New Article: Rabbi Meir Soloveichik Triumphant! The Tikvah Fund Now Fully Owns Formerly-Sephardic Congregation Shearith Israel
David Shasha
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik Triumphant! The Tikvah Fund Now Fully Owns Formerly-Sephardic Congregation Shearith Israel
I recently made note of the odious Trumpscum Meir Soloveichik’s participation in a virtual program at the Yeshivah of Flatbush High School in the Brooklyn Syrian Jewish community:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E_IlYH_2eGWV6KlgtvMBvSxeNZvVNR8n/view?ths=true
Indeed, as we can see in the following picture, it was another clever way to bring Ashkenazi Lysolism to the Idiot Sephardim:
https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2017/12/AP17342065547859.jpg
I’m not sure it was necessary, as the SYs are already on board that murderous train, but nothing exceeds like excess:
Right on the heels of the YOFHS program, formerly-Sephardic Congregation Shearith Israel proudly sent out the following announcement:
A Journey Through the Hebrew Bible
A 10-Part Lecture Series by
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik
Livestreamed from the Shearith Israel Sanctuary
A project of the Tikvah Fund
Mondays | 7:30 PM EDT
The lecture series formally confirms that SI is now a fully-owned subsidiary of The Tikvah Fund:
Registration is free - click here
(with a $50 suggested donation to support Tikvah's educational programming)
The registration link leads the SI member straight to the Tikvah website:
For those still not familiar with The Tikvah Fund, I have prepared a special newsletter to bring you up to Neo-Con Straussian speed:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tcZ47eu45_GyLGHWIQYZiWtnTBZAgDXZVnixE0O3ZR0/edit
And for those still not familiar with the Anti-Sephardi biases of the vile Leo Strauss, be aware that one of his most important works, Persecution and the Art of Writing, is essentially an argument accusing Maimonides of being a cowardly liar; a Jew who harbored heretical tendencies and disguised them in his duplicitous verbiage:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_and_the_Art_of_Writing
The following article shows us how Strauss used his Theory of the Lie in Persecution to set out an Anti-Democratic vision of politics and society:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/article_1542jsp/
As the article puts it:
A second fundamental belief of Strauss’s ancients has to do with their insistence on the need for secrecy and the necessity of lies. In his book Persecution and the Art of Writing, Strauss outlines why secrecy is necessary. He argues that the wise must conceal their views for two reasons to spare the people’s feelings and to protect the elite from possible reprisals.
Strauss was an avowed enemy of Jewish Humanism, as expressed by Maimonidean Ashkenazim like Hermann Cohen and Moses Mendelssohn:
Indeed, the basic ideological template for Tikvah is Straussianism with its hefty Neo-Con baggage:
https://tikvahfund.org/library/podcast-leora-batnitzky-legacy-leo-strauss/
Working under the supervision of Princeton University’s Leora Batnitzky, Soloveichik took this Anti-Sephardic ideology a decisive step further when he wrote his dissertation on Michael Wyschogrod and Jewish Supremacy:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytYVvsu-He-LACFKWcSsYGguR5uX33u9/view?ths=true
The late Wyschogrod went far beyond Strauss’ attack on Jewish Humanism, by denying the rational-scientific strain in Jewish thought altogether; asserting instead that the Bible should be read literally when it comes to God’s having a physical body.
I have collected my articles on Wyschogrod and Soloveichik into a special newsletter:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vkNZusv09KazmHUp3BNcBGIe9TEZEMcKsZXfbBFMm4Q/edit
It is important to also note that Soloveichik has published extensively in Commentary magazine and The Wall Street Journal, where he has often extolled White Jewish Supremacy in American Jewish History:
As we can see in a joint post with fellow Sephardi-hater Jonathan Sarna, Soloveichik used the occasion to discuss Lincoln and the Jews in order to promote the standard Ashkenazi-centric approach:
https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/history-ideas/2016/07/we-have-not-yet-appointed-a-hebrew/
The item was just re-posted in Tikvah’s Independence Day Shabbat Reader:
We should not forget that Sarna has consistently presented American Jewish History in this same racist manner:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/mendes/davidshasha/EmYNqD4sZ1A/yuY34TnEQNcJ
Indeed, like his friend Soloveichik, Sarna is positively obsessed with Ashkenazi Jewish Orthodoxy and the way it subverts the classical Sephardic heritage:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/sarna/davidshasha/Ll4A67gD2WA/ViFq6CCeBAAJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/sarna/davidshasha/Dy3LfHJHKHg/_3bSJd-nAQAJ
As we have seen, Soloveichik’s discussions of Jonas Phillips and Sarna’s of Mendes Cohen contain a pronounced Ashkenazi-centrism that permeates their Neo-Con Tikvah approach to early American Jewish History.
It is worth noting that Sarna wrote his dissertation on the eccentric Mordechai Manuel Noah, which was commercially released as Jacksonian Jew:
https://www.amazon.com/Jacksonian-Jew-Worlds-Mordecai-Noah/dp/0841905673
Strangely, the “Manuel” has been removed from his name, and the word “Sephardic” fails to appear in the book’s index.
For a more “traditional” take on the very colorful Noah, you can read the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia entry written by Cyrus Adler, a student of Sabato Morais, and a man quite familiar with our tradition of Jewish Humanism:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11573-noah-mordecai-manuel
When you look at Sarna’s magnum opus, American Judaism, it is clear that the Sephardic component is blunted, though still present in the opening chapters, as he aggressively highlights the contentiousness between the SI establishment and Sephardi elite in America, and the Ashkenazi newcomers:
https://www.amazon.com/American-Judaism-Jonathan-D-Sarna/dp/0300109768
But never at any time does Sarna fully explicate, or appreciate, the classical Sephardic heritage of Jewish Humanism and how it impacted the development of American Judaism.
One of his more recent books, published by Nextbook, a division of The Tikvah Fund, dealt with the contentious subject of Ulysses Grant and the “Expulsion of the Jews” during the Civil War:
https://nextbookpress.com/books/248/when-grant-expelled-the-jews/
Sarna’s work, as is commonplace among the White Jewish Supremacists in the Tikvah world, focuses primarily on division, conflict, and intolerance.
His YU Modern Orthodox values often highlights Ashkenazi dysfunction and sectarianism, as we saw in his bizarre discussion of the notorious 1883 “Trefa Banquet” and American Reform leader Isaac Mayer Wise:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/trefa/davidshasha/bq7PnLBnpQg/1K8qWNtEAQAJ
As a contrast to the Ashkenazi form of Jewish alienation and anomie, we can see the noble values of Sephardic Jewish Humanism in the two classic books on Shearith Israel by Rabbi David De Sola Pool, Portraits Etched in Stone and An Old Faith in the New World:
The rabbi’s book of sermons provides an excellent iteration of these classic values:
https://www.amazon.com/Rabbi-David-Sola-Pool-Selections/dp/0814807534
All three books are long out of print, unknown to many in the Sephardic community and larger Jewish world.
On a visit to the Eldridge Street Synagogue a few years ago, I saw a bound volume in one of the museum’s glass cases displaying the following article:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1NQdm28qvvXRFJRbXF2M18wN1k/view?ths=true
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1NQdm28qvvXM1dSdDcwYkZSVms/view?ths=true
Richard Wheatley’s two-part 1892 article “The Jews of New York” from The Century Magazine allows us to see how important these values were at a time when Ashkenazi racism had yet to fully rear its ugly head. It is a wonderful portrait of a vibrant Jewish world that is not only different to what we are being taught today, but one that displays the Religious Humanism of the Sephardic heritage.
In my special newsletter on American Independence Day and Sephardic Judaism I collected a bunch of articles and resources that are outside the current Jewish discourse, but which provide an important reminder of the centrality of Sephardim in American Jewish History:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cnMQ20IEjkv1d-Cigs5GDP10na1CaXcB0dsYW6AE5q0/edit
These precious resources stand in stark contrast to the Tikvah racism of Soloveichik and Sarna.
In addition, we should also make note of Soloveichik’s many essays in the radical Catholic journal First Things, that confirm his devotion to what I have called the “New Convivencia”; an alliance of fundamentalist Jews and Christians which has dominated Trumpworld Fascism:
The culmination of this benighted vision took place when Soloveichik appeared at an event at the Hoover Institute with Senator Mike Lee of Utah:
The SI donations for Tikvah on behalf of Soloveichik are confirmation that Sephardim not only do not only control their own institutions, but that these institutions now represent a vicious assault on our heritage.
It is the way in which White Jewish Supremacy now works to erase Sephardim – with our proud consent!
Bengelsdorf is alive and well in the SI pulpit.
David Shasha