New Article: Jonathan Sarna, Ashkenazi Modern Orthodoxy, and the Study of American Jewish History
David Shasha
Jonathan Sarna, Ashkenazi Modern Orthodoxy, and the Study of American Jewish History
The Lookjed Digest posted the following recommendation for a textbook on Jewish History that could be used by Modern Orthodox Yeshivah Day School educators:
http://listserv.biu.ac.il/cgi-bin/wa?A2=LOOKJED;501753bf.1712p#2
I was not aware that our dear friend Jonathan Sarna had written such a book, though the link to the Behrman House website did not actually turn up anything:
https://store.behrmanhouse.com/index.php?q=store/product-sku/190
When I did a Google search for the book, I found the following provocative article, “Why Study American Jewish History?”:
https://www.brandeis.edu/hornstein/sarna/jewisheducation/Archive/WhyStudyAmericanJewishHistory.pdf
Why study American Jewish History indeed!
Sarna’s brief article reminds us how he sees Jewish Identity, and how that identity is completely Ashkenazi.
He begins by citing obscure figures like Lady Katy Magnus and Julius Maller, rather than David de Sola Pool and Solomon Solis-Cohen with their Sephardi-centric approach to Jewish History. It is a very important bibliographic note that directs the reader to certain resources at the expense of others. It provides a unique frame for the study of Jewish History that reflects Sarna’s approach to the subject.
We must remember that Rabbi de Sola Pool authored the two most important books on early American Jewish History, Portraits Etched in Stone and An Old Faith in a New World, both of which deal with the rich past of Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Synagogue in America, in exhaustive detail:
Both books were issued to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Jewish arrival in New Amsterdam and were published by Columbia University Press.
Neither title is currently in print.
Dr. Solis-Cohen published a brief, but excellent study of the founding of the Jewish Theological Seminary that was originally delivered as an address on the Seminary’s 25th anniversary:
https://www.forgottenbooks.com/en/books/TheJewishTheologicalSeminaryPastandFuture_10054349
We will recall that the original JTS was founded under the visionary leadership of Sabato Morais and was based on his Sephardic Jewish Humanist curriculum:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1NQdm28qvvXTVBTWXFtZmtsVGc/view?ths=true
This illustrious history is not known today to American Jews.
Solis-Cohen also contributed to the following collection of addresses by prominent Americans marking the 250th anniversary of Jewish settlement in this country:
The book includes contributions by well-known political figures and religious leaders from all creeds and denominations, paying homage to what was at that time very much a Sephardic Judaism which had dominated American life from the very founding of the country.
In the 19th century, Sephardic Jewish Humanism was still very much alive in the minds of Americans when they thought about Jewish Identity.
When visiting the beautifully-restored Eldridge Street Synagogue located in Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown – right down the block from the Manhattan Bridge – I spotted a bound copy of The Century Magazine in a glass case opened to the following two-part article, “The Jews in New York,” published in 1892:
http://unz.org/Pub/Century-1892jan-00323
http://unz.org/Pub/Century-1892feb-00512
Richard Wheatley’s trenchant examination of Jews and Judaism provides us with a robust iteration of the classic Sephardic tradition and its place in American life.
It is interesting to note that, with the explosion of on-line digital resources and book reprints, a wealth of information about American Jewish History is readily available to students and general readers. Such resources can provide ample evidence of the importance of Sephardic Jewish Humanism and its profound impact on American Jewish culture.
But when we read the work of Jonathan Sarna and his disciples, it becomes clear that such resources would not be deployed, as the framework of his scholarship does not mark Sephardic Judaism as the foundation of our history.
For those interested in learning about the wider arc of this history, I have prepared an annotated reading list “Important Book Resources for Sephardic Studies” which covers a broad historical period:
My presentation is quite different than Sarna’s as it seeks to provide a comprehensive pedagogical approach to post-Talmudic Jewish History that sees the Sephardic heritage as central to Jewish Identity.
Sarna sees American Jewish History strictly out of Ashkenazi lenses.
Not surprisingly, he ends the article with Ashkenazi icon MAHARAL of Prague.
Here is the central problematic being addressed in the article:
Deepening students' Jewish identity is, of course, a noble endeavor, but using American Jewish history as the vehicle to accomplish this aim raises significant problems. What do we do, for example, about unpleasant facts: criminality, slaveholding, intermarriage, or even (for those who teach in a Reform setting) the postwar resurgence of Orthodoxy? How, moreover, will students react later in life when they learn the more complex realities of the American Jewish experience? Will they feel that their religious educators betrayed them? Even now, are we providing students with a portrait of American Jewish history that is as multifaceted and self-critical as their curriculum in American history? And, if not, what message are we unintentionally conveying-not just about American Jewish history but about Jewish education in general?
This in a nutshell is how Sarna sees the situation: The categories of American Judaism are exclusively Ashkenazi ones. But more than this is his ahistorical attitude towards the salient use of Sephardic Jewish Humanism as the paradigm of American Jewish History.
He ends the article with a nod to the future and “human potential”:
Elsewhere, I have spelled out a somewhat different set of reasons for teaching American Jewish history, placing less emphasis on identity and more on tensions and continuities within the American Jewish experience as a whole. In rethinking the issue now, I am inclined to believe there is yet another theme that deserves emphasis, one that those of us engaged in the study and teaching of American Jewish history too often take for granted, not realizing how much of an impression it can make upon our students. The theme is human potential, in our case, the ability of American Jews-young and old, men and women alike-to change the course of history and transform a piece of the world. American Jewish history is, after all, not just a record of events; it is the story of how people shaped events-establishing and maintaining communities, responding to challenges, working for change. Perhaps that is the greatest lesson American Jewish history can offer our students: that they too can make a difference-that the future is theirs to create.
History here is understood as completely beholden to the present; it is the current situation – the Ashkenazi situation – that is central. And this is how it is possible for us to make of history what we wish, rather than process what actually happened and what it means in temporal terms.
The Sarna vision of Jewish History is operative in the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia:
https://www.nmajh.org/coreexhibition/
Sarna is the NMAJH chief historian and is intimately involved in the educational programs:
http://www.harrywalker.com/speakers/jonathan-sarna
We can look at the museum’s core exhibits and see that history is presented in a thematic manner that closely adheres to the way in which Ashkenazi Jews see themselves. The word “Sephardic” never appears in the text description, nor does the heritage of Religious Humanism.
With the exception of Emma Lazarus, author of the poem “The New Colossus” which appears on the Statue of Liberty, the 18 Hall-of-Famers are all Ashkenazim.
http://libertystatepark.com/emma.htm
The HOF list is less geared to strictly historical concerns, and more oriented towards celebrity and sociology, as American Jews seek validation for what they have become, rather than how history has shaped us.
It is telling that Sarna’s “Why Study American Jewish History?” article is based on his contribution to a book of papers called Moving Beyond Haym Salomon: The Teaching of American Jewish History to 20th Century Jews, whose title notes Haym Salomon, only to say that we need to “move beyond” him.
Indeed, that is a perfect encapsulation of the Sarna project: We must transcend the Sephardic past in American Jewish History and reify the dysfunction of the Ashkenazim and their bitter factionalism as a means of processing Jewish History and Jewish Identity.
This should come as no surprise to us, as Sarna has been a dedicated foe of Sephardic Judaism and has sought to silence our voices in his work:
Sarna has succeeded in promoting this Ashkenazi-centric view of Jewish History, as we have seen in the tendentious work of his loyal disciple Zev Eleff:
Eleff is a central figure in The Lehrhaus website, which is notable for its obsession with Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and its dogged valorization of Ashkenazi Modern Orthodoxy:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/lehrhaus/davidshasha/8Zl8QGW3hYY/nnEFi7RgAwAJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/lehrhaus/davidshasha/1kprYc-hdAU/JDaa1oYNDgAJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/lehrhaus/davidshasha/ABywVJtpOmA/_Otw1G6VBwAJ
Even Sarna’s daughter Leah has gotten into the fray with a bizarre article entitled “What if Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik was Born a Woman?”:
The Lehrhaus is very much an extension of the Jonathan Sarna weltanschauung.
For his outstanding efforts as an educator, Professor Sarna has just been honored with a special academic award from Brandeis University where he has taught for many years:
This “rare” honor confirms for Sephardim that we have been shut out of the Jewish institutional discussion, where Ashkenazim completely control the discourse and present Jewish identity strictly in terms of White Jewish Supremacy.
David Shasha