New Article: “Proclaim Liberty”: Rabbi Meir Soloveichik Goes Full Orwellian in Classic Tikvah Fund Style
David Shasha
“Proclaim Liberty”: Rabbi Meir Soloveichik Goes Full Orwellian in Classic Tikvah Fund Style
The last time I visited the Strand bookstore here in New York, I wrote the following article:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/yPYnKvrL-Nk
It had to do with a new book of essays that turns Maimonides into an Ashkenazi Anti-Maimonidean!
That pesky White Jewish Supremacy again.
I was forced into expanding what was originally intended as a brief note into an article because, just a few days after writing it, Rabbi Marc Angel proudly promoted the racist book on his Jewish Ideas website:
https://www.jewishideas.org/article/was-rambam-hareidi-rabbi
Once again, we saw Angel bowing and scraping before his Ashkenazi masters, as he dutifully represented YU Modern Orthodoxy, rather than the classical Sephardic heritage of Religious Humanism.
It is what I have called the New Convivencia.
In any case, a couple of weeks after that Strand visit, I spotted this gem and found myself in a very similar situation:
I became very animated when I saw that our dear “Sephardic” friend Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Angel’s successor at Congregation Shearith Israel, was involved with the project.
The book was published under the banner of the YU Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, which Soloveichik heads up:
Here is a photo from their website which tellingly features the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:
https://www.yu.edu/straus/about
Here is what Soloveichik had to say about his hero:
Justice Scalia’s visit to The Straus Center in 2013 was one of the most memorable moments in Yeshiva’s history. We are looking forward to learning more about his life, his faith, and his worldview, with the Justice’s son, Chris Scalia, whose collection of his father’s speeches has received raved reviews and become a bestseller.
Indeed, Scalia was posthumously honored by the Center in 2017 in a program featuring his aforementioned son:
https://blogs.yu.edu/news/straus-center-welcomes-christopher-scalia/
Unsurprisingly, The Center has published a White Jewish Supremacist book, under Soloveichik’s expert imprimatur:
https://www.korenpub.com/maggid_en_usd/torah-and-western-thought.html
There we saw that the contributors and subjects were all Ashkenazim.
No room for Sephardim in “Torah and Western Thought.”
All booked up!
Soloveichik’s new Straus Center book on American History and the Hebrew Bible is more ideologically-driven political manipulation that directly connects it to my previous discussions of The Tikvah Fund and its place in the new Trump Alt-Right Christian hierarchy.
Here is a brief sampling of those articles, a Tikvah Fund “Greatest Hits” if you will:
The new book is aptly titled “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States: A Sourcebook”:
Here is the TOC and introduction:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eabB45428rDhMLbt4eCRDrmlE5oI0hNf/view?usp=docs_home&ths=true
And here is the book description from the Amazon website:
Turning to the Hebrew Bible for inspiration, solidarity, comfort, and purpose, as the members of the First Continental Congress did, is a common theme in American history. In fact, one cannot understand the American political tradition without understanding America's relationship with the Five Books of Moses. This sourcebook assembles the primary sources of American public history and allows the reader to hear the Hebraic echoes that have formed the cultural vocabulary of the Puritan settlers, revolutionaries, African slaves, leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, and the broader population.
It will surely do very well at the Hobby Lobby Bible Museum bookstore, as it promotes the Hebrew Bible as a tool of the Trump Republican Party:
Indeed, Soloveichik is a key figure in the spurious “Religious Liberty” movement, as we saw when he participated in a Hoover Institute event with Senator Mike Lee of Utah:
He has been a longtime Republican operative:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390444327204577615930677211966
His very enthusiastic participation in a religious delegation against an Obama-era Birth Control mandate shored up his Evangelical Christian bona fides:
The “Proclaim Liberty” tome is thus noteworthy for its misleading title which has nothing to do with true “Liberty,” as in Freedom and Civil Rights, but rather with instituting theocratic principles that would deny many Americans their Religious Freedom.
It is once again the Small Government Conservatives seeking to expand the role of government to control the personal lives of all Americans under their watchful eye.
In addition to this nifty Orwellian language move, we should also note the inclusion of only one Jew in the anthology of source texts:
Indeed, in what is an anthology of exclusively Christian writers, Soloveichik made sure to put his hero Jonas Phillips into the mix.
Soloveichik showcased Phillips in his 2016 Wall Street Journal Op-Ed “The Jews of the American Revolution”:
For the record, Phillips was actually demanding an end to coercive religious tests – the very opposite of what the New Christian Radicals are seeking, as they try to force their beliefs on the rest of us:
https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/9/against-religious-tests
Look no further than Mike Lee himself – likely with an assist from his faith partner Soloveichik – to upend the issue of religious tests with a misleading PILPUL duplicity.
Phillips refused to swear an oath of allegiance to Christianity, but Lee today wants to make sure that Christians can impose their views on America from the federal bench!
Some difference indeed.
Once again, for those who have not read it, here is the full text of Phillips’ extraordinary 1787 letter, explicitly calling for Religious Freedom for all Americans, regardless of their beliefs:
With leave and Submission I address my Self To those in whome there is wisdom understanding and knowledge. they are the honorable personages appointed and Made overseers of a part of the terrestrial globe of the Earth, Namely the 13 united states of america in Convention Assembled, the Lord preserve them amen.
I the subscriber being one of the people called Jews of the City of Philadelphia, a people scattered and despersed among all nations do behold with Concern that among the laws in the Constitution of Pennsylvania their is a Clause Sect 10 to viz.—I do belive in one God the Creator and governour of the universe the Rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked—and I do acknowledge the scriptures of the old and New testement to be given by devine inspiration—To Swear and belive that the new testement was given by devine inspiration is absolutly against the Religious principle of a Jew and is against his conscience to take any such oath. By the above law a Jew is deprived of holding any public office or place of Government which is a Contradectory to the bill of Right Sect. 2 viz.—1
That all men have a natural and inalienable Right To worship almighty God according to the dictates of their own Conscience and understanding, and that no man aught or of Right can be compelled to attend any Religious Worship or Erect or support any place of worship or Maintain any minister contrary to or against his own free will and Consent nor can any man who acknowledges the being of a God be Justly deprived or abridged of any Civil Right as a Citizen on account of his Religious Sentiments or peculiar mode of Religious Worship and that no authority can or aught to be vested in or assumed by any power what Ever that shall in any Case interfere or in any manner Controul the Right of Conscince in the free Exercise of Religious Worship.
It is well Known among all the Citizens of the 13 united states that the Jews have been true and faithfull whigs; and during the late contest with England they have been foremost in aiding and assisting the states with their lifes and fortunes, they have supported the cause, have bravely fought and bleed for Liberty which they can not Enjoy.
Therefore if the honourable Convention shall in their Wisdom think fit and alter the said oath and leave out the words to viz.—and I do acknowledge the scriptures of the new testement to be given by devine inspiration, then the Israelites will think themself happy to live under a government where all Religious societys are on an Eaquel footing. I solecet this favour for my Self my Children and posterity and for the benefit of all the Israelites through the 13 united States of america.
My prayer is unto the Lord—May the people of this states Rise up as a great and young lion, May they prevail against their Enemies, May the degrees of honour of his Exceellency the president of the Convention George Washington, be ⟨Extolled⟩ and Raise up, May Everyone speak of his glorious Exploits—May God prolong his days among us in this land of Liberty—May he lead the armies against his Enemys as he has done hereuntofore, May God Extend peace unto the united States—May they get up to the highest Prosperitys—May God Extend peace to them and their Seed after them so long as the Sun and moon Endureth—and May the almighty God of our father Abraham Isaac and Jacob endue this Noble Assembly with wisdom Judgement and unamity in their Councills, and may they have the Satisfaction to see that their present toil and labour for the wellfair of the united States may be approved of Through all the world and perticular by the united States of america, is the ardent prayer of Sires Your Most devoted obed. Servant
Unlike the current Trumpworld push to impose Christianity in the public arena, Phillips demanded the opposite: to be free of Christianity and allowed to be Jewish without any government coercion, as our Constitution promised.
That in Soloveichik’s world has become a distinction without a difference, and which makes a mockery of Phillips’ bold plea.
As I wrote in my article attacking the Soloveichik WSJ Op-Ed, Jonas Phillips fully adapted to the values of Sephardic Jewish Humanism and our cosmopolitan cultural orientation that was endemic to the Shearith Israel tradition.
He was certainly no Ashkenazi religious fanatic.
But Soloveichik, like his SI predecessor Angel, is a proud member of the New Convivencia; that execrable alliance of Evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews under the Zionist yoke. Religious fanaticism is the very air that he breathes.
We must therefore acknowledge that the “Religious Liberty” movement is about imposing Christian values on all Americans, in defiance of the Constitution – and of George Washington’s famous letter to the Touro Synagogue:
https://www.tourosynagogue.org/history-learning/gw-letter
The Washington letter is included in the Soloveichik book, but the Moses Seixas letter that initiated the discussion was emphatically not included:
https://www.facinghistory.org/nobigotry/the-letters/letter-moses-seixas-george-washington
I would assume that Soloveichik excluded the Seixas letter because, unlike Phillips, he was not an Ashkenazi!
I have noted how such exclusion works in my article attacking Soloveichik’s WSJ Op-Ed by presenting the historical figure of Moses Lindo, who brought Phillips to this country as an indentured servant and helped integrate him into the Jewish community:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9998-lindo-moses
Here is the passage in the Wikipedia entry that explains the connection:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Phillips#Childhood_and_emigration
Indeed, there are multiple agendas in Soloveichik’s work that should be duly noted and processed.
He has clearly shown himself to be a loyal Christian operative and Sephardi-hater as he continues to work on behalf of Trump:
His aim is not simply to innocently provide information about the Hebrew Bible’s place in American History – certainly an unobjectionable thing on its own.
Rather, his aim is to impose a benighted religious fundamentalism on all Americans who will be forced to obey the dictates of the Christian Right and their Trumpworld allies.
Do not be fooled by the window dressing; grave danger lurks underneath the surface.
David Shasha