New Article: "'Ashkenormativity' Might now be an Actual 'Thing'"
David Shasha
“Ashkenormativity” Might now be an Actual “Thing”
I recently posted an article by the passionate Yiddishist Rokhl Kafrissen arguing against the existence of Ashkenazi Jewish privilege:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/q84ktULGijo
I was just made aware of a very bizarre follow-up post:
http://rokhl.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/life-imitates-tv-tropes.html
I greatly admire Ms. Kafrissen’s enthusiasm about Yiddish culture, but continue to be both confused and despondent over the way in which she deals with Jewish culture in general.
“Nuance” is often a way to defuse legitimate concerns coming from excluded minority voices. It is sometimes a code-word for moral relativism which would argue that no one group has the right to claim victimhood. We all – Ashkenazim included – have our grievances.
Sephardim have heard this line many times before: Immigrants to Israel all had it rough and we must not single out any one ethnic group for special sympathy.
Historical evidence can be manipulated through the mechanisms of PILPUL to make it appear that Arab Jews were not so badly off, as all immigrants had a hard time of it.
It is critical that we all read history without bias and see clearly the issues at stake in the overall discussion on the Ashkenazi-Sephardi question.
As we look more carefully at American Jewish cultural history we can see the centrality of Sephardim in its earliest stages, but once the Eastern European immigrations take place the situation changes dramatically.
I have discussed the issues many times, most recently in a post on the PBS screening of a documentary called “The Jewish Journey: America”:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/0YE5suTvNtc
We have seen repeatedly that the Sephardic foundations of American Jewish history have been elided or erased:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/sarna/davidshasha/YIYuzf0eAqU/g0FqAXYJ2ygJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/mendes/davidshasha/EmYNqD4sZ1A/yuY34TnEQNcJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/sarna/davidshasha/nwGWN_a7Yr4/l3mIh9rtmg4J
When we look at the tendentious work of academic scholars like Jonathan Sarna we see a concerted effort to minimize Sephardic contributions to American Jewish culture while at the same time seeking to reframe the narrative to privilege Ashkenazim and their contributions.
Ms. Kafrissen is justifiably angry about the general ignorance that now pervades the American Jewish community, but her discussion does not provide evidence that she has properly understood the complex developments in the American Jewish heritage.
So while most American Jews today will not know Gertrude Berg, an important exponent of the Ashkenazi-Yiddish tradition who was at one time the most important radio personality in this country, her vision of Jewish identity is indeed connected to an older synthetic tradition that we have called Jewish Humanism rooted in the Sephardic heritage.
I have discussed the matter in an article on Aviva Kempner’s excellent documentary on Ms. Berg’s extraordinary career and her centrality in American culture:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/mendes/davidshasha/EmYNqD4sZ1A/yuY34TnEQNcJ
So we are dealing with two different issues here: there is the general intellectual ignorance of history and culture in our benighted Facebook age, but there is also a more insidious cultural erasure going on that seeks to remove Sephardim from the Jewish landscape.
Ms. Kafrissen does seem now to grudgingly accept the reality of this Ashkenazi hegemony even as she carps and provides various caveats to the admission.
We must not see the problem exclusively out of the lens of ethnicity: it is important to understand that many Ashkenazim accepted the model of Sephardic Jewish Humanism for many years and that the current volte-face is an unfortunate innovation in American Jewish life that is connected to a breakdown that has led to infighting and a contentious factionalism.
Indeed, Religious Humanism is a very elastic concept that can be applied to different cultural and religious traditions.
Important American Jewish figures like Sabato Morais and Henry Pereira Mendes counted many Ashkenazim among their admirers, followers, and students. Their ministries taught many American Jews how to be Jewish in a way consistent with the values of the Sephardic heritage and its polyglot cultural system:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/morais/davidshasha/owdIgkaZHys/yoRvE37LOI4J
Looking back even further in American Jewish history we can see the figure of Haym Salomon, an Ashkenazi acculturated to the Sephardic Jewish Humanism, and his close ties to Gershom Mendes Seixas, George Washington’s “rabbi”:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/salomon/davidshasha/Hwm1BFbeekk/0qeEie2mKHcJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/salomon/davidshasha/WZhqOVEhCTQ/O7XVlPrZzooJ
I have discussed the problem many Ashkenazim have with the concept of Religious Humanism in my comments to a rejection letter I received from the editor of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah’s literary journal:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/yct/davidshasha/JPZFturnQkQ/FX8HLC0KgtoJ
In addition, there is the matter of Rabbi Marc Angel and his bizarre distortions of American Jewish history and its cultural and religious implications for the present:
I completely agree with Ms. Kafrissen that American Jews need to have a better and more penetrating understanding of Jewish History and how best to apply that knowledge to contemporary realities. But we must not avoid taking a hard look at the racist modalities that have informed an internal Jewish transformation that has sought to undermine Sephardic cultural elements and impose a deleterious Ashkenazi hegemony on us while at the same time rejecting the model of Religious Humanism.
As I tried to show in my article Judaism and Culture that was rejected by the YCT editor, ethnicity is not as crucial to Jewish culture as understanding the proper relationship between our religious heritage and general culture.
The traditional Ashkenazi identity model has been woefully inadequate when it comes to providing the proper cultural-religious balance that can be found in the Sephardic formulation of Jewish Humanism. Many of the problems that contemporary Jews face could be ameliorated if we would better appreciate the classical Sephardic tradition and how its open and pluralistic cosmopolitanism provided Jews with a strong identity that embraced both the Jewish tradition and Gentile culture without the tortured conflicts that continue to plague an Ashkenazi Judaism that continues to have difficulty in dealing with the larger world, whether it be Orthodox rejection of the larger world or Secular assimilation and its unfortunate undermining of the Jewish heritage.
David Shasha