New Article: Killing Convivencia: The White Jewish Pitfalls of Interfaith Dialogue in the Documentary “Of Many” (2014)
David Shasha
Killing Convivencia: The White Jewish Pitfalls of Interfaith Dialogue in the Documentary “Of Many” (2014)
On the morning following the horrific terrorist attack on London Bridge I woke up shortly after 5:00 and found the following program on the local New York ABC affiliate:
The 2014 documentary “Of Many” on the Interfaith Dialogue group at NYU led by Rabbi Yehuda Sarna and Imam Khalid Latif was executive produced by power player Chelsea Clinton and is a perfect example of the Ashkenazi orientation of that religious movement:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/12/chelsea-clinton-of-many-_n_4942499.html
Reading The Huffington Post article on the film reminded of my own very brief tenure at the website in 2010:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/david-shasha
Sadly, my own time writing about Sephardic Jewish culture and Religious Humanism at the site was limited to a few brief months as there was a general housecleaning when it came to Jewish writers who took a critical stand against the general Zionist status quo and White Jewish Supremacy.
My exit from the website was prompted by the relentless drumbeat of criticism from Right Wing Zionists that is presented in the following post from World Net Daily’s Aaron Klein, which ultimately had a decisive impact on the website after it was sold to AOL in 2011:
http://www.wnd.com/2009/06/101131/
Rather than publishing items on what I have called “The Levantine Option,” a construct rooted in the cultural values of Andalusian Convivencia, in the face of the relentless HASBARAH attacks the website began to publish strident establishment screeds like the following offensive piece from the American Jewish Committee’s president David Harris which has the temerity to falsely speak in the voice of an Arab Jew while acting as a HASBARAH intervention on the matter of what has been called “The Forgotten Refugees”:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-harris/in-honor-of-jewish-refuge_b_13305628.html
The very first piece I published at The Huffington Post was on the subject of Convivencia, which is based not on the usual religious binary as is standard in the Ashkenazi-controlled Interfaith Dialogue movement we see in “Of Many,” but seeks to promote the historic cultural ties between Arabs of the three monotheistic religious faiths:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-shasha/a-jewish-voice-left-silen_b_487586.html
I followed that piece up with one on the 1961 epic movie “El Cid” and its place in the Convivencia tradition:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-shasha/charlton-hestons-el-cid-a_b_679711.html
In an article published in Tikkun magazine in 2009 I highlighted the Convivencia theme in a discussion of the music of the great Arab artist Simon Shaheen and how that music has played such a central role in the Middle Eastern Jewish community:
http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/may_jun_09_shasha/print
In 2014 I reiterated my integrative approach to the matter of Interfaith Dialogue and the myriad ways in which Sephardim have been locked out of the system:
Indeed, the seminal scholarship and enthusiastic advocacy of the late Yale Professor Maria Rosa Menocal promoting Convivencia has been absent from the frustratingly bland Interfaith Dialogue discussions such as those we see in the movie.
I published a tribute newsletter to Menocal which highlights the many contributions she made to the discussion of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Iberian history and their implications for current concerns:
By contrast, “Of Many” is the usual rose-colored glasses “let’s just get along” happy-face banal Interfaith Dialogue presentation that is deeply rooted in the standard Jewish-Muslim religious binary that strongly reflects the detritus of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
As one of the NYU Jewish students forthrightly states during the course of the documentary, discussion of the Middle East is fraught with danger, and it is the job of Interfaith Dialogue to bring human beings into contact in the implacable face of hatred and opposition.
This attitude towards Interfaith Dialogue is widespread but has had no appreciable impact on the many problems we now face in an increasingly dangerous world.
Never once does the movie engage the matter of cultural Convivencia which presents the reality of Middle Eastern history and its cultural pluralism and religious tolerance.
We have seen how the very concept of Convivencia has been relentlessly undermined by White Jewish Supremacy:
The attack is being actively promoted in academic circles as well:
The Interfaith Dialogue that is being promoted at elite institutions like NYU is thoroughly grounded in Ashkenazi Jewish domination.
More than this, NYU’s Jewish Studies department is currently free of Sephardim and does not offer courses on the classic literary-poetic heritage of Jewish Andalusia.
In the final assessment, we have seen a plethora of well-funded Interfaith Dialogue programs in religious institutions and universities that have done little to assuage the ongoing tensions between the religious traditions as violence and hatred continue to mark our ever-contentious world.
It is quite telling that in these Interfaith Dialogue discussions we do not see Sephardic Jews presenting their historical and cultural experiences.
Indeed, as we recently saw in the case of a young member of the Brooklyn Syrian Jewish community, Sephardim themselves have largely abandoned their rich heritage and have adopted Ashkenazi ways:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/RKDNQ4UW2dk
As we see in “Of Many,” many of the Jewish NYU students reflect the religious values of Rabbi Sarna’s Modern Orthodoxy and its staunch Religious Zionism which has become the standard of the Brooklyn Sephardic Jewish community.
This integration of Sephardim into the majority Ashkenazi system has led to a perilous erosion of our traditional intellectual and religious values which has led to what I have called the “New Convivencia”:
Sephardim have not been active in Interfaith Dialogue as Ashkenazim continue to dominate the discourse. More than this, Sephardim have forgotten their own role in the historical relationship to the Arab-Muslim world, taking their cue from the Ashkenazim themselves.
A recent article on religious tolerance by University of Washington Professor Devin Naar shows how far Sephardic Jews have strayed from their traditional culture and the historical place of Convivencia in Ottoman and Arab civilization:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/naar/davidshasha/hTIHtWaM3xw/YHjH2FOyDgAJ
This is the new and quite dispiriting Sephardic reality that we now face.
It is a sad fact that the very cultural elements that might be able to break the stranglehold of White Jewish Supremacy and its nefarious impact on the Interfaith Dialogue movement are now left in abeyance. Sephardim have been silenced and not given a place in this religious discussion.
David Shasha