New Article: The Current State of the Art in Interfaith Dialogue is Strictly White Jewish Supremacy
David Shasha
The Current State of the Art in Interfaith Dialogue is Strictly White Jewish Supremacy
Back in 2010 I posted an excellent article on Jewish-Muslim Interfaith Dialogue by Trude Weiss-Rosmarin that effectively laid out what I have called the “Levantine Option,” as it cited the brilliant work of S.D. Goitein on the Cairo Geniza in his classic multi-volume study A Mediterranean Society:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/fEUzRTxksIg/m/4Z4co8h1GwsJ
The complete set is a bit pricey, but it remains in print and is an essential addition to your Sephardic library:
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520221581/a-mediterranean-society-volume-i
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520221598/a-mediterranean-society-volume-ii
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520221604/a-mediterranean-society-volume-iii
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520221611/a-mediterranean-society-volume-iv
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520221628/a-mediterranean-society-volume-v
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520221642/a-mediterranean-society-volume-vi
Professor Weiss-Rosmarin’s 1967 essay remains a classic exposition of the Sephardic Jewish tradition and its cultural grounding in Arab-Muslim civilization.
It would be superfluous by now to say that such an exposition is very much a thing of the past.
In 2016 I said as much in an article discussing the “Bridge” theory of Jewish-Muslim relations expounded by the now-sidelined Mizrahi radicals:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/h9LyBfwRk2A/m/YqhWsFChCQAJ
With the ongoing co-optation of Sephardic culture by Zionist extremists like Naftali Bennett and his Biton Committee, the ground of Sephardic identity and representation has radically changed:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/jPQwQi6kJrg/m/lbJh1g69AAAJ
The realignment can clearly be seen on the pages of our daily newspapers.
I recently collected a bunch of articles on the UAE HASBARAH matter, which led off with a piece on Chief Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, who likely has never heard of Goitein or Weiss-Rosmarin:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/tdbyFlzaAQc/m/AbTe-knZAwAJ
The current White Jewish reality can be seen in the following article by Right Wing HASBARAH enforcer Seth Frantzman, which extols the New Zionist Alliance that has apparently forgotten the Sephardim:
https://www.meforum.org/61867/uaes-full-throttled-embrace-of-religious-tolerance
Although we do have some “Abu Dhabi” Zionist doughnuts to be proud of:
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/abu-dhabi-doughnut-a-hanukkah-hit-in-israel-651986
And, of course, we have the purchase of the racist Beitar Jerusalem by a royal Gulf sheikh-oligarch:
https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2020/12/7/emirati-royal-buys-50-stake-in-israels-beitar-jerusalem
He can serve some of those Zionist doughnuts at the matches, as the fans chant “Death to the Arabs”!
And he can learn Zionist Hebrew at an Ashkenazi-run UAE Ulpan:
https://www.israel21c.org/hebrew-language-and-israeli-culture-institute-opens-in-uae/
Ain’t “coexistence” grand?
The Ashkenazim have wisely chosen Rabbi Elie Abadie as their token Sephardi, so that he can welcome them to the region in true House Negro fashion:
https://nypost.com/2020/11/28/surprise-exodus-of-jewish-americans-moving-to-once-hostile-uae/
The pathetic UAE situation leads us right back to the current state of the institutional Interfaith Dialogue movement, which can be clearly be seen in the following announcement from the prestigious Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago:
https://mailchi.mp/uchicago/sightings-217385?e=325385d636
Here is the précis of the program:
The Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of
Religion at the University of Chicago is pleased to announce an online
symposium on Typologies of Interfaith Education
And here is how the institutional network functions:
With the generous support of the Luce Foundation, the Martin Marty Center is
excited to host this symposium in collaboration with Interfaith Youth Core
(IFYC), Chicago. It will consist of an opening plenary, led jointly by David
Nirenberg, Dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School, and Eboo Patel,
Founder and President of Interfaith Youth Core, followed by four interactive
panels on relevant themes related to interfaith education. The project Typologies
of Interfaith Education neatly aligns with the Luce Foundation Theology
program’s aim to advance the understanding of religion and theology. The
project strives for greater communication between administrators, students, and
scholars from different seminaries and universities, bridging religious and political
divides by bringing them together for the purpose of developing a more
integrated and responsive public approach to interfaith education.
I included a book review on one of David Nirenberg’s anti-Convivencia tomes in SHU 701:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/q0B2nsgBYsk/m/bhIr_lOOBwAJ
The review from Los Angeles Review of Books Marginalia by Alex Novikoff provides a strong sense of Nirenberg’s pronounced White Jewish viewpoint:
As Novikoff states:
An abiding lesson of studying the past, David Nirenberg believes, is that it challenges our desire to maintain fences that are in fact more imagined and fluid than real and immutable. Consider medieval Spain: what sort of neighborly relations might be expected of the three religious communities who resided in the same cities and villages, shared communal and sometimes private spaces, spoke common languages but followed different observances, traded in the same economy but practiced different customs, served in each other’s households and governments (sometimes willingly, sometimes forcibly), and received spiritual direction from religious leaders who often went to great lengths to denigrate the very existence of their neighbors, all during a period that spanned seven and a half bloody (but occasionally peaceful) centuries of protracted war, cohabitation, plague, and reconquest? The status of that neighborly relationship may profitably be summed up in another cliché of modern life: it’s complicated. The historian’s challenge is not simply to appreciate that complexity, but to explain what it all means and why we should care.
Medieval Iberia has often been held up as a mirror to our own society, and for quite understandable reasons. For some, this bygone era represents a beacon of interfaith tolerance and cultural exchange of the sort we might learn from today. Convivencia (“living together”) has long been the descriptive term of choice, a word that over the years has achieved a sort of sublime meaninglessness whereby it can effectively mean almost anything that one wants it to mean.
With the specter of Sam Huntington and Bernard Lewis in mind, he presents Nirenberg as “nuanced”:
Yet other scholars, now quite a few, shun this polarity altogether and favor a more nuanced middle ground of conflict and coexistence. In doing so, however, they must face the uphill battle of formulating a coherent explanatory model that adequately captures the realities of both sides. Studies of this kind focus heavily on the inherent paradox of a pluralistic society where communal coherence was precarious, geographical and ideological borders were always shifting, and allegiances among groups could be as fleeting as the fortunes of battle. Broadly speaking, then, discussions of interfaith relations in pre-modern Spain conform to one of three models: an uplifting lesson in enlightened coexistence, a depressing tale of bloodshed and violence, or a nuanced but unsettling description of cultural hybridity and economic interdependence.
I just posted a special newsletter on the ongoing attempts to undermine Convivencia and the classical Sephardic heritage, which allows us to see how Catholic apologists have successfully pushed their strategy to exalt the Reconquista:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ObDY4xAMOIo
This is the cultural-historical framework in which we now exist.
It is the way in which the precious work of the late Maria Rosa Menocal promoting the value of Convivencia has been knee-capped:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/__3JkvXJiTE/m/DrivSaphAwAJ
As director of the Chicago Divinity School, Nirenberg controls a very significant piece of Interfaith Dialogue real estate, and he is using it to promote his benighted Ashkenazi values and impose them on the field.
His conference partner Eboo Patel has for some time now been a very canny and ambitious Muslim Interfaith marketer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eboo_Patel
Unlike Reza Aslan, who was not part of the Obama administration, Patel has not given us any rigorous books on Islam:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RHQ8lEhosq4SvnvnLQnhmtQMDxvAQLXkPieaJYKRTAc/edit
He has studiously shied away from academic-intellectual substance, and moved more expeditiously towards the Interfaith Dialogue sociological ephemera:
https://www.amazon.com/Eboo-Patel/e/B001IXNWQW%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
Indeed, as we can see from his massive institutional success, taking the path of least resistance is a very profitable one!
The two men, Muslim and Jew, have organized a massive academic program who contours are by now known to us.
Here is a listing of the illustrious presenters:
Prof. Adele Reinhartz (University of Ottawa)
Prof. Ross Wagner (Duke University)
Prof. Richard Newton (University of Alabama)
Prof. Joel Lohr (Hartford Seminary)
Prof. Erin Walsh (University of Chicago)
Prof. Hille Haker (Loyola University Chicago)
Rabbi Rachel Mikva (Chicago Theological Seminary)
Prof. William Schweiker (University of Chicago)
Prof. Aristotle Papanikolaou (Fordham University)
Prof. Nichole Flores (University of Virginia)
Prof. Steed Davidson (McCormick Theological Seminary)
Prof. Richard Mouw (Fuller Theological Seminary/Calvin University)
Prof. Marianne Moyaert (Free University of Amsterdam)
Prof. Elias Ortega (Meadville Lombard Theological School)
Rabbi Or Rose (Hebrew College)
Prof. Najeeba Syeed (Chicago Theological Seminary)
Viraj Patel (University of Chicago)
Rachel Heath (Vanderbilt University)
Prof. Anand Venkatkrishnan (University of Chicago)
Harmeet Kaur Kamboj (Union Theological Seminary)
Casey Jones (UCSB)
Amar Peterman (Princeton Theological Seminary)
Here we can see the deleterious effects of institutional racism, and how Jewish representation is exclusively Ashkenazi.
And here is a listing of the individual sessions:
- Typologies of Interfaith Education: From Promise to Practice
- Biblical scholarship: Tasks and Challenges
- Pluralism and Moral Formation
- “Where do we go from here?” – A Reflection on the Future of Seminary and Divinity School Education in a post-COVID world
- The View from Emerging Scholars
As always, the word that pops out at me is “Pluralism.”
Nirenberg, like his illustrious predecessor Bernard Lewis, is not just an Ashkenazi, but is an Ashkenazi who seeks to control the discourse on Sephardim and Arabs:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/Nf7bEbh4atc/m/UdKxTpWADAAJ
In this he has clearly been successful, but more than that he has not only pressed his view of things on the rest of us, but used his privileged position to act as an institutional gatekeeper who gets to choose which Jews can participate in the discourse.
Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists can control their own representation, while in the case of Judaism we have Ashkenazim locking out Sephardim. And more than that, we have them speaking in their own racist and ethnocentric manner about what our cultural heritage is.
Without institutional access, Sephardim do not stand a chance to tell their stories in a proper way.
I have addressed the issue of how Social Science scholarship has also undermined our tradition:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ggJAFoCD7us/m/llz_Gl0BAgAJ
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/i7GjycvgTh8/m/WXhKM8lgBwAJ
We have seen how this process plays itself out in the Sephardic community, where Self-Hatred has become the standard for those I have called the “New Sephardim”:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/Zwr2J9A6j1w/m/kjjkx-u6CAAJ
The institutional genuflection can be seen in obsequious Self-Haters like Rabbi Joseph Dweck and Mijal Bitton, who have climbed the ladder of White Jewish Supremacy by saying the things Ashkenazim want to hear:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/fiMfpnIua9I/m/uWtX4mB8BgAJ
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/blWoxt23bvk/m/ZAMDGuYsAgAJ
While the Self-Hating Sephardim genuflect, the White Jewish Supremacists, like Yehuda Kurtzer, are busy making sure we are erased from the New Jewish Canon:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ytx5ztODWRA/m/MiqL6_6fBQAJ
Modern Jewish Thought is also thankfully free from any of those pesky Sephardim, as Leonard Levin showed us:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/PIQl0sj5em8/m/rFRBXPlLCAAJ
As we can see, the academic-institutional Jewish world is controlled by Ashkenazi racists like David Nirenberg, who deploy their considerable power in ways that serve to suppress authentic Sephardi voices, and present a form of Jewish identity to the larger world which is inherently rooted in the Shtetl experience of alienation and paranoia.
While extolling the values of “Pluralism,” such Ashkenazim are intent on ensuring that only they can speak as Jews, leaving Sephardim in the proverbial dust.
David Shasha