New Article: Tablet Magazine: Bourekas and Haminados for Sephardim, Serious Yiddish “Culture” for Ashkenazim
David Shasha
Tablet Magazine: Bourekas and Haminados for Sephardim, Serious Yiddish “Culture” for Ashkenazim
In a recent installment of the Weekly Items of Note I presented a typical example of how shabbily Sephardim are treated in the Jewish media:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/KdAlfekI_YU
Here is the article on Bourekas that I cited in the note:
A few days later we learned that Tablet had hired old SHU favorite Rokhl Kafrissen to write her very own Yiddish culture page:
When we read the two posts in tandem we can see how the Jewish media treats Ashkenazim better than Sephardim: Ashkenazim have “serious” culture when Sephardim have some cute old ladies in Seattle making pastry.
Just make sure to have your rolling pins at the ready!
We will recall another recent post from Tablet that presents the same “Bourekas and Haminados” Sephardischkeit approach, this one featuring University of Washington Professor Devin Naar:
I discussed that post on a recent meeting of the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America in the following article that recounts Naar’s deeply superficial approach to Sephardic culture:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/naar/davidshasha/rlu0vCildLk/oKigA5pkAQAJ
It was not the first time that we saw how Naar has treated Sephardic culture in such a trivial manner:
When we see how the Sephardic heritage has been treated as just so much unthreatening ephemera, it is important to note that Ms. Kafrissen has figured into the larger issue of what was just a short time ago called “Ashkenormativity” as a means to understand the nature of White Jewish Hegemony and its racism towards us:
http://rokhl.blogspot.com/2015/04/why-isn-thing.html
I presented my comments to Ms. Kafrissen’s “Why Ashkenormativity Isn’t a Thing” in the following SHU post:
It is important to note that Kafrissen was very aggressively responding to Jonathan Katz’s claim that there is indeed a racist White Jewish Hegemony that needed to be properly addressed:
Katz presented his claim in New Voices, the Jewish student magazine:
http://newvoices.org/2014/10/22/learning-to-undo-ashke-normativity-a-jew-in-the-motherland/
The article was immediately re-posted by The Forward:
http://forward.com/opinion/208473/learning-to-undo-ashkenormativity/
It is interesting to see how Kafrissen’s insufferable defense of White Jewish privilege has not at all prevented her smooth climb up the Jewish ladder but has ultimately led to her success, while Katz’s valiant attempt to expose Ashkenazi racism has been silenced.
The hubris of the Ashkenazim can be seen in the fact that they seem not to know that they have taken Judaism all to themselves and effectively erased Sephardim from the discussion.
For Kafrissen and her champions in the Jewish media there would seem to be no White Jewish Supremacy and no Ashkenazi racism.
Indeed, we need more Ashkenazi culture not less.
Sephardic culture not so much.
In 2013 Tablet published their list of the 101 Essential Jewish Books which contained a grand total of seven written by Sephardim – two of which were from the pre-Modern period, while a number of others were written by prominent European figures like Primo Levi, Elias Canetti, and Jacques Derrida, who are not always seen by most Jews as being Sephardic:
We even got “The Garden of Finzi-Continis” thrown in just for good measure!
The list confirms much of what I said in my first “Idiot Sephardim” article; that contemporary Jewish Literature is seen as the exclusive domain of Ashkenazim:
This Ashkenazi-centric view of Modern Jewish Literature has been re-confirmed by Tablet writer Adam Kirsch in his new book:
And so it is that the Sephardim have been set aside by the Jewish media as exotic creatures who have no actual role to play in the serious issues being discussed at the Adult Jewish Table.
Only Ashkenazim are allowed to sit at that sacred table.
Though for Tablet, as is the case with so many other Jewish media outlets, there is always time for the Self-Hating Sephardim and their attempt to reframe our long and illustrious history by putting in their lot with Ashkenazi Zionist HASBARAH, as was the case with the following article:
Here are my comments on the post:
The article by Analucia Lopezrevoredo, program director at JIMENA, had to be published jointly with an Ashkenazi writer, just for good measure. Never trust a Sephardi to be able to act on her own, even when promoting the Ashkenazi viewpoint.
JIMENA represents the kind of Sephardi that the White Jewish hegemons can really get behind:
Tom Pessah correctly exposed the group as an Ashkenazi HASBARAH front organization designed to use Arab Jews on behalf of the Zionist propaganda mission.
And so it is that even when Sephardim are allowed to speak, the language remains exclusively Ashkenazi.
Indeed, all of this provides a picture what White Jewish Hegemonic racism looks like at the present time.
David Shasha