Sephardic Heritage Update 994
David Shasha
Friends,
I would like to wish all our Muslim readers Ramadan Kareem.
We begin this week back in Purim, where Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and Stuart Halpern connect YU, Hobby Lobby Trumpworld, and The Tikvah Fund. Once again, we are faced with the Religious Liberty argument that is heavy on Ashkenazi religion and very light on the actual liberty. It is yet one more Neo-Con triumph in what is left of Trumpworld.
Moving from Right Wing Jews to Right Wing Catholics, we again have the very troubled and confused Ross Douthat trying mightily to make sense of President Biden’s religiosity. I do not recall Douthat trying to make sense of Trump’s religiosity, but that is another question. Regardless, it is yet another shameful performance on Douthat’s reactionary part.
Elizabeth Dias actually makes sense of Biden’s Catholicism, which is in the progressive spirit of the current Pope – the Pope that the Right Wing reactionary Catholics do not like. Indeed, Biden’s religion is a harbinger for what we hope will be a more caring and compassionate world.
And then, of course, there is the Ratzinger. For those who do not recall the previous Pope, Samuel Gregg’s Witherspoon Institute article reminds us that the Right Wingers love the man who supported the Child Molester Priests – similar to those Orthodox rabbis like Norman Lamm and Haskel Lookstein – and continue to sing his praises. Opus Dei lives! Hitler Youth is not so bad! And the current Pope is no good!
It has been a big week for our Sephardi-hating friend Haym Soloveitchik. I have already sent out an article that shows him to be a staunch Anti-Maimonidean, and here we get one of his essays on Jewish legal writing, published of course by Tikvah Tablet, that reinforces the idea of his racism and ethnocentrism. A win all around!
I have drifted away from Harold Bloom over the years, and had nothing to say when he passed last year. Here we have a review of one of his last books – who knows how many more might still be in the Bloom endless pipeline! – which looks at reading and books from the usual Bloomist eccentric manner. Robert Gottlieb provides the analysis.
An excellent piece from Haaretz shows us just how deep Anti-Sephardi racism was – and is – in the Zionist construct. The article reviews the matter of the Israeli Supreme Court and the exclusion which turned into tokenism. Those Sephardim who continue to buy into the Zionist project are dupes who should better understand how Zionism represents Ashkenazim and has thrown us under the White Jewish Supremacy bus.
I am always somewhat dubious about Michael Eric Dyson, who represents for me a Corporate Hip-Hop academic foil to Cornel West. Dyson is a vigorous marketer of his brand and sometimes veers off into Garveyite territory. Here he sermonizes on the racial issues facing America in a robust manner, and yet does not seem to understand that the Apostle Paul was himself a dubious figure whose attacks on Law and Justice might not be the best way of promoting the cause of Civil Rights.
Sticking with dubious religious constructs, we have Shadi Hamid presenting the sins of America in a much more conventionally Right Wing Christian way. It is a very lengthy article that tries to make sense of the Trump era, but in the end only serves to come off like a David Brooks rehash.
I include Gina Bellafante’s takedown of Fran Lebowitz because I am also confused about the elitist Upper East Side appeal of a “humorist” who is not really funny. And her cleverness grates in a way that is both pretentious and snarky.
After all this misery, I am proud to close with Douglas Brinkley’s recollection of the great Baseball giant Hank Aaron. It is indeed appropriate to remember the great slugger this week, as MLB has denied Atlanta, where Aaron played most of his career, the privilege of hosting the All-Star Game. We should also remember how Aaron himself encountered racism as he passed Babe Ruth on the all-time home-run list. I grew up watching and admiring Aaron, who, along with the great Roberto Clemente, was a quiet hero who spoke volumes with his excellence and tenacity as an athlete of color. Aaron did not have the flashy demeanor of many home-run sluggers, but his consistency was a mark of his essential humanity and the way in which he sought to better our society by his sterling example. We still have much to learn from him.
David Shasha
Queen Esther Goes to Hobby Lobby Trumpworld Via Tikvahland: Meir Soloveichik and Stuart Halpern Do the YU Straus Center Neo-Con Dance
By: David Shasha
Joe Biden’s Catholic Moment
By: Ross Douthat
In Biden’s Catholic Faith, an Ascendant Liberal Christianity
By: Eilzabeth Dias
Ratzinger’s Way
By: Samuel Gregg
The Enduring Power of Jewish Legal Writing
By: Haym Soloveitchik
Review Essay: Harold Bloom is Dead. But His ‘Rage for Reading’ is Undiminished
By: Robert Gottlieb
‘In the Whole Sephardi Community There is No Worthy Candidate for the Supreme Court’
By: Gadi Weitz and Yechiam Weitz
St. Paul’s Letter to America
By: Michael Eric Dyson
One Nation, Sinful Under God
By: Shadi Hamid
Everybody Loves Fran. But Why?
By: Gina Bellafante
A Final Interview with Hank Aaron
By: Douglas Brinkley