Quarter page, up to 2 books - Pioneers ($360)
Listing only, 1 book - Builders ($250)
As soon as the books are ready, all sponsors will have their book(s) mailed directly to them.
Thank you for joining our growing list of sponsors. Your contribution enables us to continue to provide all of these unique programs.
Indeed, as usual, it is impossible to find any actual Sephardic Jewish content in Soloveichik’s lectures, as it is impossible to find any self-respecting Sephardim who support the series.
The SI website features a list of all the donors (updated daily) which follows the fundraiser program announcement:
SPRING 2021 FUNDRAISER
https://shearithisrael.org/Spring-Fundraiser2021
Providence & Politics: Zionism from Herzl to Begin
A Major 7-Part Virtual Lecture Series by Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, focusing on key figures in Zionism and the miracle of the story of Israel
To register or sponsor, click here.
Join Rabbi Soloveichik for a unique tour around the world, with visits to the Vienna of Herzl, the London of Balfour, the Kentucky of Louis Brandeis, the Missouri of Truman, and more.
This series will tell the miraculous story of Zionism in an unusual way, pondering how only Providence can fully explain the events through which the state of Israel came into being.
Launching on Tuesday, April 6, with a Grand Finale on Thursday, May 13, these seven virtual lectures between Pesah and Shabuot will coincide with our observance of Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron, Yom Ha'atzma'ut, and Yom Yerushalayim, and hopefully make our marking of these days more meaningful.
Registration is free, but sponsorships are greatly appreciated and are essential support to our Congregation.
All sponsors will be recognized in a beautiful content-rich commemorative booklet that will be mailed out after the series.
SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES:
SERIES UNDERWRITERS
Visionaries | Full page ad, up to 10 commemorative booklets .............$3600
SESSION SPONSORS
Dreamers | Full page ad, up to 8 commemorative booklets.................$1800
Leaders | 1/2 page ad, up to 5 commemorative booklets......................$1000
Pioneers | 1/4 page ad, up to 2 commemorative booklets......................$360
Builders | Listing only, 1 commemorative booklet ...............................$250
To register or sponsor, click here.
LECTURE SCHEDULE
Opening Session: Tuesday, April 6, 7:30pm
via Livestream from the Main Sanctuary
"Neighbors in Vienna: Herzl, Freud, and the Wonder of Jewish History"
Session #2: Tuesday, April 13, 7:30pm, via Conference Call
"Blue and White in Basel: The Zionist Congress and the Israeli Flag"
Session #3: Tuesday, April 20, 7:30pm, via Conference
Call
"London Battle: Jew vs. Jew and the Balfour Declaration"
Session #4: Tuesday, April 27, 7:30pm, via Conference Call
"From Louisville to Washington: The Extraordinary Evolution of Louis
Brandeis"
Session #5: Tuesday, May 4, 7:30pm, via Conference Call
"Missouri Miracle: Harry Truman, Eddie Jacobson, and the Birth of
Israel"
Session #6: Tuesday, May 11, 7:30pm, via Conference Call
"God and Man in Tel Aviv: The Declaration, the Altalena, and the Israeli
Air Force"
Session #7: Thursday, May 13, 7:30pm,
via Livestream from the Main Sanctuary
"The Synagogues of the Jewish Quarter: A New Understanding of
Jerusalem"
Thank you to our supporters (updated April 28, 2021):
SERIES SPONSORS
Anonymous (3)
Lewis Bateman
Karen and Jack Daar
Sharon Dane and Gail Propp
Dr. Elon Granader
Edith, Marla, and Avri Horowitz
The Nathan Family
Martine & Jack Schenker
Stan & Madelene Towne
SESSION SPONSORS
Dreamers:
Anonymous
Julis-Rabinowitz Family
George Klein and Charles and Alexandra Silber
Marcia & David Lavipour
Debbie and David Sable
Leaders:
Anonymous
Judith Deich
Suzan and Fred Ehrman
Juan Mesa-Freydell
Judy and Joel Schreiber
Dr. Margo Yellin Woll and Cynthia Yellin Aronsohn
Pioneers:
Anonymous
Bonnie Barest & Family
Mark Belnick
Bengio Misrahi family
Deena and Josh Bernstein
Nava & Dan Bettinger
Viviane Bregman
Rabbi Meier Brueckheimer
Doina and Larry Bryskin
Daniel Chazin
Shlomit & Chaim Edelstein
Faith Fogelman
Laury, Reuben, and Matea Frieber
Ingber/Waxman Family
Esther Kremer
Morton Landowne
Zoya Raynes Friedman
Carla and Jonah Schein
David Schimel
Esther and Bill Schulder
Maimon Schwarzschild
Ruth and Irwin Shapiro
Judy & Isaac Sherman
Luiz Carlos Barreto Silva
Marion & Billy Weiss
Dr. William Zeitz & Family
Builders:
Anonymous (2)
Chaplain (MAJ) Bruce Bublick, USAF, Retired, and Mrs. Judy Bublick
Shelley & Ruvan Cohen
Cheryl and Eddie Dauber
Edward Derosa
Miriam and Yale Drazin
David Eisenman
Paula M. Elbirt
Rella Feldman and Curtiss Pulitzer
Robert Friedman
Jane and Roger Gerber
Ron Goldofsky
Vivan and Arthur Klaus
Barbara Klein
Martin Kofman
Doris and Jonathan Konovitch
Neal Kozodoy
Joan B. Lefkowitz
Alice & Harold Lehrer
Karen & Bruce Lerman
Lydia E. Mark
John Moscowitz
Mark Perkins
Susan & Marlon Portes
Rima Raynes
Alene Schneierson & Morris Krimolovsky
Tovah & Rabbi Gershon Segal
Orna Shulman
Robert Sidi
Karen & Roy Simon
Shauna R. Singer
Mark A Speiser
Susan Ulick
Drs. Stephen and Dorothy Vatner
Lloyd Zuckerberg & Charlotte Triefus
Other contributors: Ellen Newman, Judith & Marshall Siegel, Steven Spira, Mattie Weiser
The announcement tells us that we will eventually be getting a special volume in his White Jewish Supremacist Neo-Con honor, that we can cherish forever:
Our Providence and Politics commemorative booklet is about to be printed. This limited edition will include special content by Rabbi Soloveichik with beautiful images, based on his inspiring lecture series.
Do you feel inspired yet?
https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2017/12/AP17342065547859.jpg
That is what the New Convivencia looks like!
The SI installation of Soloveichik has emphatically ensured that Sephardic Convivencia is a dead issue, and that the New Convivencia has been militantly installed in its place:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/qMIB_fEmS9E/m/dGapk7QNEAAJ
It is all about Jewish Sparta and Muscular Christianity:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/gbgbI0HHmzk/m/_674OJPbBgAJ
We can see it in Tikvah Fund favorite and Netanyahu stooge Ron Dermer’s current demand that HASBARAH be focused on Christian Evangelicals rather than American Jews:
We can see it in Soloveichik’s Hoover Institute program with fellow Trumpscum, Senator Mike Lee, and his Mormon Trumpist devotion:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sUvnfXMeduh00CKAuDD30NiRwbD-5Q147YrMHbGs7Q0/edit
Lee is quite the Insurrection apologist:
His hero is a true Mormon icon:
As he told his Lysol followers:
“To my Mormon friends, my Latter-day Saint friends, think of him as Captain Moroni,” Lee told rallygoers in Arizona. He also stated that the president “seeks not the praise of the world” and wants only “the well-being and peace of the American people.”
“Incitement” is a relative term to him, as even Mormons can be practitioners of PILPUL:
“But, the fact is that the word ‘incitement’ has a very specific meaning in the law, and Donald Trump’s words and actions on January 6, 2021, fell short of that standard. The House rushed its impeachment without an investigation, charged President Trump with a crime it failed properly to allege, and then sat on its poorly worded Article until after he left office.
Everyone’s entitled to a mulligan!
https://news.yahoo.com/gop-sen-mike-lee-defended-224634742.html
Christian Trumpism is a stirringly depraved and ignorant phenomenon, as we have seen in the case of convicted scammer and holy adulterer Jim Bakker and the New Cyrus:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xHRBMHxAFWOuwSxGl_zj__cSSV7q5plmm-TNLq7cEc0/edit
We can see it in Soloveichik’s abiding concern for Whore of Trump Coney Barrett:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/fomWxZTWdq0/m/PIk-NtmmAwAJ
We can see it in Soloveichik’s many articles proudly published in the radical Catholic journal First Things, yet another loyal Trumpscum religious institution:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_fs8wonYLfhONdKPKTgFt_aoi6GPoJ2uhDFcWOfKuTk/edit
We can see it in Soloveichik’s devotion to the Jewish Primitivist Michael Wyschogrod and his demented anthropomorphic Anti-Maimonidean ways:
We can see it in Soloveichik’s Wyschogrod dissertation written under the tutelage of Princeton Tikvah Straussian Leora Batnitzky, another arch hater of Jewish Humanism and the Sephardic heritage:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytYVvsu-He-LACFKWcSsYGguR5uX33u9/view?ths=true
Indeed, the late Wyschgrod’s connection to the New Convivencia remains strong in spite of his passing:
https://www.ccjr.us/news/in-memoriam/michael-wyschogrod
https://www.cjcuc.org/2016/12/30/remembering-a-pioneer-in-jewish-christian-relations/
His book Abraham’s Promise: Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations is a New Convivencia landmark:
https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/1355/abrahams-promise.aspx
As the devout Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson stated:
"When I first heard Michael Wyschogrod many years ago, I knew that here is a Jewish theologian whom Christian theology needs for its own sake. Kendall Soulen's labor of love is therefore a blessing."
Indeed, Wyschogrod’s disciple R. Kendall Soulen has published a book using this Primitivist method called The God of Israel and Christian Theology:
https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/9780800628833/The-God-of-Israel-and-Christian-Theology
I have reconstructed Soloveichik’s ideological world in some detail in order to show how much contempt he has for the classical Sephardic heritage, and how that contempt has smoothly translated into a religious upheaval for Congregation Shearith Israel and its historical values of Jewish Humanism.
Since Soloveichik’s hiring, Sephardim are no longer welcome at SI.
But his devotion to Christian Fundamentalism is abiding.
The demonic transformation of the Oldest Jewish Congregation in America is complete.
We need not bother with Gershom Mendes Seixas, Sabato Morais, Henry Pereira Mendes, and David de Sola Pool anymore:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YdIbnc6QQfbx-EsR9k-yXMrc1mKyIGW54mRG_labC48/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EydsEHKKe2c_vFjjokHGfo2eCZ0x51kr32klUf4iV2A/edit
Why should we even study the Sephardic heritage?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bKBTQSn0dytn4AefatM1wTgG22DTMaz3sVCuYIxiJEY/edit
When the noble spirit of Zalman Bernstein fully permeates the SI sanctuary:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8UrV67wrZUghBRZimf_5PeQTkQbzXsufntJtD6Y1EM/edit
You can be sure that Sephardim and the Sephardic heritage have no place in it.
David Shasha