New Article: Looking through Rabbi Ezra Labaton’s Bookshelf
David Shasha
Looking through Rabbi Ezra Labaton’s Bookshelf
In addition to the problem of Anti-Sephardi racism coming from the majority Ashkenazi Jewish community, we have the even more intractable problem of Sephardim who have relinquished their cultural-intellectual heritage in a way that empowers and emboldens the Ashkenazi racists.
In a recent SHU article written by Daniel Harari we have seen the deeply negative role played in this process by the late Isaac Shalom, the driving force behind the American Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn:
In his trenchant words:
Isaac Shalom was an individual who wielded immense power during the formative years of the Syrian-Sephardic community. A founder of a successful business, Oriental Jobbers, he provided many of the Syrian immigrants with their peddling wares, working with them on credit. He enabled these individuals to create lives and livelihoods for themselves by creating for them a system in which they could work while they acculturated to America. Isaac Shalom had an outsize influence in the community as well, founding Magen David Yeshiva and ending the Magen David Talmud Torah, establishing the Magen David Federation which attempted to consolidate the charity giving of the community, and advocating for the Ozar Hatorah school system in the Middle East and North Africa. He would direct the dealings of these organizations and was involved in many more. This arrangement enabled him to move the community in the direction he chose using his organizations and its leaders as his proxies. Between his commercial and philanthropic efforts, he positioned himself as someone who could make or break whoever he chose.
It is critical to note that the De-Sephardification process that Shalom began was closely tied to a dictatorial authoritarianism and a code of institutional secrecy that remains the basic template of the Brooklyn Syrian Jewish community, which has eliminated open discussion of issues and institutional transparency.
One of the main effects of Shalom’s rigid leadership was to undermine the native rabbinate, led by the brilliant Jewish Humanist Hakham Matloub Abadi, and impose an Ashkenazified Judaism on the community. It was a process that began with his founding of the Ozar Hatorah schools in North Africa, which were closely tied to Ashkenazi rabbinic institutions like the Mirrer Yeshiva here in Brooklyn.
Shalom embraced the Ashkenazi Orthodox vision and resolutely rejected the old ways of Levantine Judaism with its roots in Babylonia and Spain.
In the 1960s a new movement was afoot to bring Yeshiva University Modern Orthodoxy into the community.
One of the primary leaders of this movement was Ezra Labaton, who became a devoted disciple of the “Rav,” Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.
Rabbi Labaton even went to the extreme lengths of moving to Boston, where the icon of Modern Orthodoxy lived, where he matriculated for his doctoral degree and basked in the plangent light of his hero.
The development of a YU weltanschauung in the Brooklyn Sephardic community has led to a vicious battle between Modern Orthodoxy and Haredi Orthodoxy that continues to bedevil us.
Back in 2014 I wrote an article that discussed in detail the late Rabbi Labaton’s career and his now-faltering vision to impose an Ashkenazi Modern Orthodox diktat on the Sephardim:
We recently received word of a public event just held in his honor:
December 29th, 2016- Hanukah Lighting and Program
7:45- Ocean Township Lighting Nerot Hanukah in Memory of Rabbi Dr. Ezra Labaton with Ocean Township Mayor, Christoper P. Siciliano at the corner of Monmouth Road and Deal Road
8:15- Memorial in the Synagogue Lobby with Refreshments
8:30- "Insights into the Siddur" by Rabbi Saul J. Kassin, Rabbi Albert Setton, Rabbi Joseph Dana, & Rabbi Meyer Laniado
8:45- "Insights into Hanukkah" by Mr. Elliot Braha
9:15- Arbit
A website devoted to Rabbi Labaton has also posted a fascinating list of his preferred books on Jewish topics:
http://www.rabbilabaton.com/the-rabbis-bookshelf/
Right off the bat we will see that in addition to basic subjects like Bible, Jewish History, philosophy, law, and prayer, the list is suffused with the cares and concerns of Ashkenazi Modern Orthodoxy, with sections on Modern Orthodoxy itself, Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust.
The list begins with a set of introductory books by Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin which reflect Ashkenazi Modern Orthodox values, and have come to typify the New Jewish Conservatism embodied in the writings of Prager:
Prager has not only showed his allegiance to Evangelical Christianity, but has become a Trump apologist as well:
In that edition of “This Week in Trumpworld” I also made note of the arch-Sephardi hater Jonathan Sarna whose book on American Jewish History proudly appears on Rabbi Labaton’s bookshelf.
I have written extensively of Sarna’s antipathy for the Sephardic heritage:
So from the very outset, we see that the books being promoted by Rabbi Labaton’s students in his name are closely tied to the Modern Orthodox world and its strictly Ashkenazi leadership.
Conspicuous by its absence from the list is the subject of Sephardic Studies.
And indeed, we will notice that all the books are written by Ashkenazim with a few Christians thrown in for good measure.
From Emil Fackenheim to Abraham Joshua Heschel to Eliezer Berkowitz to Norman Lamm to Elie Wiesel to Samuel Belkin to Leo Strauss and Isadore Twersky, the list is stacked with Ashkenazi Jews and is completely bereft of any Sephardic writers.
Even the section on the Sephardic Sage Maimonides is presented in an Ashkenazi manner, using the filter of Modern Orthodoxy in a way that refuses the values of Jewish Humanism in a Levantine key.
Not only is there no section on Sephardic Judaism and its cultural heritage, but the extensive section on Jewish History does not have a single book on Spain, the Middle East, or North African Judaism.
But we can count the many titles written by Rabbi Soloveitchik, as well as a plethora of books by Rabbi Telushkin, who appears to be a particular favorite.
When reading the list of books it is important to note that Rabbi Labaton’s disciples see his way of thinking as a courageous rejection of Haredi Orthodoxy. They will emphatically point to the “diversity” and “openness” of these studies and the way that they allow for a more expansive Jewish understanding than that permitted by the Ultra-Orthodox.
And while it is true that Modern Orthodox Judaism is not as closed-minded and intellectually depleted as what goes on at places like Lakewood, it is equally true that Modern Orthodoxy has its own narrow parameters which are rooted in “Da’as Torah” authoritarianism:
Modern Orthodox Judaism has militantly rejected the Sephardic heritage and its expansive cultural sense:
Sephardic Jews have been excluded from the Ashkenazi consensus largely because we have rejected Jewish Authoritarianism as it has consumed the Ashkenazi tradition. Our Jewish Humanism is alien to Ashkenazi thought.
Rabbi Labaton was a champion of this Ashkenazi elitism, believing that Sephardim and the Sephardic heritage were less valuable than the superior Eastern European Judaism. His life was dedicated to inculcating this Ashkenazi-centrism into his students and into the Sephardic Jewish community at large.
When we look more closely at the list we will see a curious lack of intellectual sophistication in some of the choices, with lowbrow writers like James Michener, Paul Johnson, Herman Wouk, and Milton Steinberg interspersed with the more scholarly-academic material.
The list of recommended books ultimately reflects a cautious blending of this lowbrow tendency with a more robust iteration of Ashkenazi Modern Orthodoxy and its various conceptual-intellectual protocols.
What it does not reflect is a basic understanding or even a minimal concern for the Sephardic heritage.
And this indeed is an accurate representation of Rabbi Labaton’s worldview, which was predicated on antipathy for the Sephardic tradition and an affirmation of Ashkenazi supremacy and ultimately White Jewish hegemony with its endemic racism.
Ezra Labaton was a central figure in the ongoing erasure of the Sephardic heritage in our community, as he so very enthusiastically united with the very Ashkenazi racists who have worked diligently to remove our culture and our human presence from the Jewish stage.
David Shasha
Addendum: Bibliographical Note
I have prepared a number of reading lists that provide a stark contrast to Rabbi Labaton’s Bookshelf.
“Important Book Resources for Sephardic Studies” is a compact, but wide-ranging look at Sephardic literature and history up to the contemporary period:
I have also prepared a critical reading list on Israel and Zionism:
Finally, I have collected a number of my reading lists in the special “Building Your Sephardic Jewish Library” newsletter which is sent out annually right before the fall school semester:
These resources provide students and lay readers with a more balanced approach to Jewish culture than what we see from Rabbi Labaton’s Bookshelf.
Rabbi Labaton’s aim was to promote the ideas and values of Ashkenazi Modern Orthodoxy. My reading lists seek to present the Jewish heritage with the Sephardic element included and provide the necessary intellectual background to the tradition of Jewish Humanism.