New Article: The Comfortable White Jewish Supremacy World of Rabbi Marc Angel
David Shasha
The Comfortable White Jewish Supremacy World of Rabbi Marc Angel
We just received an e-mail newsletter from Rabbi Angel that was chock full of the usual White Jewish Supremacy:
https://www.jewishideas.org/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=1531
That White Jewish Supremacy is very accommodating to the Angel family and its vast financial empire:
https://www.jewishideas.org/about-us
Once again, we see how it pays to be on the right side of the Ashkenazim:
Rabbi Angel has a long career of service to his congregation and community. He has served as President of the Rabbinical Council of America, the Rabbinic Alumni of RIETS, Sephardic House, and various other organizations. He is co-founder of the International Rabbinic Fellowship and its first President. He has served as an officer and board member of UJA-Federation of New York, the HealthCare Chaplaincy, American Sephardi Federation, Cancer Care and other agencies. He has won national rabbinic awards from the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations and the United Jewish Communities, and the Finkle Award of the New York Board of Rabbis. Author and editor of 36 books and hundreds of articles, he has won a National Jewish Book Award in the category of Jewish Thought for his book, The Orphaned Adult, published by Human Sciences Press; and a National Jewish Book Finalist Award in the field of Sephardic Studies for his book, Foundations of Sephardic Spirituality: The Inner Life of Jews of the Ottoman Empire; and another National Jewish Book Finalist Award for Jewish Scholarship for his book Maimonides, Spinoza and Us: Toward an Intellectually Vibrant Judaism. The latter two books were published by Jewish Lights Publishers.
It is a pedigree that has paid huge dividends.
First, we have the announcement of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah’s Day of Learning:
https://www.jewishideas.org/yemei-iyun-bible-and-jewish-thought
Angel was involved in the rabbinical accreditation process of YCT’s graduates after the RCA denied their Orthodox status:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshivat_Chovevei_Torah#History
He remains on the school’s advisory board, the only Sephardi in that group:
https://www.yctorah.org/about/leadership/jewish-leadership-advisory-board/
His son Hayyim is apparently on the YCT faculty, also the only Sephardi in that group:
http://www.torahleadership.org/faculty.html
Though he does not appear on the YCT website:
https://www.yctorah.org/yct-rabbinical-school/faculty/
As we can clearly see, the Angels are very comfortable with the White Jewish Supremacy, as their Sephardi identity is snugly aligned with the Washington Heights Soloveitchik racist mentality:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19iVeUgl2UVZwYW2dg3hkknljJqfPwcwiApvO3ejCi9s/edit
Once again, it is worth recounting Soloveitchik’s attack on Maimonides and Jewish Humanism from his book The Halakhic Mind:
It is pertinent to note that modern Jewish philosophers have adopted a very unique method. The source of knowledge, for them, is Medieval Jewish philosophy. The living historical religious consciousness which embraces both antiquity and modern times is ignored. Such a method cannot cope with the problems of Jewish philosophy for three reasons. First, medieval Jewish thought, despite its accomplishments and merit, has not taken deep root in Jewish historical religious realism and has not shaped Jewish religious world perspective. When we speak of philosophy of religion, we must have in mind foremost the philosophy of religious realities experienced by the entire community, and not some abstract metaphysics cultivated by an esoteric group of philosophers. Second, we know that the most central concepts of Jewish philosophy are rooted in ancient Greek and medieval Arabic thought and are not of Jewish origin at all. It is impossible to reconstruct a unique Jewish world perspective out of alien material. (p. 100)
I have discussed the matter in more detail in my article on Samson Raphael Hirsch:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1osm0botpWsc_L-yS0ZvOOD-FPmIY75vb7T83BjQI9wE/edit
Hirsch, one of the most important figures in what would eventually become Modern Orthodox Judaism, provided the template for Soloveichik’s attack on Sephardim as not being fully Jewish:
This great man, Maimonides, to whom, and to whom alone, we owe the preservation of practical Judaism to our time, is responsible, because he sought to reconcile Judaism with the difficulties which confronted it from without, instead of developing it creatively from within, for all the good and the evil which bless and afflict the heritage of the father. His peculiar mental tendency was Arabic-Greek, and his conception of the purpose of life the same. He entered into Judaism from without, bringing with him opinions of whose truth he had convinced himself from extraneous sources and — be reconciled. For him, too, self-perfection through the knowledge of truth was the highest aim, the practical he deemed subordinate. For him knowledge of God was the end, not the means; hence he devoted his intellectual powers to speculations upon the essence of Deity, and sought to bind Judaism to the results of his speculative investigations as to postulates of science or faith. The Mizvoth became for him merely ladders, necessary only to conduct to knowledge or to protect against error, this latter often only the temporary and limited error of polytheism. Mishpatim became only rules of prudence, Mitzvoth as well; Chukkim rules of health, teaching right feeling, defending against the transitory errors of the time ; Both ordinances, designed to promote philosophical or other concepts; all this having no foundation in the eternal essence of things, not resulting from their eternal demand on me, or from my eternal purpose and task, no eternal symbolizing of an un- changeable idea, and not inclusive enough to form a basis for the totality of the commandments.
There are “real” Jews, and then there are the Sephardim.
It is likely for this reason that Angel has called his organization “The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals”; Jewish being the key term indicating his rejection of Andalusian Convivencia:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/_nrcdGWekO0/m/9HlHPrs9AQAJ
When in Rome, do like the Ashkenazim!
Next, we got the announcement of the new issue of Angel’s inaptly-named journal Conversations; a publication that remains strictly within the circumscribed bounds of the YU echo-chamber:
https://www.jewishideas.org/sites/jewishideas.org/files/Conversations36.pdf
I have discussed the matter in the introduction to my article “A Broken Frame: Sephardi Occlusion and the Repairing of Jewish Dysfunction”:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZZLhopNWNnqMb0GW2OQGcripP8SnZojsmxamctBLDzU/edit
Naturally, the new issue of the journal opens with a shameless tribute to his son Hayyim, as the family is very proud of tooting its own horn, as we have seen before:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/PA5SHFRQUII/m/P9BtjwJBBAAJ
The issue also contains a translation from fellow YU traveler Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, another Self-Hater, of a short piece from Rabbi Ben-Zion Uziel, a Sephardi favorite of the Religious Zionists:
https://www.yutorah.org/_cdn/_materials/R-Uziel-535603.pdf
Sadly, under the failed leadership of Rabbi Uziel, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Palestine-Israel from 1939 to 1953, critical years in the tragedy of Sephardic history in its losing encounter with Zionism, the Porat Yosef rabbinical seminary, leading the charge, moved us into a Haredi Yeshivish direction, as Uziel utterly ignored the lethal Ashkenazi racism that stigmatized many of the new immigrants from the Arab-Muslim world in the early days of the state:
https://www.jpost.com/experts/rabbi-meir-mazuz-and-the-battle-for-orthodox-judaism-341771
But the Ashkenazim continue to look to him as the “Right Sephardi,” as he affirmed their Religious Zionism:
https://www.yutorah.org/_cdn/_materials/R-Uziel-535603.pdf
Other than that, there is no actual Sephardic content or contributor in the journal.
Except for Angel’s grandson Andrew Arking, son of his daughter Ronda:
https://firstcollege.princeton.edu/people/andrew-arking-22
Indeed, for the Angels it is all in the MISHPOCHEH:
https://www.jewishideas.org/node/1568/pdf
It is good to see how the Ashkenazim have found a strong ally in Angel and his family.
Just to put a ribbon on the White Jewish Supremacy arrogance, Angel posted his piece on the weekly Torah reading, hypocritically attacking the “Me First” mentality:
https://www.jewishideas.org/me-first-thoughts-parashat-ki-tetsei
It is indeed truly impossible to make these things up:
“Cutters” are despicable to us because they show disdain for us and everyone else on line. They think only of themselves, without casting a thought as to how the rest of us feel. We are not irritated with them only because they cost us a few more seconds in line; we are agitated because they depreciate and insult us by their arrogant selfishness in thinking themselves more important than the rest of us who are patiently waiting our turn.
Over the course of his very well-remunerated career, as he has aggressively sought the approbation of the YU Sephardi-haters, Angel has been a living example of cutting corners and abandoning the struggle of Sephardi dignity and equality in the Jewish community.
It has been some years since I wrote my article “The Idiot Sephardim: A Confrontation Between a Sephardic Student and a Yeshiva University Professor,” but it is always worth keeping in mind when we consider Self-Hating climbers like Angel:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fUx-B5XHPIrr7b_7xS4ZpmiEmvo_qBy0pKqOAtmJ5WI/edit?usp=sharing
That racist YU professor insisted that there were no Sephardic writers included in his Introduction to Modern Hebrew Literature class because we were “Poor and Uneducated.” It is something we have seen many times before, and will likely continue to see in the future.
Indeed, we continue to remain unwelcome in the realms of Modern Jewish Philosophy and canon studies:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/PIQl0sj5em8
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/ytx5ztODWRA/m/MiqL6_6fBQAJ
It is an example that we recently saw in the work of Mijal Bitton, another YU loyalist, who, like Angel, wants to use her privileged place in the White Jewish Hegemony to also act as the “Right Sephardi” and to represent the community as she tramples on its cultural values:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/blWoxt23bvk/m/ZAMDGuYsAgAJ
Both Bitton and Angel were very much impressed with the UAE Kushner move to impose Ashkenazi hegemony on the Arab-Muslim world:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/2sENwLmhDmQ/m/-iwOWWWRAgAJ
https://www.jewishideas.org/article/courage-and-wisdom-make-peace
It is clear that Angel knows the racist world he lives in, yet continues to express himself with sheer CHUTZPAH as he watches Sephardim being forcibly kept off the Adult Jewish Table, as he continues to cash his Ashkenazi checks and receive his many Ashkenazi honors and awards.
David Shasha