Annual Hakham Matloub Abadi Tribute
David Shasha
Friends,
Each year right before Passover I take the time to honor the memory of Hakham Matloub Abadi. Rabbi Abadi was the last authentic Sephardic rabbi here in Brooklyn and his legacy has sadly been forgotten and dispensed with. The high moral principles and intellectual standards of Rabbi Abadi are now a thing of the past. Instead, the Syrian Jewish community of Brooklyn has chosen – as we have seen in media reports over the past few years – the path of corruption over the ways of justice, cruelty over compassion, greed over humility. It has become a community where living in a moral way is a sign of weakness. Moral degeneracy has become the order of the day.
I recently did a Google search with the words “Rabbis of Syria” and was confronted with links to articles reporting on the criminality of community rabbis in the Jersey Sting case. The process by which the classical Sephardic tradition has been erased from the Sephardic community has been frustrating and difficult for those who still have faith that this tradition is the one that would pull the community out of its corrupt ways. In addition, there is the specter of Rabbi Abraham Hecht who did his best to demean and humiliate Rabbi Abadi. It seems that Rabbi Hecht remains beloved by a community that rejected the values of Hakham Matloub Abadi:
http://www.chabad.info/index.php?url=article_en&id=26630
Rather than embrace the Religious Humanism of Hakham Matloub, the Brooklyn Sephardim have chosen an ostentatious form of religiosity that is fraught with the sort of religious hypocrisy that Hakham Matloub constantly inveighed against. The battle that Hakham Matloub fought with a lay leadership led by Isaac Shalom was one that has had serious repercussions in a community that does not seem to understand and appreciate the true religious values of Torah Judaism. We now have a community that is predicated upon materialist values and which rejects the importance of knowledge and ethics.
Over time it has become all too clear that it is what one possesses materially that confers status on a community member rather than the good deeds one does or the knowledge one possesses. A system of “pay-for-play” has gradually taken over the life of the community which is founded on its religious institutions. Sadly, the rabbis of the community are very much a part of the larger corruption that Hakham Matloub fought so hard against. The rabbis are part and parcel of that corruption and are all too willing to forget the Torah in order to get ahead.
It is not simply a matter of including Sephardic history and literature in school curricula – although this too is a matter of some urgency. The problem is also that the ethical foundations of Sephardic Religious Humanism and its adherence to strict values of justice and compassion have become outmoded and disregarded. What is most disheartening is the apathy and acquiescence of the younger members of the community who have little or no concern for the noble heritage of Sephardic Religious Humanism and its forgotten practitioners.
The community is now ruled by the “Might makes Right” law of the jungle. There is no legal authority that can break the stranglehold of the powerful and their greed and cruelty. Community members have no place to turn to find a truly ethical person in the leadership. It has become a contentious struggle to achieve material supremacy and forcefully take the reins of power regardless of the moral consequences. The community hierarchy is now completely predicated upon principles that are deeply antithetical to Torah values as Hakham Matloub understood and taught them.
It is for these reasons that I choose at this time to return people’s attention to the figure of this great Sage and it is my sincere hope that we should look to his genius and holiness and begin to emulate him.
Once again, I would like to personally thank our dear friend Zvi Zohar who selflessly has given of his time and energy to compose the definitive portrait of Hakham Matloub’s scholarship which is the centerpiece of this special newsletter.
David Shasha