New Article: The Ghost of Moses Seixas Haunts Us All: Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and the ASF Take Us Back to Pottersville
David Shasha
The Ghost of Moses Seixas Haunts Us All: Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and the ASF Take Us Back to Pottersville
For those who might have missed it, here again is my article on Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which discusses a debate on Sephardim and Ashkenazim conducted at Congregation Shearith Israel back in 1976:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/DBEbnGMCXC4
Here is the text of the proceedings:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1NQdm28qvvXd29FZzlYVFk5dXc/edit
The debate between then-SI Rabbi Marc Angel and Malcolm Stern had Angel taking the Ashkenazi side and Stern taking the Sephardi side!
And we know how that turned out.
It brought us straight into Pottersville, that dark place where the Ashkenazim control all Jewish representation and where Sephardim count for nothing.
In his pre-New Year’s Friday Night Lights program, the current SI rabbi had what to say about the classic Capra movie:
https://files.constantcontact.com/9a50190d001/447b00e8-af31-4dc4-9f43-23a98bb4e28a.pdf
It is worthwhile to reproduce Rabbi Meir Soloveichik’s comment from the source sheet:
To live in time and feel its rhythm, one must also move from the memory of the past to the unreality of the future...one must go from events that were and are no longer, toward that which will be real someday- from reminiscing to anticipating. To live in time, he says, means to be committed to a great past and to an unborn future. Time awareness also contains a moral element: responsibility for emerging events and intervention in the historical process. Man, according to Judaism, should try to mold and fashion the future. That is exactly why he has been created as a free agent. There is no need for freedom if only transient and marginal decisions are at stake. Man is free to reach central and basic decisions that will determine his and some-times the world’s future.
Read in light of my article on The Tikvah Fund posted shortly before the SI source sheet was sent out, Soloveichik’s White Jewish Neo-Con Master-of-the-Universe Supremacy is a fascinating confirmation of my thesis about the Tikvah future:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/gbgbI0HHmzk
The theme of Time and Freedom is an interesting one, as we connect Angel to Soloveichik through YU and its Anti-Sephardic values.
The current SI shows us what it means when Sephardic authority is abdicated, as Ashkenazim impose on us by fiat their dysfunctional hubris and reject our cultural cosmopolitanism.
Only the White Man owns Time.
I was particularly struck by this bold sentence:
There is no need for freedom if only transient and marginal decisions are at stake.
Is he talking about the Sephardim he has vanquished?
His imposition of Neo-Con Tikvah values has indeed wiped out the venerable tradition of Gershom Mendes Seixas:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/lLmkIXofKwE/m/0_19VBhpBAAJ
He has proudly “Proclaimed Liberty” in The Federalist Society manner:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/SvAkVwHpJUU/m/y50PJbkPBAAJ
Indeed, Soloveichik is obsessed with Religious Freedom, as we saw when he united with fellow Trumpist, Senator Mike Lee, at the Hoover Institute:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/JVae6I3QlmM/m/rDql86i4CQAJ
And he has given us effusive praise for the Whore of Trump and her attacks on the Establishment Clause:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/fomWxZTWdq0/m/PIk-NtmmAwAJ
It is a very different sense of Religious Freedom than the one which Moses Seixas demanded of George Washington:
https://www.tourosynagogue.org/history-learning/gw-letter
Here is the Seixas plea:
Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now (with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events) behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People—a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance—but generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language, equal parts of the great governmental Machine.
And here is what our first president answered in return:
While I received with much satisfaction your address replete with expressions of esteem, I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you that I shall always retain grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced on my visit to Newport from all classes of citizens.
The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security.
If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good government, to become a great and happy people.
The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my administration and fervent wishes for my felicity.
May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.
May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.
It is a textbook definition of Religious Humanism.
Indeed, it is always worth re-reading Washington’s proclamation of Religious Liberty, which is the antithesis of the current Federalist Society Trumpist iteration:
The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
Here is the key point again, in case you might have missed it:
May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.
Religious Freedom means that we shall not be made “afraid” by others not of our particular religious persuasion!
That principle is now being imperilled by the Tikvah Soloveichiks of the world, who seek to impose an intolerant Trumpist Christian theocracy on us:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/W2F21yO7Plg/m/DLIuweZaBQAJ
It is in this way that the Pottersville model has now entered into the Sephardic consciousness.
Marc Angel’s pro-Ashkenazi advocacy in 1976 has led to the evisceration of the Sephardic heritage, and the imposition of a White Jewish future on us, as I discussed in my Tikvah article.
Sephardim no longer have any agency at SI, as they have no agency at the ASF:
https://mailchi.mp/asf/onward2021?e=9f39c396e1
Indeed, both of the e-mails from SI and the ASF promote Ashkenazi supremacy as we can see in the very arrogant wording of the ASF missive, sent out with the unbelievable title “Who CARES About Sepharadim?”:
The ASF’s perseverance pursuing our purpose in the face of adversity was also rewarded with scores of articles in the world’s leading publications and media coverage on every continent. This unsolicited recognition reflects the quality and significance of the ASF’s efforts to preserve and promote the history, traditions, and rich mosaic culture of Greater Sephardic communities, as well as the ASF’s effectiveness representing the Sephardic voice in Jewish communal and diplomatic affairs.
The verbiage never speaks to the historic destruction of the classical Sephardic heritage; rather, it boasts of the ASF’s firm control of the media discourse and the way it has connected positively to the very White Jewish Supremacy that is the cause of our eclipse.
The ASF asks us to forget that we do not even run our own institutions.
Ashkenazim apparently care more about us than we do about ourselves!
How’s that for some prime paternalism?
We have seen how this paternalism worked out in the UAE HASBARAH matter; another Jewish project controlled exclusively by Ashkenazim:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/tdbyFlzaAQc/m/AbTe-knZAwAJ
Clever marketing strategies cannot replace the actual intellectual-moral substance of Sephardic Jewish Humanism and our pitiful lack of representation in the Jewish world.
A debased Orientalism will not do it.
The Ashkenazi-run ASF does not present the cultural realia of the Sephardic heritage in its relation to American civilization, as I have presented it in my article “The Central Place of Religious Humanism in Judaism and American Civilization: Episodes and Figures in Cultural History”:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ammiyFOcYQs
In place of our traditional culture, we have the very unthreatening ASF “Rich Mosaic,” that does not explain why Sephardim like the late Rabbi Jose Faur have been ignored, not only by the Sephardic community, but in the larger academic Jewish world:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/OOpZzMziYP0/m/HWO4PrCMBQAJ
The ASF never invited Faur to speak at the Center for Jewish History.
More than this, they even worked diligently to make sure that a proposed lecture series in which he was included, and which also included a tribute to the late Maria Rosa Menocal, would not be permitted in the CJH building.
It was a particularly bitter pill for me to swallow, given how brutally ineffective the ASF has been over many years.
We will recall that the ASF vigorously promoted one of its leaders, Mijal Bitton, who sought to undermine the Sephardic teachings of Faur in a Tikvah-friendly manner:
Bitton, along with her fellow SY rabbi-daughter Sara Labaton, has emerged as a favorite of the White Jewish Supremacy at the Shalom Hartman Institute, whose North American president, Yehuda Kurtzer, has showed us exactly why the ASF has failed in so abject a manner:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/DX2nwC4r6OI
The great Anti-Colonialist political philosopher Frantz Fanon has warned us of what happens when those with “Black Skin” don “White Masks”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Skin,_White_Masks
The sad reality of ASF Orientalism was made clear when its director Jason Guberman sat down with Daniel Pipes to discuss matters of great HASBARAH concern:
https://www.meforum.org/61793/guberman-on-digitally-preserving-jewish-sites
Sephardic representation is not a matter of empty taxonomies, of taking inventories of dead cultures and moribund communities, as the ASF has always been happy to do, but to look at what the actual Sephardic role in the contemporary Jewish world is at the moment, and how our erasure relates to the majoritarian Ashkenazi rejection of our traditional values.
As we can see with Meir Soloveichik, Marc Angel, and the ASF, Sephardic representation at present is nothing.
The future has spoken!
David Shasha