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ymarkovReviewed: The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature, Ilan Stavans, editor. Schocken, 2005, $ 27.50
By David Shasha
I am a Sephardic Jew with what most would consider a strong Jewish education--yet nothing I had learned growing up in Brooklyn or attending the Yeshivah of Flatbush gave me any reason to think that Sephardim had contributed at all to Jewish culture, especially modern Jewish culture. We were taught Buber and Soloveitchik in Jewish Philosophy, Wiesel, and Potok in our English classes, and the less said about our Jewish History program—where the teacher once told a cousin of mine that Sephardic history was not taught because “Sephardim have no history” —the better. We passed our high school years blissfully unaware of Hispano-Jewish poetry, Kabbalah, Maimonidean rationalism, the picaresque Arabian-style tales of Judah al-Harizi, the seminal grammatical studies of the Sephardi balshanim, and the poetical insights of Moses ibn Ezra. We had no notion of the historical works of Abraham ibn Daud, Solomon ibn Verga, and Joseph ha-Kohen, no hint of modern Sephardic Jewish writers, and certainly no clue that Sephardim, too, had experienced anti-Semitism, participated in Zionism, and suffered during the Holocaust.
The Argentine-born Syrian Rabbi José Faur, then a professor of rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary, opened my eyes. In a lecture that shattered my world view he introduced me to two Sephardic writers I had never heard of, Edmond Jabès and the Nobel Prize winner, Elias Canetti. These two very different authors wrote from a perspective utterly different from any I had encountered before, a distinctly Sephardic point of view that was at once eminently modern and grounded in the cultural values and the epic history of the Jews of Muslim Spain and the East.
More: http://www.zeek.net/feature_0509.shtml
By David Shasha
I am a Sephardic Jew with what most would consider a strong Jewish education--yet nothing I had learned growing up in Brooklyn or attending the Yeshivah of Flatbush gave me any reason to think that Sephardim had contributed at all to Jewish culture, especially modern Jewish culture. We were taught Buber and Soloveitchik in Jewish Philosophy, Wiesel, and Potok in our English classes, and the less said about our Jewish History program—where the teacher once told a cousin of mine that Sephardic history was not taught because “Sephardim have no history” —the better. We passed our high school years blissfully unaware of Hispano-Jewish poetry, Kabbalah, Maimonidean rationalism, the picaresque Arabian-style tales of Judah al-Harizi, the seminal grammatical studies of the Sephardi balshanim, and the poetical insights of Moses ibn Ezra. We had no notion of the historical works of Abraham ibn Daud, Solomon ibn Verga, and Joseph ha-Kohen, no hint of modern Sephardic Jewish writers, and certainly no clue that Sephardim, too, had experienced anti-Semitism, participated in Zionism, and suffered during the Holocaust.
The Argentine-born Syrian Rabbi José Faur, then a professor of rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary, opened my eyes. In a lecture that shattered my world view he introduced me to two Sephardic writers I had never heard of, Edmond Jabès and the Nobel Prize winner, Elias Canetti. These two very different authors wrote from a perspective utterly different from any I had encountered before, a distinctly Sephardic point of view that was at once eminently modern and grounded in the cultural values and the epic history of the Jews of Muslim Spain and the East.
More: http://www.zeek.net/feature_0509.shtml
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As promised yesterday: The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult by Murray N. Rothbard
Date: 2009-03-08 06:45 pm (UTC)The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult
by Murray N. Rothbard
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html
Enjoy:-)
Re: As promised yesterday: The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult by Murray N. Rothbard
Date: 2009-03-08 06:48 pm (UTC)The part from the article above that I mentioned to you yesterday:
[...]
Her Bible
The Biblical nature of Atlas for many Randians is illustrated by the wedding of a Randian couple that took place in New York. At the ceremony, the couple pledged their joint devotion and fealty to Ayn Rand, and then supplemented it by opening Atlas – perhaps at random – to read aloud a passage from the sacred text.[...]
offtopic
Date: 2009-03-12 01:16 am (UTC)