Sephardic Heritage Update 1020
David Shasha
Friends,
We begin this week’s newsletter with a set of articles on Sephardic Judaism that I first discovered in the Tikvah ASF newsletter. Mohamed Chtatou provides a pretty boring Right Wing Bernard Lewis-Norman Stillman boilerplate review of Andalusian Judaism that has all the necessary facts, but which are presented in a way that would very much appeal to the White Jewish Supremacy, as they lack any serious appreciation of Religious Humanism.
Andras Kilb’s Qantara article sets out to complicate the picture a tad, as he reviews a new introduction to Andalus from Brian Catlos. What I have been sensing for quite a long time is the pressing need, from what is generally a Right Wing political perspective, to erase the work of Maria Rosa Menocal and present Muslim Spain from a Neo-Con perspective. The idea is to put the idea of Convivencia into question, and deploy various forms of Arab-hatred in the scholarship.
On the other end of the White Jewish Supremacy, we have a fascinating article that was re-posted by Tikvah Mosaic magazine on the relationship between Yiddish and Arabic! As the White Jewish Supremacy seeks to erase Sephardim from the discourse, the Tikvah crowd is looking to link their Ashkenazi culture to the Arabs. Indeed, it is impossible to make these things up.
Sticking with the Ashkenazi racists, we have Susan Hattis Rolef who is complaining about Mizrahi discontent in Israel. She is eliding the fact of Ashkenazi racism and apparently blaming it on its Sephardi victims. As Israel is currently a socio-political mess, with Mizrahi Jews supporting the Right Wing Ashkenazi Zionist reactionaries, the question might be moot. But in the end, it remains clear that the White Jewish Supremacy continues to find PILPUL ways to maintain its elite privilege.
Arno Rosenfeld reminds us that there has been much discussion of late on the matter of Afghan Jewry. I will set aside whether this Jewry has an important place in our history, and focus on the fact that the Biden pull-out has been the subject of much HASBARAH anger. Rosenfeld here looks at Jewish sites in that benighted country. Along the way, we once again encounter Schneersohn-Christ Turkey tourist-Kashrut macher Rabbi Mendy Chitrik who we were introduced to in last week’s newsletter. Again, the idea is for Ashkenazim to take the place of Sephardim in anything dealing with Middle Eastern Jewish culture.
An important figure in the displacement of the Sephardim is Zionist icon Abraham Isaac Kook and his mystical-occult form of Jewish Nationalism, which has led to the messianic Settlers. Kook is a big favorite of Self-Hating Sephardim like Rabbi Marc Angel and Rabbi Joseph Dweck. Here Angel offers us a lengthy assessment of Kook and Modern Judaism by Dr. Pinchas Polonsky. It gives us further confirmation of the Anti-Sephardi ethos of YU as we have seen in the work of Haym Soloveitchik.
Daniel Gordis has become one of the shrillest voices in the world of Right Wing Zionist HASBARAH and here he gives us another one of his Anti-Left diatribes on the matter of Hegelian Judaism.
In an interesting take on Menachem Begin’s polemic against German Reparations for the Holocaust, Tikvah Tablet pitbull Liel Leibovitz discusses the matter of Poland, which has been front and center in the Jewish media of late. His hero Begin would be proud of him! For those unfamiliar with the matter, here is a Tikvah post that clarifies it:
https://tikvahfund.org/tikvah-online/begins-speech-on-reparations/
We have, of course, been closely tracking the Anti-Woke screeds of monomaniac Bari Weiss, and here we get Seattle Devin Naar favorite Emily Alhadeff taking on much of the same territory in somewhat confused fashion. The matter of the New Racial Consciousness is bothering many Jews, who ignore their own racial concerns dealing with Zionism and Anti-Semitism, and attack African-Americans who are seeking their own justice. Alhadeff, an Ashkenazi married to a Sephardi, is pretty much all over the place as she tries to fit her views into the larger Tikvah Neo-Con paradigm.
Law and Liberty radical extremist Theodore Dalrymple reminds us that the Right Wing obsession with Edward Said is by no means done with. His hysterical article is very much in the Tikvah spirit, and was re-posted by Mosaic magazine in an effort to continue to undermine the important scholarship of Said; a scholarship praised by the late Nissim Rejwan, who wisely saw it as connected to the Sephardim and the Orientalist racism we face from the Ashkenazim.
We close with a fascinating piece on some YouTube “moral philosopher” named Dhar Mann, who apparently makes Poptrash pronouncements as if he is some profound thinker. With all the discussion of Social Media networks of late, it is important to remember that the common denominator of the Internet “influencers” is their utter ignorance and mercenary greed. Little of actual intellectual or moral substance can be found in a world of bullies and scam artists.
David Shasha
The Golden Age of Judaism in al-Andalus
By: Mohamed Chtatou
Religious Tolerance in Al-Andalus was a Family Affair
By: Andreas Kilb
Yiddish and Arabic Share an Uncommon Commonality
By: Alexander Jabari
Saying Ashkenazim are Elitist Won’t Change Status of Mizrahim
By: Susan Hattis Rolef
What Will Happen to Afghanistan’s Jewish Sites Under the Taliban?
By: Arno Rosenfeld
Rav Kook and His View on the Modernization of Judaism
By: Dr. Pinchas Polonsky
Forgo the Jewish State to Save Liberal Zionism?
By: Daniel Gordis
Why Poland is Right to End Holocaust Property Claims
By: Liel Leibovitz
The Challenge of DEI, CRT, Justice, and the Jewish Community
By: Emily Alhadeff
The Challenges of Creating a Jewish Racial Equity Statement
By: Emily Alhadeff
Edward Said: Reflections on a Patrician Radical
By: Theodore Dalrymple
Dhar Mann, YouTube’s Moral Philosopher
By: Ezra Marcus