Two Items of Special Note: Rabbi Brant Rosen's Response to my Post and the Wednesday New York Times Crossword Puzzle on Arab Jews

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David Shasha

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Jan 5, 2013, 5:58:18 PM1/5/13

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Friends,

I prepared two items for the Weekly Items of Note posting that I did not want to be lost in the massive amount of information that I routinely send out:

1. This past week I posted Rabbi Brant Rosen’s discussion of Palestinian food and Israeli culture with my harshly critical comments:

https://groups.google.com/group/Davidshasha/browse_thread/thread/a22f0fd9ae8cbda8

The issue was one more piece of evidence that Ashkenazim only see themselves as being Jewish, denying the authentic Jewish ethnicity of Arab Jews.

Adam Horowitz of Mondoweiss requested a response on my comments from Rabbi Rosen and the two texts have now been posted to that site:

http://mondoweiss.net/2013/01/exchange-sephardi-racism.html

The response is an excellent assertion of my own points and I could do no better than to allow Rabbi Rosen to speak for himself. I trust that SHU readers will be able to understand the matter easily as the response doubles-down on the original post and adds an accusation of racism against me. Anything I might write would be redundant and pale in comparison to Rabbi Rosen’s two astounding texts. They will serve as cautionary examples of what Arab Jews are dealing with in the current political climate.

2. Apropos the matter of Jews not being Arabs is the following bit from The New York Times Crossword puzzle from this past Wednesday:

http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/making-scents-of-things/

The blogger who discusses the puzzle (written by David Steinberg and edited by Will Shortz) notes that the clue for 57 across, “e.g., Jewish or Iranian”, gave her some difficulty. The answer “NONARAB” is indeed confirmation – if more were needed – that the idea that Jews cannot be Arabs permeates every part of our Western culture. The New York Times crossword is very much a part of the intellectual culture of the elites and its assertion is indeed the final word in the matter.

Only it is not at all true.

http://groups.google.com/group/Davidshasha/browse_thread/thread/b4d6d3a2672ee62f#

I would like to thank our good friend Stephen Shalom for alerting me to the crossword puzzle.