This Week in The Tikvah Fund (1/31)
David Shasha
The First Tikvah “Conversion”!
I must say that – jaded as I am on these things – I was completely shocked and taken aback by the following article from Jewish Insider:
https://jewishinsider.com/2021/01/nellie-bowles-new-york-times/
I quickly cut-and-pasted the article and found one more on Ms. Bowles’ Substack page and sent them both out on Thursday without comment:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/IzPbobTTL5c
I am not sure what I can say to add to what is in these deeply disturbing pieces.
We see all the usual Tikvah suspects involved in the Bowles “conversion”; her partner Bari Weiss, “godmother” Alana Newhouse, and her “rabbi” Meir Soloveichik.
There is of course the personal, romantic aspect of the Lesbian relationship involved in the “conversion,” but I believe that there is something much more, much deeper about the whole thing.
In Tikvah Neo-Con ideology there is something that speaks to the reactionary in American Christian hearts that allows for the assimilation into such Neo-Con Jewish ideas and values.
It helps to explain how White Jewish Supremacy and its attendant racism links to attacks on Multiculturalism in the Trumpworld Alt-Right.
The icing on the cake is, of course, Bowles’ love for Sephardic and Mizrahi food, as she says nothing about our religious and literary heritage.
Such obvious racism is part and parcel of Tikvahworld, and is transmitted as Jewish mothers’ milk in any “conversion” ceremony.
The whole thing is truly a Hillul Hashem.
The Ashkenazim are NOT KHAZARS!
When I began to study with Rabbi Jose Faur back in 1981, I was drilled in the Arthur Koestler Ashkenazim-are-Khazars theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Tribe
Even at the time I came to understand that the theory was a bit crackpot, but there was still the question of where the Ashkenazim came from, and why their understanding of Judaism so profoundly contradicted that of the Sephardim; the latter being rooted in the Talmudic academies and eventually in Maimonidean Jewish Humanism.
There have been many Ashkenazim who sought to erase the Khazar stigma, and it is not surprising that White Jewish Supremacist Tkivah Tablet published the following article by Dan Shapira:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/history-detective-shapira-khazars
Koestler is not mentioned, and neither is Judah Halevi and his curious book title, though there is plenty of refutation when it comes to the Arab historians.
In the end, given how Sephardim are not really Sephardim anymore, the whole question of origins is largely moot; especially as we have seen how Ashkenazim during the Haskalah adopted Sephardic ways:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/kKoo0WTd4Pk/m/EiVX0avmAgAJ
But the Whore of Trump Newhouse is likely still worried about how to keep Ashkenazim above Sephardim, and certainly Arthur Koestler will not do!
The Dodger Doidge Will Not Stop Attacking Fauci and Supporting Trump: If the Whore of Trump Will Not Relent, Can We?
There is, of course, always the matter of overkill.
But, I would submit, whose overkill?
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/mad-science-sane-science
The Mad “Scientist” Norman Doidge, a lunatic if there ever was one, has been given yet more Tikvah Tablet space to parrot the Lysol COVID Talking Points.
The article clocks in at some 14 pages, over 7,000 words.
It pompously cites Ovid, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Machiavelli, Socrates, Hippocrates, and Thomas Sydenham, as he goes full Wacko Neo-Con Luddite:
As it turns out, so much of what ails us today are products of modern science and technology gone wild: lethal antibiotic-resistant organisms that our “total eradication of disease mentality” produced because we vastly overused the antibiotics we had (which, by the way, were originally natural products of nature, not the lab); pollution (of every element), chemicals in our baby food, toys, floors, and mattresses causing skyrocketing childhood illnesses; bioterrorism; loss of biodiversity affecting the food chain; fabulous totalitarian surveillance tools called cellphones, global networks that allow our enemies thousands of miles away to reach into the controls of our electrical grids, water systems, food delivery systems, banks, nuclear systems, computers, and control them, turning them on and off with a keystroke; 3D printers to make assault weapons in the basement, nuclear weapons to empower lunatics, industrialized death camps with cyanide showers, and, not to mention man-made environmental disruptions causing ecological catastrophes.
And then attacks Fauci over the “Wuhan Virus”:
On this list of course, is also a pandemic that spread so rapidly because of air travel, and the “efficient” design of our urban centers which maximize overcrowding—and a microbe that may have originated in a lab known to be unsafe, and experimenting with bat viruses. “Just last year,” an article in Newsweek reported, “the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.”
He cites someone named Janelle Ayres, a young pumps-wearing whipper-snapper, who believes that drugs are of dubious value, and that we should allow infections to enter our bodies rather than fight them:
https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/18/superbug-new-model-infection/
Her credo:
Her approach, in a nutshell: Stop worrying so much about fighting infections. Instead, help the body tolerate them.
And, of course, he attacks government lockdown orders.
Unlike Doidge, I am perfectly willing to admit that I am not an epidemiologist, and have no expertise on whether the Ayres approach will work in the larger scheme of things. But I do know enough to understand that she is trying to work in a macro way to discover things that might help us in the very long term, and that drugs cannot be a permanent answer in dealing with infections in a comprehensive way.
But it is telling that Doidge is arguing against drugs when the new president, unlike Lysol Trump, is working overtime to get shots into people’s arms.
Doidge and his Whore of Trump enabler are beneath contempt, and Tikvah Tablet remains implacably Insurrectionist.
Tikvah Tablet Gets to the California Ethnic Studies Curriculum with “Jews of Color” Ashkenazi Racism Intact
For those who might not be following the situation, the HASBARAH Lobby is up in arms about the California Ethnic Studies Curriculum:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/-kLsi6o2ssk/m/JY9NCio7BAAJ
The Zionist Ashkenazim want you to know that the clock is ticking:
And now we have the Whore of Trump beating the drum as well:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/california-ethnic-studies-curriculum
It is all about Ethnic Cleansing!
The article deploys the racist Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and AMCHA:
I was particularly struck by the following passage:
Brandy Shufutinsky is an African American Jewish woman who is pursuing an Ed.D. in international multicultural education at the University of San Francisco. She opposes the ESMC. “It needs to be scrapped. Its foundations are faulty,” she told Tablet, having more of a “political agenda than an educational one.” Her interest is personal. The mother of four, she is concerned that “other states will follow the lead of California, and may have an impact on my own children in the future.”
She is apparently a fan of the John McWhorter gaslight:
She doesn’t approve of critical race theory, and she said the LA Unified Teaching District has already adopted a fine ethnic studies program that does not rely on it.
“I’m a progressive Democrat and have been for my entire life, and I come from a family of Democrats,” she said. “I don’t understand how someone who claims to be progressive can say they are against Israel. Israel is one of the most successful countries in terms of the indigenous rights movement. They have reclaimed a culture that was decimated and denied, reclaimed their religion, their peoplehood, and language in their traditional indigenous land. This is something that progressive people all around the world should hold up as an example, not demonize.”
The key point here, beyond the usual White Jewish Supremacy and hypocrisy when it comes to erasing Sephardim from the Jewish discourse, is once again the matter of the “Jews of Color” and their White Jewish orientation:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/brandy-shufutinsky/?anchor=about-me
Ms. Shutufinsky, a very good ROOSKIE name indeed, is very concerned about anti-Black racism, but is far less concerned with anti-Arab racism, whether it is directed at Palestinians or Sephardim.
She is a perfect example of how the “Jews of Color” canard is being used to support White Jewish Supremacy and its racist values.
Only Yiddish is Modern
Normally I would not have paid much attention to the following Jewish Review of Books article:
https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/9568/write-a-modern-letter-live-a-modern-life/
It is an excerpt from a book on Yiddish letter-writing manuals – nothing to be concerned about.
But I was immediately struck by the way Mosaic magazine chose to re-post the article:
The new title is revealing from a Sephardic perspective:
What Yiddish Letter-Writing Guides Reveal about Jews’ Journey into Modernity
It is not specific to Eastern European Jews, but Jews more generally.
It is yet another example of how Ashkenazi Jews see themselves as the only Jews, and that Sephardim really have no connection to Modernity.
And that is Tikvah White Jewish Supremacy.
Ross Douthat Continues to Struggle to Understand Himself
We have just seen how Douthat understands Joe Biden’s “Liberal” Catholicism:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/l3si50GRE6E/m/bHicmKlRDgAJ
We have also seen his connection to The Tikvah Fund and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/AVv0r0iYOuQ
Here is their union enshrined in video:
As we continue to struggle with the detritus of Trumpism, Douthat has some very interesting ideas when it comes to the economy in the Lysol universe:
For conservatives interested in economic populism — meaning, basically, a more middle-America-friendly economics, a program of sustained support for workers and families rather than just upper-bracket tax cuts — Trump’s ascendancy has always been a weird mix of vindication and calamity.
First, the list of vindications. Trump proved in his 2016 primary campaign that Republican voters weren’t particularly wedded to right-wing economic orthodoxies. He flipped the blue-collar Midwest in the general election in part by repudiating the austerity economics of the Paul Ryan-era party. His support for looser money broke with the party’s Obama-era monetary hawkishness and helped deliver the lowest unemployment in decades. And even in defeat, his surprisingly strong 2020 coalition suggested the possibility of a pan-ethnic, working-class future for the G.O.P.
Though I am no Paul Krugman or Bob Reich, parroting the FOX News talking point about unemployment is a red herring that speaks to Douthat’s inherent Reaganism:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/opinion/what-the-economic-data-dont-tell-us.html
Krugman saw no actual correlation between low unemployment and economic growth, reminding us that wages are stagnant and that workers are not seeing any gains:
The thing is, however, that we’re currently close to full employment. The unemployment rate is historically low. Other indicators, like the rate at which workers are quitting jobs (a sign of how confident they are of finding new jobs) also point to a more or less full employment economy. Wage growth and inflation are still subdued, but it’s still unlikely that unemployment can fall a lot from here. This means that growth over the next decade will have to come from rising capacity, meaning growth in potential output.
Bob Reich makes the point even more clearly:
https://robertreich.org/post/177953319405
In his words:
“Lowest unemployment rate ever.” Rubbish. The unemployment rate is now down to 3.9 percent. That’s good. But it doesn’t measure how many people are still too discouraged to look for work or are working part time who’d rather be working full time. The labor participation rate (percent of prime working age work who actually have jobs) has been stuck at 88.9 percent for over a year.
And that was before the Pandemic hit.
Now we can see the net impact of the Trump Tax Cuts which have been doing their job.
The rich are much richer now, while the poor are much poorer:
Douthat’s column is ostensibly about the Traitor Josh Hawley, but it is ultimately about his own confusion when it comes to Populism and Conservatism.
As we continue to await word on the new Biden Stimulus bill, Douthat remains stuck in the Land of the Trickle-Down.
David Shasha