New Article: Notes on the New Pew Research Survey: Confirming White Jewish Supremacy and the Erasure of Sephardim
David Shasha
Notes on the New Pew Research Survey: Confirming White Jewish Supremacy and the Erasure of Sephardim
Introduction: Ashkenazim Now Own “Sephardic” Institutions
Before I discuss the just-released Pew Research Survey on Jewish Americans, I wanted to provide some important SHU resources on how Ashkenazim have taken control of the few nationally-recognized Sephardic institutions in America.
I have again related the depressing case of Congregation Shearith Israel and its Tikvah Fund racist leader, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/2ZAUqDiAT40
SI is the oldest Jewish Congregation in America, founded by Sephardic Jewish immigrants in 1654, and has counted many illustrious Sephardic leaders in its ranks over the centuries.
The esteemed Rabbi David de Sola Pool recounted its history in two studies (both currently out of print) of the Synagogue and its famous cemetery:
The SI Sephardic tradition is dead, given the Neo-Con Tikvah shenanigans of its current rabbi.
In this context we must of course mention Soloveichik’s illustrious predecessor, Rabbi Marc Angel, whose fidelity to the White Jewish Supremacy of his Rav Muvhak Joseph B. Soloveitchik laid the groundwork for the new regime:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DPCfokksdzUO2iAO1GD-u8B2iNzhnJYmMjlYrC3EtIo/edit
Angel’s MISHPOCHEH-run Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals reflects his contempt for the classical Sephardic heritage and its Arabic cultural borrowings, as we learned when he wrote an attack on Andalusian Convivencia that relied on a very offensive book by a Spanish Catholic apologist:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V-uAEYS_aBAnDNMDPwvzIUFn9hbTy6n5jVknqrDTUN8/edit
Indeed, this obsequious allegiance to Ashkenazi Zionist Islamophobia has made him blind to the anti-Sephardi racism that runs through his beloved YU Modern Orthodox Judaism.
From Samson Raphael Hirsch:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1osm0botpWsc_L-yS0ZvOOD-FPmIY75vb7T83BjQI9wE/edit
To Haym Soloveitchik:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NBCYyz07l0iTs34hfKZuCZ9croAiB8Mb-JK4Gx9BOFE/edit
Back in 1976, Angel proudly took the Ashkenazi side in a debate with Malcolm Stern on the tensions between Sephardim and Ashkenazim in early New York Jewish history:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V-uAEYS_aBAnDNMDPwvzIUFn9hbTy6n5jVknqrDTUN8/edit
His fiercely militant support for the Ashkenazi racists was made clear to me in a very personal way when he rejected my article “A Broken Frame: Sephardi Occlusion and the Repairing of Jewish Dysfunction” for publication in his inaptly-named journal Conversations:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZZLhopNWNnqMb0GW2OQGcripP8SnZojsmxamctBLDzU/edit
It is interesting to read my article in light of the current Pew report, as the Ashkenazi divisiveness and dysfunction I discuss, coupled with the erasing of Sephardim, is very much evident in the data.
Then, of course, there is the American Sephardi Federation, which is currently being run by Jason Guberman, founder of the group DIARNA, which provides critical HASBARAH information to the Israeli government on Jewish properties in the Arab world, and its publications editor Aryeh Tepper, yet another Tikvah Fund Neo-Con Straussian lackey:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/0zR1MjTw480/m/1OaaOC9UCgAJ
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/tx3nIc6cMeM/m/thIKdqeTBQAJ
The ASF continues to oversee the destruction of the Sephardic heritage in this country, as it does nothing to attack the massive institutional and socio-cultural racism that we face. Indeed, one would expect nothing less from its Ashkenazi leaders.
And there is JIMENA, which is a group designed to further Ashkenazi HASBARAH interests:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/u8KXBiFOLRU/m/WeiaSW1FAgAJ
It has vigorously promoted “The Forgotten Refugees” documentary, as I noted in my recent article on Bret Stephens and the very inaptly-named Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, founded by former David Project head David Bernstein:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/4FRto3Kgn80
As I said there:
A number of the Blog’s articles come from our dear friend David Bernstein, founder of The David Project, and founder of JILV as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_David_Project
He is a man who knows a great deal about stifling Free Speech.
The David Project was a radical Right Wing HASBARAH Cancel Culture organization, whose claim to fame was the famous “Columbia Unbecoming” debacle that introduced us to Bari Weiss:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15yQlqUlCeKPfaqW2Ty3KyjA2lEIZAYLMe9r5ChQAK_0/edit
I have indeed pointed out the irony of Weiss becoming a proud champion of Free Speech, when in fact her career has been rooted in Cancel Culture:
Destroy MEALAC!
http://volokh.com/2005/03/31/columbia-report-on-mealac/
There was also the DP production and promotion of “The Forgotten Refugees” documentary, which is a virulently anti-Arab piece of HASBARAH propaganda dealing with Middle Eastern Jews:
https://www.jimena.org/resources/forgotten-refugees/
Yehouda Shenhav has responded to the matter in bracing detail:
JIMENA recently made a big HASBARAH splash, with many other Ashkenazi groups and individuals, attacking the California Ethnic Studies Curriculum:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/-kLsi6o2ssk/m/JY9NCio7BAAJ
Which is also part of the JILV program:
The Blog section also includes an article by Tikvah SAPIR contributor and JILV board chair Pamela Paresky attacking Gavin Newsom and the California Ethnic Studies Curriculum:
https://jilv.org/critical-ethnic-studies-curriculum/
Finally, there is the prominent Self-Hater David Suissa and his White Jewish Supremacist Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, who I also presented in the Stephens JILV article:
We will notice that the JILV Resources section is led by Self-Hating Sephardi David Suissa and his Jewish Journal of Los Angeles:
Here is the link to his world-renowned podcast:
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-david-suissa-podcast-david-suissa-TkqB9rzt4jX/
It affirms Suissa’s desperate desire to be an Ashkenazi, as he defiantly turns his back on the Sephardic heritage and our cosmopolitan Jewish Humanism:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c1l0_eK349whup0o6s-Gy_dtWeVCZVQOZC3Q-UFwSQM/edit
Of course, we can see here the Intersectional HASBARAH linkage between The David Project, SAPIR, David Suissa, and the Ashkenazi-run JIMENA under the rubric of Cancel Cancel Culture.
Each of the Sephardic-in-name-only institutions takes their marching orders from Ashkenazim and Ashkenazi institutions, as they deny representation to Sephardim seeking to reject the White Jewish Supremacy and its racist foundations.
So, as you process the Pew information, please keep in mind how academic Judaic Studies has forced Sephardim into the Social Science margins and denied our religious and intellectual-literary culture as part of the standard Jewish curriculum:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_k1I5KoFmIK0Qk7Zfd6HvTPo3iYaWL6YpuRp3VY3tgA/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l4GaqfTjcBkotDfzurNs8unp9sRA374FLKOmeEBcOkU/edit
According to the current Social Science orthodoxy, Sephardim are just a bunch of liars and cheats.
In this vein, we will close these notes with a discussion of our dear friend Dr. Mijal Bitton, whose understanding of what is going on lacks any sense of the problem that Pew is actually presenting.
The Orthodox Da’as Torah Triumph
Back in April 2019 I posted an article by our dear friend Witherspoon Institute New Convivencia Neo-Con hack Daniel Ross Goodman on the Orthodox rise, according to the 2013 Pew Research Survey:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/J45rrr_1H14/m/ZY8a_1xhAAAJ
The new Pew Survey reconfirms that takeaway:
According to the JTA “Cheat Sheet”:
The future of American Jewry appears to be one of polarization. The numbers of Orthodox and unaffiliated Jews are growing. The Conservative and Reform movements, which once claimed the bulk of the American Jewish community, are shrinking.
Overall, the raw percentages belonging to each denomination haven’t changed much since 2013. But religious affiliation by age shows a changing community.
Among Jews aged 65 and older, 69% are either Conservative or Reform, while just 3% are Orthodox. But among adults under 30, 37% are Conservative and Reform and 17% are Orthodox. Just 8% of those young adults are Conservative, as opposed to 25% of Jews over 65.
And 41% of Jews under 30 are unaffiliated, compared to 22% over 65.
The Orthodox Jews are not afraid to rule Judaism as a minority, and have exerted their substantial clout on mainstream Jewish institutions and political organization in a very dangerous and deleterious way.
A very interesting recent example of this Orthodox Surge and its Neo-Con Intersectionality is a piece from Rabbi Gil Student’s Torah Musings by Herzl Institute Executive Director Rabbi Rafi Eis on the family, that was pointedly re-posted by Tikvah Mosaic:
Here is the complete article attacking the “Progressive World” in the name of Shtetl Orthodoxy:
https://www.torahmusings.com/2021/04/orthodoxy-and-lgbtq-in-a-progressive-world/
It is not at all hard to see the way in which the Neo-Cons and the Religious Fundamentalists have found common ground in the area of “Family Values.”
What is most interesting about this reactionary symbiosis, very much in the Witherspoon wheelhouse, is that Eis seeks to construct a very constricted form of Biblical “philosophy” which relies on the Ashkenazi tradition of an ahistorical Judaism that essentializes the commandments in order to paint a picture that demonizes Gays as inherently evil. It is a perfect example of how the Orthodox Jews have united with the Right Wing Conservatives in their assault on Civil Rights, and their belief that Jewish Law is monolithic.
It is for this reason, as the Pew study shows, that most American Jews – especially the youth – want out.
And who could really blame them?
Trump Triumphant!
It is thus important to note that the Orthodox Jewish minority are largely with Trump:
As we saw in a 2018 article on Modern Orthodox “Liberals” by Shira Hanau:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/V0wXGBI3mPY/m/PbG0tcY0AgAJ
Which is confirmed in the JTA article:
While non-Orthodox Jews largely disapproved of Trump’s handling of nearly every aspect of the role, Orthodox Jews were the only ones to overwhelmingly approve of his job performance, particularly on Israel. Among Orthodox Jews, 86% rated Trump’s handling of policy on Israel as “excellent” or “good,” compared to 40% overall of respondents who rated his handling of Israel policy as good or excellent.
It is easy to see how Conservative and Reform have largely collapsed, and that Orthodoxy has coalesced into a radical, racist minority that sees itself as the true Judaism. Their minority status, as with the Trump Republicans and Christian Evangelicals, does not bother them at all. They continue to see a clear path to bully their way into cultural dominance, and will stop at nothing to impose their views on the rest of us.
Sephardim Do Not Exist
It thus comes as absolutely no surprise that American Sephardim, according to the survey, do not really exist anymore:
Overall, two-thirds of Jews identify as Ashkenazi, while only 3% identify as Sephardic, or following the traditional religious Jewish customs of Spain, according to Pew. Another 1% identify as Mizrahi, a term primarily used in Israel that refers to Jews with roots in the Middle East and North Africa.
It is a product of White Jewish Supremacy, in the context of an almost-complete breakdown in formal Jewish identification:
For organizations that are invested in “Jewish continuity” (or, in plain English, urging Jews to marry Jews and have Jewish babies), the 2013 Pew study was a red flag. It found that the majority of Jews who married after 2000 wed non-Jews. When it came to non-Orthodox Jews, the numbers were even higher.
The same is true of the 2021 study, though researchers say the numbers haven’t shown meaningful growth. In other words, plenty of young Jews are still intermarrying, but the number isn’t much bigger than it was in 2013. Due to changes in methodology and small sample sizes, the researchers emphasize that it’s unwise to compare results between the two surveys.
The 2021 study found that in the past decade, 61% of Jews married non-Jewish partners. And nearly three-quarters of non-Orthodox Jews who married since 2010 wed non-Jews. Intermarriage is quite rare among Orthodox Jews.
In total, 42% of married Jews have a spouse who is not Jewish.
These trends naturally benefit the Orthodox, who can point to Intermarriage as Assimilation and to Sephardim as invisible.
The Jews of Color are All the Rage!
As Sephardim fade into obscurity, the Jews of Color rise:
It is a mixed bag of data, but the basic idea running through the JTA article is that things are becoming more “diverse”:
An overwhelming majority of American Jews, about 83%, share the same basic demographic profile — but there are signs that American Jewry is growing more diverse.
The 83% is made up of Jews who say they are white and do not identify with ethnic labels such as Hispanic, Sephardic or Mizrahi. They were all born in the same set of places — the United States, Canada and Europe, plus countries of the former Soviet Union — and so were both their parents.
The remainder, an estimated 17%, depart from this profile in at least one regard. These American Jews identify as Black, Asian, some other minority race or multiracial. Also grouped here are Jews of any race who identify as Hispanic, Mizrahi or Sephardic — or anyone born in the rest of the world, including Israel.
Those are among the findings of a report released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center that offers the most detailed information yet on the diversity of American Jews.
Pew found that 17% of American Jews could be considered diverse, but only 8% said they are Black, Hispanic, Asian, other minority races or multiracial. The vast majority, 92%, identified as only white, and an additional 2% identified as white and Hispanic.
As I have repeatedly written, the Jews of Color tag is something of a misnomer, given that many who identify with the name actually identify Jewishly as Ashkenazim and not Sephardim:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aLeRt1dmdRNbrwJfZWNY_yBnm9CagXxEsCkRr091iBI/edit
The pioneering group Be’chol Lashon was founded, as I note in my article, by an Ashkenazi couple, Gary and Diane Tobin:
https://globaljews.org/about/history/
The idea then was to create more Orientalist Jewish Kitsch “Diversity”; which has now become a far more expansive movement incorporating African-American Jewish converts who are very much allied to the HASBARAH world, and very much not attuned to the Sephardic heritage.
Guess which side is winning?
Conclusion: Dr. Mijal Bitton Weighs In!
And then we have our Token Sephardi friend, proud ally of the White Jewish Supremacy, who shows us what selling out means in real time:
Whether Middle Eastern and Sephardic Jews represent diversity among American Jews the same way that Black Jews do is an entirely different question, according to Mijal Bitton, a scholar who studies Jewish diversity. Some Ashkenazi Jews are not white, while some Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews are white, Bitton said in a comment featured in the Pew report.
“The idea that the Syrian Jews I’ve studied are ‘Jews of color’ would feel overwhelmingly foreign and even ludicrous to them,” Bitton said. “Some might identify as white, some as Middle Eastern, some as non-White – but not as Jews of color.”
We can see from these ignorant comments that demography is meaningless, and that the Sephardic heritage is not a factor in the study; a fact that is reinforced by the participation of Bitton who has no real sense of what the Sephardic heritage is, but who knows how to get Ashkenazim to bring her on board as an “expert.”
Her work provides no indication that she understands the Andalusian Jewish tradition, presented in my article “Sephardic Judaism and the Levantine Option,” which appeared in the special edition of the journal Critical Muslim “Reclaiming Al-Andalus”:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1NQdm28qvvXVFhBSjh3eVdIU0E/view
https://criticalmuslim.com/issues/06-reclaiming-al-andalus
I recently wrote an article on the Shalom Hartman Institute and American Jewish music which presented the Syrian Jewish tradition in a way that is also beyond Bitton’s grasp:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Rp2kwRQcny_KeF1X24JQav3-an2edAl7lySF8nwv6w/edit
More than this academic lack, her work lacks a basic grasp of the socio-political issues in the Brooklyn Syrian Jewish community that led to the current malaise.
Such as the tyranny and corruption of Isaac Shalom:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Sa4YGX4v5w3BRWFS6WfGVwICemodsyPVfmu2gt6_IJA/edit
Shalom is revered as the “founder” of the SY community to this day; though members of the community have no idea how he sought to wipe out the traditional rabbinate, led by Hakham Matloub Abadi, in favor of the Ashkenazi Orthodox system:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fO_WyLY2gnqUOvbpDQ7KzsS82UOwW35j-ACCPi7sBDQ/edit
Shalom began a patronage system which created what I have called the “Rabbis of Ashley Madison”; a motley crew of yes-men and bag-men who cater to the whims of the community oligarchs and bow to their fearsome wealth:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wZLZSZ-TP8aUVjs351YThh74WHzCBorf37U0HqY2brY/edit
Given the recent history of autocracy and Social Darwinism in the community, it is little wonder that the SYs were big Trump supporters:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/uNq0KgEOO9k/m/FiE89xyUAgAJ
Just as unsurprising was Bitton’s pathetic attempt to make sense of it, using her Social Science academic bona fides in a way that neglected to note how the Sephardim are not really Sephardim anymore:
The abandonment of the community’s heritage of Jewish Humanism and intellectual attainment was well-noted in Zev Chafets’ New York Times article “The SY Empire”:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t4z5IL7aLzfmN5hgLNUhhY3rqY_7kD0J/view?ths=true
That article presented a corrupt, ignorant, and very wealthy community which has maintained its secretive nature for many years. Money, rather than Torah, is the foundation of life in the community.
Chafets recounted the tragic story of Sam Toussie, who gave an interview to New York magazine which led to his persecution and a very untimely heart attack that killed him.
It is a story I am familiar with, as my maternal grandfather Saul Mishaan also found himself on the wrong side of the corruption, and suffered his own early demise under the malignant shadow of the SY Empire.
As I write these embittered words, I think of the lack of respect that the families of these two men continue to have for them, and wish to honor them as I honor the Sephardic heritage.
I discussed many of these issues in a special newsletter devoted to the memory of Rabbi Jose Faur; showing how Bitton misses many of these points because of her allegiance to the White Jewish Supremacy:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T5hwSK5C4N8Vd50UYMptCy1jmk5LSyJbIUEh-Lq6_s8/edit
Indeed, it was her own father who helped the community blackball Rabbi Faur; preventing him from giving public classes and lectures at Congregation Beth Torah.
Bitton has actively embraced the Ashkenazi Judaic Studies Social Science standard, and freely joined with racist institutions like SHI, Hebrew Union College, and Tikvah Tablet with great zeal. Career and livelihood always trump truth and integrity!
How very SY.
She knows little of how the community descended into barbarity, and why it is in the sad state it now finds itself in. The debased cruelty of the community has created a herd mentality that brooks no dissent or opposition. Comply or die!
Her analysis is faulty as it does not acknowledge that the reason Sephardim are absent from these institutional discussions is because they have shed their traditional identity and embraced the ways of the Ashkenazim – as I have written in my article “The New Sephardic Jewish Binary”:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EyglybEAkHmQ35sIU6XubsU92mLCM1FGO90ENj_NE-w/edit
In that article I show how contemporary Sephardim have abandoned their cultural legacy, and adopted either YU Modern Orthodoxy or Lakewood Haredism.
Indeed, Pew could, if they looked, find such Sephardim assimilated to the Ashkenazi Orthodox groups.
The Pew study will thus not be able to distinguish Sephardim from Ashkenazim, because Sephardim, like Dr. Bitton herself, have actually become Ashkenazim.
David Shasha