New Article: Devi Mays and the Wages of Sephardic Self-Hatred: Ashkenazi Academics Present Us as Racist Degenerates
David Shasha
Devi Mays and the Wages of Sephardic Self-Hatred: Ashkenazi Academics Present Us as Racist Degenerates
This brief article will provide some contextual resources for the actual ramifications of Sephardic Self-Hatred in the Jewish world and its very canny White Jewish Supremacy, as it seeks the elimination of the classical Sephardic heritage and the tradition of Religious Humanism.
For those who might not be aware, Ashkenazim have been very anxious and concerned with the Sephardic heritage and its many achievements.
Former JTS leader Ismar Schorsch gave voice to that anxiety in his much-cited article “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy in Nineteenth-Century Germany”:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AcnHjkeHyLqyjv5QowWDLyd2ipgq83kD/view?ths=true
It thus came as no surprise that his son Jonathan would take the negative thesis one step further in his work on Sephardim and the Slave Trade:
https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004392489/BP000036.xml
That indeed is an excellent way to demonize Sephardim.
Dad would have certainly approved!
And so would Rabbi Shalom Morris:
https://shalommorris.com/2016/01/09/conference-on-jews-and-slavery/
Back in 2016 Morris made us aware of a conference in Potsdam on Jews and Slavery that prominently featured Schorsch on his native Teutonic academic soil.
The Morris post shows us the direct line from Sephardic Self-Hatred to White Jewish Supremacy.
Well played!
I have discussed the shift from literary, intellectual, and religious study of the Sephardic heritage in the university in my article on the New Jewish Social Science, which was occasioned by yet another Morris post:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_k1I5KoFmIK0Qk7Zfd6HvTPo3iYaWL6YpuRp3VY3tgA/edit
In that article I referred to the pioneering work of Daniel Schroeter, whose 2002 book The Sultan’s Jew provided an early example of the trend:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v2oZfd9akexSEWdfgydCc52SEvy46AucaYAf-MBZYCw/edit
Schroeter’s aim, as I indicated in the article’s title, “A Portrait of the Sephardi as Swindler,” was to present an Orientalized version of Sephardim; as the book’s main character is seen as a slimeball cheat:
The world that Meir Macnin entered at the start of the 19th century was one where Jews and Arabs were seen equally as part of the same barbarity. Semites both, they were seen as loathsome caricatures who had little ethical character and were out to exploit their Christian neighbors. In spite of this, the British, like their European peers, continued to do business with the Arab south, as had been done for many centuries. But the tide was now turning and Europe was developing a greater civilization than that of the Arabs who had once dominated the continent of the North.
Schroeter, as is standard in the White Jewish Supremacy, is fully intent on displaying the debased side of the Sephardic heritage, and lines up the evidence and presents the context in such a way to promote a Bernard Lewis-style Orientalism:
Jewish Social Studies, the primary organ of the New Jewish Social Science and its residual racism, just published an article by University of Michigan Professor Devi Mays, entitled “Becoming Illegal: Sephardi Jews in the Opiate Trade”:
https://www.academia.edu/43671377/Becoming_Illegal_Sephardi_Jews_in_the_Opiate_Trade
Mays’ CV does not give any indication of her background or why she became involved in Sephardic affairs:
https://lsa.umich.edu/judaic/people/faculty/devimays/_jcr_content/file.res/MAYS.CV.Feb%202018.pdf
But it does provide a treasure trove on the theme “Sephardim as Degenerates.”
There is her book Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora:
https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=32274
And her article “‘I Killed Her Because I Loved Her Too Much’: Gender and Violence in the 20th-Century Sephardi Diaspora”:
And yet another masterpiece of degeneracy, “’Between Desdemona and Othello’: Jewish Honor, Gender, and Sexuality in a Mexico City Murder”:
Indeed, she is less a scholar in Sephardic Studies, and more a scholar in Sephardic Criminality!
Her appearance on an Ottoman History podcast “Turkino” linked her to another prominent Self-Hating Sephardi, Devin Naar:
http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2019/05/turkino.html
The “fraud” theme should be familiar by now:
Leo lived in New York City with his family. Born and educated in the cosmopolitan Ottoman capital of Istanbul, he was now part of the vibrant and richly-textured social fabric of America's largest metropolis as one of the tens of thousands of Sephardic Jews who migrated to the US. Though he spoke four languages, Leo held jobs such as garbage collector and shoeshine during the Great Depression. Sometimes he couldn't find any work at all. But his woes were compounded when immigration authorities discovered he had entered the US using fraudulent documents. Yet Leo was not alone; his story was the story of many Jewish migrants throughout the world during the interwar era who saw the gates closing before them at every turn. Through Leo and his brush with deportation, we examine the history of the US as would-be refuge for Jews facing persecution elsewhere, highlight the indelible link between anti-immigrant policy and illicit migration, and explore transformations in the history of race in New York City through the history of Leo and his family.
Mays is naturally allied to the Sarah Abrevaya Stein and Julia Phillips Cohen cabal that I discuss in my article on the New Jewish Social Science.
You can see the internal ties in a roundtable from the 2018 AJS conference:
The Monday session, listed as 5.12 on page 102, features the usual suspects:
“JEWRY’S STEPCHILDREN”? SEPHARDIC AND MIZRAHI JEWS AND THE BOUNDARIES OF MODERN JEWISH HISTORY
Moderator: Aron Rodrigue (Stanford University)
Discussants: Devi Mays (University of Michigan)
Daniel J. Schroeter (University of Minnesota)
Sarah Abrevaya Stein (University of California, Los Angeles)
“Stepchildren” indeed!
And so it is, that we are on the “Boundaries” of Modern Jewish History.
What better way to fulfill the proverbial self-fulfilling prophecy than to eliminate Sephardic Intellectual History and its vast cultural impact, and replace it with Sephardic Racist Degenerates.
This is the end result of a lengthy process of transformation that has been brought on by the odious Bernard Lewis and his loyal student Norman Stillman, as Sephardim are thrown into the Orientalist maelstrom.
It affirms what Lewis said back in 2002:
The conflict, coexistence, or combination of these two traditions [i.e. the Judeo-Christian and the Judeo-Islamic] within a single small state, with a shared religion and a common citizenship and allegiance, should prove illuminating. For Israel, this issue may have an existential significance, since the survival of the state, surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned by neighbors who reject its very right to exist, may depend on its largely Western-derived qualitative edge.
Ashkenazim have removed Sephardim from the Adult Jewish Table, and are thus able to say whatever they want about us.
Only Ashkenazim can analyze us, as Sephardim themselves intensify their own Self-Hatred in a way that will allow them to function professionally in a corrupt Jewish world.
David Shasha