New Article: The Shalom Hartman Institute Continues to Promote the White Jewish Supremacy: Two SY Rabbis’ Daughters Included
David Shasha
The Shalom Hartman Institute Continues to Promote the White Jewish Supremacy: Two SY Rabbis’ Daughters Included
As we have come to expect, the latest programming announcement from the Shalom Hartman Institute is chock full of their usual White Jewish Supremacy:
https://mailchi.mp/shi.org.il/hartman-at-home-looking-ahead-to-2021?e=ce188d0296
There is a lot going on with them these days!
I have already discussed SHI North America president Yehuda Kurtzer’s Anti-Sephardi racism, and his support for the New Talmudists, in an article on the Peter Beinart One-State controversy and the “Yavneh” thesis:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ytx5ztODWRA/m/MiqL6_6fBQAJ
The article featured sharp criticism of his anthology The New Jewish Canon, and was later included in a special newsletter dedicated to the imperilled legacy of Rabbi Jose Faur, a figure who is proudly ignored in the book:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ytx5ztODWRA/m/MiqL6_6fBQAJ
I recently made note of the CHUTZPAH involved in a Jewish Book Council/SHI Kurtzer program on Jewish Political “Diversity,” when his book has no actual Sephardic intellectual content:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/PtJOxsPnuOI/m/U3dNv7SYBQAJ
Here is the announcement of the co-sponsored event:
In addition to that program, Kurtzer will also be leading a four-part discussion of The New Jewish Canon:
And guess who is one of the participants in the discussion?
Mijal Bitton: Identity and “Who Counts?” in The New Jewish Canon
That’s right, it is the token Sephardi tool of the White Jewish Supremacy, who so very shamefully participated in the racist book, and who is now going to lecture us on “Who Counts”!
I suppose we could probably skip it, given that only Ashkenazim count for SHI and for Kurtzer. It is likely that she will be discussing her contribution to the book, dealing with Sephardic demographics. Hence, the word “count.” And I am sure that she will be able to paper the whole thing over and not hurt anyone’s feelings. In the end, she knows who really “counts.”
That’s how Sephardim get ahead in the world of White Jewish Supremacy!
Never make waves.
Or you will face the nasty consequences.
In her duplicitous tributes to her uncle Rabbi Faur she has said nothing about Kurtzer’s book:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/blWoxt23bvk/m/ZAMDGuYsAgAJ
https://us9.campaign-archive.com/?u=9ee686c09238e3a1fb7447ee7&id=dc68ef925f
It is interesting to note that the Ashkenazi ethnocentric fanatics did not feel the same way as she did.
They had what to say about it:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/EreW7uWzKms/m/bsKxcXlMBQAJ
Even when Ashkenazim are in control, they are not satisfied.
And even when Sephardim are not in control, they are quite satisfied to go along with the racist charade.
I do wonder what she thought about that Forward article by Yiddishist Mikhail Krutikov when she read it. Did she even feel a twinge of shame for her continuing silence on Kurtzer’s deplorable racism?
We should also note that her interview with the Ashkenazim at the ASF was quickly re-posted by The Tikvah Fund’s Mosaic magazine with a very interesting, and very offensive, title:
Indeed, Faur was very “idiosyncratic”!
I suppose that would explain why Kurtzer left him out of The New Jewish Canon.
I was also intrigued to see the SHI MLK program announcement:
“Justice” is indeed a relative term for the White Jewish Supremacists.
The event features yet another Self-Hating Sephardi:
Sara Labaton – Caring For The Sick: Human and Divine Presence in the Face of Illness
Ms. Labaton, like Ms. Bitton, is the daughter of a rabbi in the SY community:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosef_Bitt%C3%B3n
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Labaton
Interestingly, based on my own bitter experiences, both Yosef Bitton and the late Ezra Labaton had critical roles in preventing Rabbi Faur from achieving any positive role in the SY community.
Labaton’s devoted students put together a list of their mentor’s recommended books, which utterly lacks the Sephardic element, as it also pointedly ignores Faur:
http://www.rabbilabaton.com/the-rabbis-bookshelf/#literacy
His loyalty was to YU and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and he even moved to Boston in his college years to be near his idol:
http://www.rabbilabaton.com/category/rav-soloveitchik/
Labaton was part of a militant Washington Heights SY triumvirate that included his fellow Ashkenazi wannabes Raymond Harari and Moshe Shamah, who I have called the “Rabbis Who Hate Us”:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/1YDG73IxkgI/m/yNHa4-u9cJwJ
The three men vigorously led the YU faction in the Brooklyn SY community, which accomplished two things:
First, it destroyed what little was left of the classical Sephardic heritage which had been preserved by Hakham Matloub Abadi:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/Ox-wE_ec5zo/m/GX_d4kVXBQAJ
Second, and perhaps even more significantly, the Modern Orthodoxy of the late 1960s soon led to the emergence of a Lakewood-style Haredism in the community, best exemplified today by the ubiquitous Rabbi Eli Mansour:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/VZwzo4IMb4Q/m/wGvcW4KrAgAJ
Here is my recent article on his Neo-Christian values:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/qizWNzCwJfQ/m/aoehWAvIAwAJ
I have discussed the problem in my article “The New Sephardic Jewish Binary: Between Meir Kahane and Moshe Feinstein”:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/Md20wpiqEk4/m/qCuUrF7-BwAJ
The adoption of the Ashkenazi Orthodox binary has naturally led to divisiveness and contention with an overall erosion of communal harmony and tolerance. Religious ideology trumps all other concerns in the contemporary Sephardic community.
It is indeed deeply ironic that it was the Haredi Mansour, and not the YU SY rabbis, who was invited to speak at the Orthodox Union’s massive gathering at Citi Field in 2018:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/m7MKUVSVAJI/m/sFcNpt4gCwAJ
The Brooklyn Syrian Jews now have no Sephardic heritage, and the Modern Orthodox failure has led to Haredi dominance in the community.
This dysfunctional evisceration of our traditional culture has now been extended to a new generation of Self-Haters who are squirming their way up the ladder of White Jewish Supremacy.
Sara Labaton, also like Ms. Bitton, is a very ambitious person who desperately wants to climb that ladder, and has the CV to prove it.
She is a member of the Zeramim editorial board:
https://zeramim.org/editors/sara-labaton/
She is on the staff of Mechon Hadar:
https://www.hadar.org/faculty-staff/sara-labaton
And, of course, she has a plum role as Director of Teaching and Learning at SHI:
https://www.hartman.org.il/person/sara-labaton/
Again, like Bitton, affirming the White Jewish Supremacy is something she certainly learned from her father, who wanted nothing to do with our Andalusian heritage:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ASZ9YE5oJSE/m/fCqSmRp4PN8J
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/l3d_GiV9hx4/m/iodb-iEbBQAJ
They both did their doctoral dissertations on Sephardic sages, Abraham Maimonides and Abraham ibn Ezra:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nl17Z6B6OKlWf6rIS7NZRUdy9AJTPqad/view?ths=true
https://dissexpress.proquest.com/dxweb/results.html?QryTxt=&By=sara+labaton&Title=&pubnum=3716561
Indeed, both dissertations treat Sephardim in the Ashkenazi manner, which rejects the values of Sephardic Humanism and our expansive cosmopolitan cultural attitude. Leo Strauss is always lurking in the perennial shadows.
And this has led to ethical corruption and human cruelty, as intolerance rules the community under the divisive Ashkenazi rubric, which I discussed in my article “A Broken Frame: Sephardi Occlusion and the Repairing of Jewish Dysfunction”:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/yj_4nB1nWTk/m/PSVcxzqBsKEJ
It is noteworthy that the article was rejected for publication by Rabbi Marc Angel, a close friend of the SY YU rabbinic triumvirate. The Sephardic Modern Orthodox Ashkenazi world is quite an incestuous place indeed.
It would be interesting to know whether the two rabbis’ daughters are even aware of each other, and, if so, what their view of the White Jewish Supremacy actually is.
In the end, to our shame, it would be impossible for Ashkenazim to erase us without our help. As we can see in this minor but representative example, there are many Sephardim who are more than happy to genuflect to the Ashkenazim as our noble heritage continues to erode.
David Shasha