New Article: Integrating Self-Hating Sephardim into the White Jewish Supremacy: The Case of Mijal Bitton Again!
David Shasha
Integrating Self-Hating Sephardim into the White Jewish Supremacy: The Case of Mijal Bitton Again!
For those who may have missed it, I wrote a very lengthy response defending my teacher Rabbi Jose Faur against Tikvah Tablet Shalom Hartman Ashkenazi Wannabe Mijal Bitton:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/blWoxt23bvk
I then prepared a special newsletter which bookended the response with my articles on the White Jewish Supremacy of Leonard Levin and Yehuda Kurtzer, both of whom egregiously left Sephardim out of their presentations of Modern Jewish Thought:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/ORulbdv3qcQ
As I also noted, Kurtzer runs the North American division of the Shalom Hartman Institute, which currently counts Bitton as one its fellows.
This is how I concluded the article:
Bitton is certainly not alone in her silence on the battle that must still be waged for the Sephardim, but that does not absolve her of the damage she continues to inflict on those who, like Faur himself, continue to be excluded by the racism of the White Jewish Supremacy she profits from.
As he indicated in the text that serves as the epigram to this essay, Faur understood Jewish Oratory, derasha, as a means to bring together hearing, understanding, and performance into one united activity which allows human beings to reject the mythic and embrace the real.
It is not enough to weave webs of words, however pleasant they might be, however good they might make us feel, and leave out the performative component of the linguistic super-structure that grounds our lives.
We must confront reality, and reject those myths that generate a false view of life, and which serve to cloud the actual task that needs to be performed if we are to affirm truth and justice as we fight to reject the base and the corrupt.
Our human integrity depends on it.
A few days after posting the special newsletter I wrote another article on White Jewish Supremacy related to the Kushner UAE “triumph”:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/FhA365Wf4wQ
It was as if I was struck by kismet, because a very short time after posting the UAE article I received word of a Facebook post from a very proud and pompous Bitton which confirms what I had already said:
I had the privilege earlier today to share some words of Torah with a group of Jewish community leaders and members in Dubai - the community that R’ Yehuda Sarna leads with the help of his chief of Staff, Sara Fredman Aeder, and community leaders like Ross Kriel and Alex Peterfreund. Being present in this Zoom Kabbalat Shabbat was deeply emotional. The call started with children singing the UAE national anthem and Hatikva, included prayers and joyful candle-lighting. The mood was jubilant and celebratory in light of the news of the normalization of relationship between the UAE and Israel.
Yesterday, as I heard about the announcement, I was more focused on the implications, re: annexation, Bibi's long-time rule in Israel and concerned about the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But today’s call highlighted a different aspect of this historic agreement: peace and relationship between the Jewish state and Arabs countries that for years were in tension with each other. In particular, this is a historic moment for Jews who have a familiar and intimate relationship with the Arab world.
I have focused much of my studies learning the history and the present of once-vibrant Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa. The rise of Zionism, Arab nationalism and rejectionism (and other factors, of course) contributed to the inability of these communities to comfortably stay in their countries of origin and led to the mass exodus - at times displacement - of hundreds of thousands of Jews who had to make new homes.
Seeing today’s celebration by the UAE’s Jewish community reminds me that even with all its challenges, yesterday’s deal is indeed a miracle. Joining via zoom in prayer with a growing Jewish community in the Arab world openly celebrating their faith and commitments brought me to tears. B’H this type of normalization will strengthen Jewish communities in the Arab world, populations that will not be asked to renounce their Zionism or hide their Jewishness.
As can clearly be seen from the FB post, Bitton is “privileged” to be part of the White Jewish Supremacy:
I had the privilege earlier today to share some words of Torah with a group of Jewish community leaders and members in Dubai - the community that R’ Yehuda Sarna leads with the help of his chief of Staff, Sara Fredman Aeder, and community leaders like Ross Kriel and Alex Peterfreund. Being present in this Zoom Kabbalat Shabbat was deeply emotional.
Of course, every person listed there is Ashkenazi.
And once again we see “Chief Rabbi” Sarna, as I wrote in my UAE article:
Then we learned of NYU Rabbi Yehuda Sarna being “appointed” Chief Rabbi of the UAE:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/nyu-chaplain-to-be-1st-chief-rabbi-of-the-uae/
I wrote about Sarna’s White Jewish Supremacy in the Interfaith Dialogue world in the following article:
As I said there:
The Interfaith Dialogue that is being promoted at elite institutions like NYU is thoroughly grounded in Ashkenazi Jewish domination.
More than this, NYU’s Jewish Studies department is currently free of Sephardim and does not offer courses on the classic literary-poetic heritage of Jewish Andalusia.
In the final assessment, we have seen a plethora of well-funded Interfaith Dialogue programs in religious institutions and universities that have done little to assuage the ongoing tensions between the religious traditions as violence and hatred continue to mark our ever-contentious world.
It is quite telling that in these Interfaith Dialogue discussions we do not see Sephardic Jews presenting their historical and cultural experiences.
It is little wonder that this HASBARAH advocacy, with all the attendant American political pressure, has sought to completely eliminate Arab Jews from any relationship with the Arab-Muslim world.
The Sarna-Bitton White Jewish Supremacy connection took an interesting turn in May 2019 when they held an event with New York Times Neo-Con racist columnist Bret Stephens on, what else, Anti-Semitism:
https://nyunews.com/news/2019/045/01/new-york-times-journalist-speak-at-nyu/
Stephens was called out by the NYU Jewish Voice for Peace for his racist record:
NYU Jewish Voice for Peace issued a statement in response to the event citing past comments from Stephens against Palestinians and Muslims. In one column, Stephens said Palestinians have a “blood fetish” and equated what he called “the Arab mind” to anti-Semitism in another. The statement went on to call for Sarna to disassociate from the Bronfman Center and the event.
“We are disappointed yet unsurprised that The Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU and its director, Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, are embracing right-wing Islamophobe Bret Stephens for an event tonight,” the statement read. “While Rabbi Sarna positions himself as an interfaith champion, we are disturbed by his willingness to welcome with open arms someone as violently racist as Bret Stephens.”
The event took place prior to Stephens’ notorious “The Secrets of Jewish Genius” column published in December of that year, which served to confirm his truly vile White Jewish Supremacy:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/stephens/davidshasha/kyX5EqjLwY8/4XMKDLIPBgAJ
Here is my article on the racist debacle, which forced a rare disclaimer and revision of the article from the Times’ editors:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/stephens/davidshasha/vCcR0JR62JA/9lTgNpb6BgAJ
This is what I said there:
I recently posted, without comment, the deeply offensive New York Times column by The Tikvah Fund macher Bret Stephens, “The Secrets of Jewish Genius”:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/kyX5EqjLwY8
The original article contains a reference to a 2005 paper on IQ by three University of Utah anthropology professors, who are apparently smitten by the racist Eugenics bug:
https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf
Here is what they say about Sephardim and Ashkenazim:
There are several key observations that motivate our hypothesis. The first is that the Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group, combined with an unusual cognitive profile, while no similar elevation of intelligence was observed among Jews in classical times nor is one seen in Sephardic and Oriental Jews today.
Later in the paper they tellingly cite Bernard Lewis (more about whom below) with the usual racist flourishes that characterize his work:
The Ashkenazi occupational pattern was different from that of the Jews living in the Islamic world. The Jews of Islam, although reproductively isolated, did not have the concentration of occupations with high IQ elasticity. Some had such jobs in some of the Arab world, in some periods, but it seems it was never the case that most did. In part this was because other minority groups competed successfully for these jobs-Greek Christians, Armenians, etc., in part because Moslems, at least some of the time, took many of those jobs themselves, valuing non-warrior occupations more highly than did medieval Christians. In fact, to a large extent, and especially during the last six or seven hundred years of relative Moslem decline, the Jews of Islam tended to have “dirty” jobs (Lewis, 1984). These included such tasks as cleaning cesspools and drying the contents for use as fuel—a common Jewish occupation in Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia. Jews were also found as tanners, butchers, hangmen, and other disagreeable or despised occupations. Such jobs must have had low IQ elasticity; brilliant tanners and hangmen almost certainly did not become rich.
The Jews of Islam tended to have “dirty” jobs!
This is the academic source that Stephens decided to base his argument on.
Ashkenazi Power is absolute, there is no way to fight it!
And Bitton not only does not fight it, she is a full partner in the enterprise.
She might want to choose her racist friends more carefully.
Indeed, the boxes within boxes of my citations reflect a hall of (Ashkenazi) mirrors which serves to further distort the Sephardic heritage.
As Bitton states:
I have focused much of my studies learning the history and the present of once-vibrant Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa. The rise of Zionism, Arab nationalism and rejectionism (and other factors, of course) contributed to the inability of these communities to comfortably stay in their countries of origin and led to the mass exodus - at times displacement - of hundreds of thousands of Jews who had to make new homes.
As usual, she neglects to detail how Sephardim lost their status, how Ashkenazi racism played a critical factor in the process, and how she is knee-deep in institutional White Jewish Supremacy.
Indeed, how could she, given that she saw herself as “privileged” to be asked to participate in their ZOOM call!
She does give it away in this ecstatic passage:
The call started with children singing the UAE national anthem and Hatikva, included prayers and joyful candle-lighting. The mood was jubilant and celebratory in light of the news of the normalization of relationship between the UAE and Israel.
There is no mention of how any of this is actually connected to the Sephardic tradition, and its centuries-long connection to the Arab-Muslim world. No discussion of the cultural ties between Arab Jews and Arab Muslims, no sense that Zionism is not identical to Judaism, and no criticism of the Jewish institutional world for putting Ashkenazim in charge of Arab matters.
And, quite pointedly, no mention of the deadly troika: Trump, Kushner, and MBS.
That is crucial because of Trump’s recent fundraising visit to the Syrian Jewish enclave in Deal, New Jersey:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/uNq0KgEOO9k
The SY event netted over $5 million:
Here is the point I made there about the crushing conformity among young people in the community:
There is no freedom of speech in the community, and controversial public statements are squashed by a vicious internal censorship mechanism that would serve to punish anyone straying from the SY primrose path.
Most depressing is the way that the nihilistic Isaac Shalom standards have been reinforced over generations. The social demands are so strict that the normalization of the Shalom pathology, as has been the case with Trump, is now complete; children grow up without any sense that things were ever different. They have been transmitted a culture of ignorance and malevolence that has become routine for them. Any attempt to criticize or change it is met with deep contempt and hostility.
The SY youth are all in with the program and maintain the system in a robotic fashion, lacking any intellectual curiosity or moral questioning of the debased culture. There is really little hope that anything will change in the future.
There is, as we can so clearly see in Bitton, that utter lack of intellectual curiosity which can be ultimately understood in the complete absence of knowledge when it comes to the Sephardic literary-intellectual heritage and our battle against Ashkenazi hegemony.
And that absence of knowledge can be traced to places like NYU’s Judaic Studies department and its lack of any Sephardic scholarship and class offerings.
The SY community is well-known for its boorishness and utter lack of general cultural knowledge.
Based on their cozy relationship with Yeshiva University, Bitton’s alma mater, I have called them the “Idiot Sephardim”:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fUx-B5XHPIrr7b_7xS4ZpmiEmvo_qBy0pKqOAtmJ5WI/edit?usp=sharing
In this sense, I must recall my own personal transformation as an NYU undergraduate once I began studying with Rabbi Faur.
Like Bitton, I too was a Modern Orthodox YU stooge, but once I began to learn from Faur about the Sephardic heritage and the ubiquitous Ashkenazi racism, it quickly became apparent that it would be necessary for me to make changes in the way I saw the world and how I did things.
None of it paid off professional dividends, but it was something I felt bound to do in spite of the great personal cost.
Bitton has sadly not learned this important lesson, largely because her relationship to the Sephardic heritage has been “mediated” through the toxic lens of Ashkenazi hegemony and the academic method of 19th century German scholarship, as can be seen in her “hidden” work in the Jewish Social Sciences:
https://dissexpress.proquest.com/dxweb/results.html?QryTxt=&By=&Title=&pubnum=13426422
Sociology is indeed a way to stigmatize the Sephardim, as the researcher stands outside the parameters of the community, treating its members like caged zoo animals:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_k1I5KoFmIK0Qk7Zfd6HvTPo3iYaWL6YpuRp3VY3tgA/edit
As there is no Sephardic Studies program at NYU, Bitton, in classic White Jewish Supremacy fashion, chose to go the way of Social Science:
https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/programs/education-and-jewish-studies/current-students
This is what it looks like:
Mijal Bitton is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the Education and Jewish Studies program. Her dissertation “Syrian Jews in America: In Search of Community” examines the mechanisms for the maintenance of religion and ethnicity in a Sephardic immigrant community. Mijal’s study aims to bring to light insights from a long understudied population to complicate and enrich normative understandings of education, ethnicity, religion, and identity in the sociology of immigrant communities in America. Ultimately, her project argues against normative notions of western religion and ethnicity that render many immigrant communities both marginal and unintelligible in academic scholarship. Using qualitative methods Mijal seeks to describe a Jewish-American-Syrian social group and its efforts towards self-perpetuation while paying careful attention to its complex genealogies.
It is a world of White Jewish perks and amenities:
Before beginning her doctoral studies, Mijal graduated summa cum laude from Yeshiva University. She received an Avichai Fellowship and a Wexner Graduate Fellowship for her doctoral studies. Mijal works as a Doctoral Fellow and Faculty at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
In that very well-funded White Jewish world it is not necessary to know the classical Sephardic literary-intellectual tradition, or to have general cultural acumen; but it is important to affirm Ashkenazi hegemony.
As we can see from her FB post, she does not mark the cultural situation of the UAE Jewish community, as she refuses to see the pain of the Sephardim from being beaten down by the Ashkenazim:
Seeing today’s celebration by the UAE’s Jewish community reminds me that even with all its challenges, yesterday’s deal is indeed a miracle. Joining via zoom in prayer with a growing Jewish community in the Arab world openly celebrating their faith and commitments brought me to tears. B’H this type of normalization will strengthen Jewish communities in the Arab world, populations that will not be asked to renounce their Zionism or hide their Jewishness.
Her words are pure HASBARAH balm; the perfect Uncle Tom presentation meant to strengthen Zionist hegemony in its strangulation of the Sephardic heritage.
All we have here is the Hatikva, the hope of no hope for Sephardim:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/zalman/davidshasha/41osFrJygew/IkwaQu_CAwAJ
It is thus clear that Bitton is more concerned with her place in the White Jewish Supremacy than she is about speaking truth to power.
And that is why she has gotten to where she is today.
As I have said, she has profited quite handsomely from her silence, as she continues her inexorably defiant climb up the ladder of White Jewish Supremacy.
She has learned the lesson of Faur’s failure quite well.
I am sure her father made sure of that.
David Shasha