Weekly Items of Note (12/3)
David Shasha
Nissim Rejwan and the Racist Jewish Media
On Wednesday I marked the one month anniversary of the passing of our dear friend and comrade Nissim Rejwan by re-sending the SHU tribute newsletter in his honor:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/Vh6o72Nwyjo
I have waited, apparently in vain, for the English-language Jewish media to acknowledge Rejwan’s life and work by publishing obituaries for him. Their silence has truly been shameful, but speaks volumes about the contempt that the Ashkenazim have for us.
As we continue to see the myriad ways in which the Ashkenazim and Zionists have stigmatized and trivialized the Arab Jewish heritage, it should come as no surprise that a towering intellectual figure like Rejwan is being completely ignored, as if he never existed.
So, when we read all the Arab Jewish Refugee articles, and see the “Bourekas and Haminados” superficiality that is now the way we are routinely presented by the Ashkenazim, we should recall the seminal figure of Nissim Rejwan and how he valiantly held high the banner of Arab Jews and promoted our serious cultural values and heroically fought the vile Ashkenazi racism that continues to destroy us.
Update (November 30th)
After a good deal of lobbying, our friend Emile Cohen was finally able to convince the London Jewish Chronicle to publish the obituary he wrote for the SHU tribute newsletter:
https://www.thejc.com/news/obituaries/obituary-nissim-rejwan-1.449298
Aside from this one exception, there have still be no Rejwan obituaries in the Jewish media.
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Yeshiva University, and Antonin Scalia
For those who are too busy these days to remember the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, do not fret, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and Yeshiva University have got you covered!
http://blogs.yu.edu/news/straus-center-welcomes-christopher-scalia/
In February 2016 I posted the following “tribute” to one of the most despicable haters of American democracy and our Constitutional system:
It is not at all surprising to see the radical extremist Soloveichik hosting such a program, as it is certain that he and Scalia have much in common!
“Justice Scalia’s visit to The Straus Center in 2013 was one of the most memorable moments in Yeshiva’s history,” said Rabbi Soloveichik. “We are looking forward to learning more about his life, his faith, and his worldview, with the Justices’ son, Chris Scalia, whose collection of his father’s speeches has received raved reviews and become a bestseller.”
Yet another nail in the coffin for the tradition of Sephardic Jewish Humanism, as the Ashkenazim take glee in burying the corpse.
Ashkenazim “Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon” Among Themselves!
I was browsing through the Judaica stacks at the Strand and saw the following book:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674025851
The book is a mammoth tribute to the vital work of Harvard Professor Ruth Wisse:
Wisse is a prominent figure in the radical Right Wing Tikvah Fund world:
From what we see in her book The Modern Jewish Canon, she does not seem to even know that Sephardim exist:
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3643668.html
The HUP book is chock full of papers from White Jewish racists writing about other White Jewish racists:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674025851&content=toc
So, while Sephardim are relegated to “Bourekas and Haminados,” we see the Ashkenazim discussing important things like the Modern Jewish Canon; an All-White construct that speaks to the primitiveness and barbarity of Sephardim who apparently do not know how to write “canonical” books.
Indeed, this is what is being taught at Harvard University!
“Many ‘Sephardic’ Jews Aren’t Actually Sephardic”!
Leave it to the racist Forward to print the following article:
The article is not what you might think it is.
It appears that some Russian Jews believe they are Sephardic, and are just Russian.
The author is not a Sephardi, but a Yiddishist and a linguist who embarks on the usual PILPUL about Sephardic identity and what it means.
Tellingly, the word “Arab” never appears in the discussion.
“Sephardic” in this Ashkenazi-Eurocentric context means those Jews who lived in Christian Spain, rather than those who lived in Muslim Spain.
It is a travesty of history which has been designed to de-couple Sephardic Jews from the Arab-Muslim world and limit it to the Latin world of Europe and Catholicism.
The article links to Bedier’s previous article on how Ashkenazim are not descended from the Khazars.
And so it is that Ashkenazi origins are not tainted, while Sephardim are not really sure if they are Sephardim!
Right Wing Jews Love CHABAD!
Last Tuesday Mosaic magazine posted the following video on CHABAD from the academic Ada Rapoport-Albert:
https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2017/11/the-20th-century-transformation-of-chabad-%e1%b8%a5asidism/
This is how they introduced the lecture:
Today Chabad-Lubavitch Ḥasidim are best known for their robust efforts at proselytizing to other Jews, and their sometimes controversial messianism. But between the movement’s founding in the 1770s and the early 1900s, these features were nowhere in evidence. Ada Rapoport-Albert explains how Chabad’s radical self-reinvention took place, focusing on the period between the World Wars. In addition, she argues that the introduction of outreach and messianism were accompanied by a major change in attitudes toward women, who in the eyes of rabbinic leaders went from being considered “the wives of the Ḥasidim” to being active participants.
I would not think that there is any necessity to watch the video, but I do think that it is important to note how much support there is for the neo-Christian, Right Wing Zionist group and its destructive behavior.
There is no question that CHABAD is a very big and a very well-funded organization that has become a central part of the Jewish institutional world, a real player in religious terms.
And there is also no question that, with its Schneersohn-Christ and its Settler Zionist values, CHABAD has had a very dangerous and deleterious effect on Judaism.
CHABAD represents the very antithesis of the open and tolerant values of Sephardic Judaism, as it continues to promote the idea that it is a warm and loving movement. To those who know CHABAD as it really is, the movement embodies the worst of Ashkenazi intolerance and Jewish fanaticism.
David Shasha