From SHU 657: The Dilemma of the Self-Hating Arab Jew
David Shasha
The Dilemma of the Self-Hating Arab Jew
Last summer I had a meeting with a young Israeli anti-war activist who is currently working for her PhD at the New School here in New York. At the meeting I was surprised to learn that she was interested in the Sephardic Question. She told me that she was also working at +972 magazine, a Leftist Israel website that is well-known among the Progressive crowd.
She asked if I would prepare an article for +972 which I quickly did.
The following article was the result.
Almost immediately, she told me that the article was too complicated for the Israeli reader. My usual pile-on of additional readings to illustrate and bolster my points was seen as a problem for the magazine’s Israeli readers and the piece was not deemed fit to publish.
I was discussing the matter with a staunch SHU supporter who teaches in an Israeli university and he offered to help me pitch the piece to the chief editor of +972.
After a few weeks there was no response to the piece from the editor and I ended up publishing the piece in SHU 657. After thinking some more about it, I decided to write up some comments on the matter.
The article aims to do two things:
There is the usual attack on Sephardi Ultra-Zionists and their self-hating tendencies. I believed that exposing such people would resonate with Israeli Leftist readers.
But the article does not stop at mere critique of Sephardic HASBARAH operatives: My discussion seeks to get beyond the stereotype of Uncle Tom Sephardim and actually delve into the larger question of Sephardic culture and history.
So while I cannot produce a rejection letter from +972, as I recently did for another of my rejected articles – the YCT piece on Jewish culture and Religious Humanism, the lack of interest in the +972 article speaks to a very important lacuna in the Israeli mindset: Knowledge of Jewish history in general and of the Sephardic heritage more specifically.
My overall sense of the problem with the article is not simply that it contains many English-language resources, but that once I make the transition from a critique of Zionism to the cultural-historical issues the discussion becomes incomprehensible to the Israeli reader.
At the same time that I wrote this article on David Suissa, I prepared a more comprehensive attack on the self-hating Sephardim:
I have of late been writing a good deal about self-hating Sephardim:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/cdZIlt1Q37I
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/1YDG73IxkgI
I just read the following article in The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles by Suissa that once again reminded me of the problem:
http://www.jewishjournal.com/david_suissa/article/at_ucla_the_power_of_negative_emotions
We are currently dealing with a clash of perspectives both inside and outside the Sephardic community. Most Sephardim, sadly, resemble Suissa in their self-hatred and apathy to the racism we face as a community. Such Sephardim are resolutely devoted to the Ashkenazim and bristle at the suggestion that Ashkenazim might be a problem for Sephardim. We are all one big happy Jewish family. Never question this consensus, or you will be on the receiving end of some very brutal attacks from such people.
But beyond this Zionist consensus there is a very destructive impulse among members of the Jewish Left. The pronounced lack of knowledge of Jewish history and culture has allowed the Zionist crowd to usurp the substantive content of traditional Jewish identity. Unlike other Progressive cultures in different parts of the world, Israeli Leftists show no interest in their cultural past as Jews.
Having been reared in a deeply pathological Jewish environment whose ethos is militantly ahistorical, young Israelis not only have little or no knowledge of the Jewish past – and here I mean the voluminous literary corpus of the Judeo-Arab Middle Ages and its related civilization in the Renaissance and Modern period – but they have no interest in anything that extends beyond the dogmatic political certitudes of their group.
My article was rejected because it does not at all speak the language of Israeli Progressives.
And this is a shame because the values of Jewish Humanism that are maintained in the classical Sephardic tradition could, if understood, provide young Israelis with an alternative understanding of their identity and add an important component to the crituq of Zionism. I have provided such an argument in an article on the late Ben-Zion Netanyahu:
Understanding the details of Sephardic history could provide Israelis with a more precise view of what is ultimately at stake in the struggle over Jewish identity. The Ashkenazi-Sephardi split is not just a product of Zionism, but has deep historical roots, as I have shown in my article “From Rabbenu Tam to Shabbetai Sebi: The Road from Jewish Pathology to Jewish Degeneracy:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/tam/davidshasha/YukEg78vkCc/VvqGRFxtZkQJ
A closer engagement with the facts of Jewish history and the Jewish literary tradition would be beneficial to many young Israelis who are trying to process who they are and how Zionism fits into the larger model of Jewish identity.
Unfortunately it does not seem like such a change in the thinking of Israelis will be taking place anytime soon.
DS
At the conclusion of her excellent 2008 study of Mizrahi Jews in Israel, We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands, the journalist Rachel Shabi deals with the intractable issue of the Arab-ness of such Jews and the difficulty of being both Jewish and Arab at the same time:
Neither Zfania nor Sasson would self-define as Arab Jews – few Mizrahis would – and in their perspectives on the conflict both are on the right. Some Mizrahi activists argue this to be the product of a Marxist-style false consciousness. Just as capitalist social forces blind workers to their true motivations, so Zionist social forces nurture a similar effect in Mizrahis. After so many years of learning to hate their own rejected Arab features and having to hide them, the Mizrahis simply projected all that revulsion onto the neighboring Arab community – because self-loathing is hard to maintain and because there, in the enemy, was the perfect outlet for it. (p. 229)
I have addressed the issue in my essay “Sephardi Typologies”:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/davidshasha/jLpGDjeI_HE/2Onof-IvopwJ
The Arab Jewish question is one that remains persistent and throws a monkey wrench into the problem of Sephardic continuity.
I have dealt with the problem of nomenclature in a special edition of my Sephardic Heritage Update newsletter:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/davidshasha/tNbTomcu5i8/WndxQZhhZPQJ
In my writing I define the term “Sephardic” by highlighting the centrality of Arabic language and culture in Spain which was only later displaced by European Romance language and culture. Even the later culture of the Conversos is rooted in the older Arabic paradigm(s).
Rabbi Shemtob Ardutiel, known in Spanish history as Don Santob de Carrion (1290-c.1369), is an excellent example of the complexity of Sephardic identity as it combined Judeo-Arabic tradition with the Castilian vernacular:
http://davidwacks.uoregon.edu/tag/santob-de-carrion/
It is of course to be remembered that many of the Sephardic exiles resettled in the Ottoman Empire and re-integrated into the Arab-Muslim world from the Balkans to North Africa to the Eastern climes of Asia. The idea that Sephardim are not Arabs is thus quite ludicrous.
With all this in mind we can look at the Moroccan-born David Suissa, publisher of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, who asks “Are Jews Losing Their Story?”
http://www.jewishjournal.com/david_suissa/article/are_jews_losing_their_story
Sadly, Sephardic Jews have forgotten their history because institutional leaders like Mr. Suissa have reduced their identity to a confused mish-mosh of Zionism and Anti-Semitism.
Reinforcing the point is Suissa’s intimate participation with the Hasbarah organ JIMENA:
http://www.jimena.org/mizrahi-remembrance-kick-off-reception-with-david-suissa-elan-carr/
JIMENA is a group that aims to militantly promote the idea of the “Forgotten Refugees”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forgotten_Refugees
http://www.jimena.org/resources/forgotten-refugees/
Rather than actually explore the literary-cultural and intellectual-religious heritage of the Arab Jews, groups like JIMENA and leaders like David Suissa serve the larger Hasbarah-Zionist narrative by maintaining a myopically obsessive focus on the final years of Jewish life in the Arab world; thus reinforcing the theme of perpetual Anti-Semitism in the Muslim Middle East and ignoring the very history that Suissa is telling us he is so very much interested in.
Along with our venerable history come the values of Sephardic Religious Humanism which are decidedly not compatible with the new Jewish militancy represented in Zionism.
I have discussed the tradition of Sephardic Jewish Humanism on many occasions:
http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/jan10_shasha
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/d9Q4PNeOS0U
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-shasha/moses-maimonides-arab-jew_b_491543.html
Those who lack a basic understanding of Sephardic tradition often feel more at home with the Ashkenazi revolution that has silenced our voices and compromised our moral values. History is not some static knowledge, but a set of principles that define who we are as human beings and as Jews.
I recently announced the publication of a new book to my newsletter readers that is dedicated to the work of the great Maria Rosa Menocal who did so much to restore the knowledge of this precious Sephardic heritage:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/dsT97LqaG2A
As I began to read the book I could not help noticing that Sephardim are noticeably absent from the contributors. Although I brought the late Professor Menocal to speak to the Sephardic community here in New York a number of times, I am sorry to say that the vast majority of the members of our community have ignored the need to bring awareness of our history and culture to our young people.
So Suissa’s article is certainly correct: Jews know very little of their past.
But the reason that Sephardic Jews know little about their past is because of institutional leaders like Suissa whose priorities are aligned with the anti-Sephardi and Islamophobic values of Ashkenazi elites in Israel and America. There is no concern with Sephardic history – unless it serves to support the Zionist narrative and its enabling concept “Negation of the Diaspora.”
In an article written at the time of the recent Gaza War, Suissa shows us just how committed he is to Zionism and the Ashkenazi forces that have done so much damage to our historical-cultural identity:
http://www.jewishjournal.com/david_suissa/article/how_liberal_critics_failed_israel
According to Suissa, as has been the case with so many other Jewish leaders, it is not that the Liberal critics failed Judaism, they failed Israel.
For such people Israel is far more important than Judaism and has essentially replaced it.
I will not repeat here the many arguments I have made that show this article for the mindless echo-chamber Hasbarah for what it really is, but will point out that it is shameful both from a Torah perspective and from a self-interested Sephardic perspective to ignore the crimes of Israel and Zionism against our heritage.
But according to such self-hating Sephardim we must forget that heritage and our sacred traditions and go all-in for a country that continues to abandon any sense of morality. We must support the killing of babies in the name of Judaism and adopt the Pilpul-casuistry of the Sephardi-haters like Benjamin Netanyahu, who learned it from his father:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/Davidshasha/xK7momoxzs0/9Fipv-M0PPoJ
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-shasha/netanyahu-aipac-pilpul_b_512135.html
The problem of self-hating Sephardim is a matter that I have discussed repeatedly:
http://www.jpost.com/Experts/Rabbi-Meir-Mazuz-and-the-battle-for-Orthodox-Judaism-341771
Rather than choosing to advocate on behalf of their beleaguered community and its vanishing heritage, such self-haters make common cause with the very Ashkenazim who are destroying our identity.
To see the gusto with which Suissa’s attack article cites the work of Ari Shavit makes us think of how little such Sephardim know about their own culture and history and how beholden they are to the “superior” Ashkenazim.
It is commonplace among these Sephardi “leaders” to present an arrogant and bullying posture when it comes to Israel and Zionism, but remain chillingly and offensively silent when it comes to Sephardi issues that would put Israel and Zionism in a poor light. It is doubtful that such blowhards would be able to pass a cursory examination of Sephardic history or would be able to identify the milestones of the Sephardic literary tradition.
It is doubtful they would know who Rabbi Uzi Meshullam is:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/Davidshasha/7XWsFNEejHE/IvSGZ2UV97EJ
Or if they are even offended at Ephraim Kishon’s offensive “Sallah Shabbati” and its continued centrality to elite Israeli culture:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/uckz9qcGWHY
What culture we get from Sephardic institutions these days can best be called “Bourekas and Haminados” identity: a vain exoticism that we can clearly see reflected in the following story about a group in Washington, DC:
Of course it is much easier to use the megaphone that such people have purchased in order to add their voices to the bully Jewish echo-chamber which has little concern for or knowledge of the classical Sephardic Jewish tradition. It is all Zionism all the time. And this means that Sephardim and their heritage take a back seat to the Ashkenazim and must not assert themselves as equals. We are expected to know our place and not speak out of turn.
Israel must never be questioned.
To be constantly lectured by self-hating Sephardim like David Suissa is truly offensive and galling. The loss of our cultural heritage and illustrious history has been enabled by the endless genuflection of such “leaders” to the Zionist idol. The pressing question of Sephardic continuity is a real one and will not be answered by those who are all too willing to subordinate our intellectual and religious history to those Ashkenazim who are so intent on eliminating it.
David Shasha
From SHU 657, October 29, 2014