Sephardic Heritage Update 1080
David Shasha
Friends,
Longtime SHU readers know by now that I love the classic Country Music, from Hank Williams and Bill Monroe to Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves. And at a time when the Christian Humanist values of that musical tradition have been sold out for corporate Nash Vegas interests, it is important to praise great traditionalists like Vince Gill. We thus begin this week’s newsletter with my article on Gill and his family values. CMT paid tribute to Gill, but the show was mostly a bore – except for the final segment, which featured a tearful tribute from Gill’s daughter Jenny, who recounted her dad’s love of humanity and his tremendous Hesed. I wanted to make sure, at this time of hate and contentiousness – hate and contentiousness that continue to demand an angry response, to praise a great musical artist and his Religious Humanist values. Make sure to go out and purchase a copy of his classic “These Days.”
And that leads us to the YEEZUS, the self-proclaimed Greatest Artist of Our Time. We all know by now the Nick Fuentes mess, but here we move back in time to the YEEZUS Academy, which has since been forced to shut down. That an illiterate like YEEZUS can have his own school is a very scary idea – and I wonder if the gullible parents will get their tuition many back. It is sure that they will never get their human dignity back!
Mychal Denzel Smith reviews a new book on Black Conservatives that asks the pressing question “Was Kanye Right?” The review reflects the confusion over YEEZUS and his purported “artistry” which remains a stumbling-block for those racial activists who are in denial when it comes to Corporate Hip-Hop and its Trumpist values.
We then move back into the problem of the Trump-Kushner HASBARAH Accords. I have just spoken with a loyal SHU reader who is now working in the UAE, and he has confirmed what I have been saying about the Schneersohn-Christers and the attack on Jewish Humanism and Convivencia in the Gulf. We have an article on the much-publicized CHABAD wedding, and another on the real impetus to the Accords, HASBARAH economics. Israel can continue to bask in Gulf Wahhabi love, as Jews continue to die in the homeland.
A bizarre article from The New York Jewish Week profiles B’nei Jeshurun’s Rabbi Rolando Matalon, who apparently has just sought to acknowledge his Arab Jewish identity. The article is less about how a Sephardic liturgical custom is being adopted in the Synagogue, and more about how Rabbi Matalon – an Ashkenazi by temperament and identity, has turned his back on the Sephardic heritage for many years.
I must admit that when I read Hadar Hazan’s article “Mizrahi Bimbos” I did not really understand it. I have for a long time tried to ignore the self-hating and subservient Mizrahi Israelis, and the idea of “Bimbos” kind of eludes me. There is much to say about Ashkenazi Zionist racism, and I am not sure if the article gets to the heart of the matter. Read it and decide for yourself.
It has been some time since Brooklyn SY hub Magen David Yeshivah, led by Lakewood macher Rabbi Eli Mansour, had its run-in with Transgender issues. I wanted to have one article on the controversy, which consumed the community for a short time and is now passed, as it pits the Trumpist DEATH SENTENCE SYs against the new Gender politics. The teacher in question dresses in Haredi garb, making the whole thing that much more bizarre. Make of it what you will.
It has been some time since The New York Times exposé on educational malfeasance in the Haredi Hasidic community in NYC, but I wanted to include YU macher Moshe Krakowski’s epic defense of the malefactors in Commentary magazine. It is yet another example of how Washington Heights has allied with the Ultra-Orthodox, who were once anathema to the Modern Orthodox. The times they have-a changed!
And that leads us to the great White Jewish Supremacist Phyllis Chesler, who is all over the Tikvah Neo-Con Jewish media, whining about being cancelled from a speaking engagement at the West End Synagogue. Cancel Culture is endemic to the Neo-Cons – as we have seen Chesler attack Islam – but when others cancel them for their radical extremist racism, they are not happy. It is interesting that Sephardim have been cancelled by both the West End Synagogue as well as by Tikvah Tablet. But Sephardim are not really Jews, so that is not important. What is important is Ms. Chesler’s arrogant sense of entitlement. Zei Gezunt!
There has been much discussion of Peshat, Biblical Literalism, in the Orthodox community of late:
http://www.rationalistjudaism.com/2022/11/new-ban-pshat.html
It is an interesting Orthodox controversy that Tikvah Straussian Jeffrey Bloom weighs in on. He connects Moshe Hayyim Luzzato to hyper-Straussian Leon Kass in order to strengthen the Neo-Con Intersectionality. It is unclear how this Straussianism works in relation to the Christian Evangelicals and Rabbinic Midrash, but it is clear that there are important Zionist HASBARAH connections, as The Tikvah Fund continues to advance the Trumpist religion agenda.
We thus end appropriately with Sarah Ogince’s excellent JNS article on Christians blowing the Shofar. The Christian Zionism is a messianic eschatology which will have all the Jews dead or converted after Dracula Jesus returns to earth, and this helps us to better understand the Evangelicals (ab)use of Jewish rituals. It is Intersectionality in the New Convivencia. New Jews for Jesus CEO Dennis Prager knows it well!
David Shasha
Religious Humanism, ‘Anava, and Yir’at Shamayim: Jenny Gill’s Tearful Tribute to Her Dad Vince, “You Are My Sunshine”
By: David Shasha
What the Hell Is Going On at Kanye West’s Mysterious New Private School?
By: Cheyenne Roundtree
Book Review: Was Kanye Right?
By: Mychal Denzel Smith
Abu Dhabi Rabbinic Wedding Landmark Event for Jewish Life in the Arab World
By: Menachem Posner
Abraham Accords Two Years Later: and Economic Collaboration and Cultural Exchange Flourishing
By: Dmitriy Shapiro
For the First Time, a UWS Synagogue Embraces a Sephardic High Holiday Tradition
By: Alan Zeitlin
Fear of Mizrahi ‘Bimbos’
By: Hadar Hazan
Brooklyn Yeshiva Asks Transgender Teacher to Leave Amid Uproar Over Her Identity
By: Luke Tress
The Jews of the Jews
By: Moshe Krakowski
Disinvited
By: Phyllis Chesler
How Literally Do Jews Take the Hebrew Bible?
By: Jeffrey Bloom
When Christians Blow the Shofar, it’s a Wake-Up Call for Jews
By: Sarah Ogince