martillo@mit-athena.UUCP (Joaquim Martillo) (03/31/85)
>> Since Rosen became so upset a few months ago, when I stated that under >> Jewish Law he would be Jewish, I do not know why he cares. >> >> But as for true Judaism, many Ashkenazi hakamim including Jacob of Emden >> and the Vilna Gaon have been of the opinion that Sefardi shittah is of >> higher Qedushah than the Ashkenazi shitah. >> >> In Israel, there is neither halakic justification for either the >> existence of a chief Ashkenazi rabbi no halakic justification for the >> continued observance of Ashkenazi minhagim. >> >> As for Purimshpile, this is one example of many borrowings from >> Christian practise which Ashkenazim have made. Since 99% of Ashkenazim >> are apostate I must wonder whether perhaps Ashkenazim have not been >> prepared for their apostacy by ill-considered borrowing over the >> centuries. > Do you have any sources for these statistics? They are quite radical. > Also, why is Ashkenazi Judaism not authentic? You are shooting off anti- > Ashkenazi rhetoric again with no regard for the truth. Please refrain from > your diatribes because they only sicken the majority of the net. Sorry to > word this condemnation so strongly, but this isn't the first time you've > done this. Given the numbers of Ashkenazim who emigrated to the USA between 1870 and 1921 and assuming a very conservative population growth rate there should be 18000000 Jews in the USA. Of the 18 million only 6000000 identify as Jews. Of these 6000000 only about 5% are shomrei miswot. By definition one is apostate if he is not shomer mizwot. Conversion to Christianity is not required. Anyway the dominant religion of the USA is resurgent hedonistic Roman paganism in which the apostate Ashkenazim take full part and not Christianity. The figures imply a rate of apostacy of about 98.4%. So I exaggerated for effect. This number is a lower bound anyway. Actually, I only get hate mail pertaining to net.religion.jewish from a small minority of religious Ashkenazim who are so mentally inflexible that they cannot consider that perhaps some of the problems which the Jewish community has today are the result of incorrect decisions which Ashkenazi religious leaders of the last 2.5 centuries made. I have to admit that were I Ashkenazi and were this all I knew of the religious Jewish mentality, I would probably be irreligious. The Ashkenazi Judaism of the last 300 years diverges strongly from the Ashkenazi Judaism which preceded it (but which had already been under trenchant Sefardi criticism for about 500 years). With the development of humanism, enlightenment, and liberalism in the West, Judaism began to look shabby to Central and Western European Jews. A majority wanted to partake of the "new" Western "civilization." Apostacy and conversion to Christianity began in earnest. A reform ideology was developed for those who could not take the final plunge in the baptismal waters but who could forego the brit Abraham. Eventually (after a shockingly long time acutally) the shomrei hammiswot were able to make a response, though really quite pitiful. The response was acceptance of the Westernizers critique of Judaism as backward and shabby with the assertion that Judaism could be brought up to date by compartmentalizing the religious experience, making observance decorous like Christian worship but taking full part in German, French, Italian, and Dutch culture in everything else. The net effect is to reduce being Jewish to being a member of a small religious sect in the general body politic. This approach works for a short time period when the general culture is very religious and when people like Hirsch can count on a general disdain for the idea of one's sisters and daughters sleeping with non-Jews but eventually fails when religion is not longer so important and when non-Jews have generally renounced anti-semitism as is the case in the USA. If you are 7/8 American or German in your life, why not go all the way? Life would be so much easier. By reducing Judaism to merely the religious part of one's life, Judaism is essentially weakened. If a Japanese goes to see Shakespeare or reads Schiller or enjoys Gide or attends the Russian ballet, he does not feel his essential Japanese-ness to be threatened, but as the culture became less religious, performing such activities did become and were perceived as a threat to essential Jewishness because by reducing Judaism to merely a sect of Germans or Americans, Judaism has been emasculated by cultural impoverishment. There was a time when shomrei miswot wrote wonderful poetry but no longer only the Hilonim now. The Eastern European case is different but amounts to the same negative effect. The illiterate impoverished masses of Ashkenazim were cut off from Jewish culture because during the period when Ashkenazim were a tiny minority in Europe the rich Jewish folk culture which had sustained the masses of Jews in N. Africa and the middle east was lost. Cut off from any form of religious expression the Eastern Europeans fell into massive apostacy (this is the late 16th and 17th century). Eventually revulsion set in and the reaction was the development of Hassidic culture whose folk culture is basically 17th century slavic folk culture (which I must say as Jewish culture is even less appealing than it is as non-Jewish culture). Since like the Central Europeans the only form of religious expression which the eastern Europeans knew was Christianity, the religious intellectual culture began to borrow heavily from Christianity. This is rather apparent in Eastern European mysticism and the ascetic, mortifying and self-punishing tendencies of Eastern and Central European Judaism. In fact I would suggest that the Ashkenazi principle of always taking more and more humrot upon oneself has ultimate origin in Christianity. Ganzfried and Golden has very strong Christianizing tendencies. The net effect of both the Central European and Eastern European tendency was increasingly to Europeanize the Jewish community. Furthermore, there was increasing confusion in how to organize the community. Previously, the community was organized around faith ie belief in God (which everyone did) and observance ie Jews act this way (fulfil the miswot) and nonJews act that way. Now the organization became centered around piety like the Christian sects. Since really only about 10% of Jews like nonJews are capable of piety which in the Ashkenazi case tended to make being Jewish harder and harder because of new humrot (I bet this year they will be telling us in Borough Park not to eat masah for Pesah -- hey what's the new humrah from Crown Heights?), the other 90% tended to be driven away. Perhaps they wanted to be. Ashkenazim have this incredible fascination for European ways. With this new packaging of Judaism, the net effect was to fragment the community and all Ashkenazim whether religious or irreligious began to view themselves as primarily Europeans rather than as primarily Jews which tended to make action during the holocaust difficult for Ashkenazim. Sefardim who tended to view Europeans basically as Jew-hating barbarians were much more likely to rebel lead by their hakamim against the Germans. That the irreligious viewed themselves as Europeans is obvious. The religious self-view is apparent in the warped reaction to Zionism. If you hold that Israel is home and if your relatives invade your home while you are absent and basically start shitting all over the place as the religious held the irreligious did in the Land of Israel, you don't sit in Europe and whine, you go home and beat your relatives brains out. During the 20s, the European Zionists were basically a tiny lunatic fringe and immigration to Israel was easy. The religious Ashkenazim could have made the yishub as they wished. Also 15% of the population of Jews in the land of Israel who were Sefardi were already pretty disgusted and would have helped. But religious Ashkenazim had achieved the state where they could not function as Jews in an environment where they were not surrounded by Europeans. The Sefardim who lived in Central and Eastern Europe were fortunate not to have listened to the Ashkenazi gedolim who told Jews that they should not leave. Of the 300 Sefardi families who lived in Czechoslovakia. Only 1 family remained when the Germans occupied. (Franco mindful of Sefardic support which he had received during the civil war intervened on their behalf). Deutscher (of the Bund) had the decency after the holocaust to keep a silence which he explained -- Had I been silent during the 20s and 30s, perhaps many of those Jews who listened to me would have emigrated and would be living today. >> I know that Yom Kippur among Ashkenazim seems much more Churchlike than >> Jewish. The Hassidic Qabalah is basically Slavic Orthodox >> Neo-Platonism. Shaving the heads of married women is a Slavic pagan >> custom. >> >> When I have spent passover with Ashkenazim, I experience "hayinu >> `abadim" but I have never seen evidence that we are "bnei horim." This >> is also typically slavic. >> >> The list is endless and goes from the most trivial to fundamental >> religious and political outlook. >> >> In fact the ba`alei teshubah movement exactly parallels a religious >> revival currently taking place among the slavic orthodox. In Russia, >> the ba`alei teshubah movement has in fact even been a partial reaction >> to the adoption of Russian orthodoxy by various Jewish dissidents in the >> 60's. >> >> It simply may be time for Ashkenazim to renounce the decadent detritus >> of the Ashkenazi diaspora in perhaps a form Jewish Wahhabianism. >> >> I find amusing Yehoshua` Lebovitz admiration for the Wahhabi's since he is the >> Jewish analogy of what the Wahhabi's are trying to stamp out in Islam. > > Yakim, > > We are aware of your opinion of us vusvus scum that pervade the net. > If you don't like our brand of Judaism then fine. But, your articles are > doing nothing to change any situation. You argue so vehemently against > Ashkenazim, that I fear you are hiding something. Maybe an ancestor long > ago who was Ashkenazi ? (:-)) I have never hid on the net that one of my grandparents was Ashkenaziah and that three came from European countries. However the Ashkenaziah acted correctly and adopted Sefardi ways. Nor have I hid that my background. I am a Falaji, the family who used to throw Ashkenazim in jail for refusing to recognize the authority of the Sefardi rabbinate in the Ottoman Empire. The Falajis had the barbaric primitive idea that Ashkenazim should pay the communal taxes and also the Falajis were a little disgusted at the white slave trade which was dominated by guess who. The problem in Israel was that establishing Ashkenazi battei din in Israel was a truly illegal usurption of power by the standards of Jewish law. Now I genuinely do not mind usurption when it serves a good purpose however in this case, the establishment was an admitted act of European chauvinistic anti Sefardi bigotry. At a time when perhaps 20% of Ashkenazim were religious and 80% of Sefardim were religious. Thus the establishment was silly. Further after usurping authority and money the religious Ashkenazim who had authority did zilch for Sefardim but instead filled their pockets (with money which often came from Sefardi supporters of the religious parties -- who have been the majority of supporters of religious parties since the 50s). This was quite stupid because the lack of good religious schools for Sefardim meant that now only 30-40% of Sefardim are religious (still many times more than the Ashkenazi community) and of these most in Israel are quite disgusted with the Ashkenazi religious establishment -- which is part of the reason of the existence of Shas. Sorry Bill Peters Tami is not the religious party of Sefardim but rather an ethnic Moroccan party whose platform is that religious Moroccans should be able to partake as freely from graft as religious Ashkenazim. Anyway in the past year, the Ashkenazi religious establishment has managed to insult gratuitously as far as I can tell Yosef and Eliahu at least twice. Behavior which is acceptable among slavs is simply not acceptable among Jews. I know that a former Ashkenazi chief rabbi in Argentina nearly got his head blown off for gratuitously insulting the Sefardi community -- the usual you know -- they don't speak Yiddish -- not driving out of the community those who are not into being super mahmir -- one too many expressions of contempt. Speaking of gratuitous insults, yes I happen to be aware of all the problems with the Ethiopians. The point is not that Sefardim are any less aware of the problems but that by Sefardi standards their milah is probably kasher. All the hate-mail writers who got upset when I stated that the 'A`jamis tend to consider all Ashkenazim are presumptive mamzerim should think about how the Ethiopians feel. Perhaps we should have all Ashkenazim undergo ritual circumscision and immersion when they come to Israel. The conclusion is the current behavior of the Ashkenazim is very bad -- and I have not even discussed Russian Jews or creeps like the New Jewish Agenda (who are having a special seder for Palestinians here in Boston -- how do you like that Jews celebrate freedom and they make a celebration for people who have oppressed Jews for millenium). A large part of the problem is that 200 to 300 years ago Ashkenazim put a new European packaging onto Judaism which now in view of the holocaust is pretty silly. Why would any Jew want to identify with Europe anyway? This packaging prevents teshubah because it assumes Europeaness is superior and basically accepts a lot of the critique which the assimilators and reform make rather than attacking the stupidity of their basic assumptions. Rather than splitting hairs between European orthodoxy and the other obsolete European Jewish ideas of the 17th and 18th centuries, rejecting in toto all of the development of European Judaism of the last 300 years would be an easier technique for qerub. Optimist that I am I prefer to believe all those Ashkenazim got involved with Eastern religions because the Europeanization of the European Jewish community turned their stomachs and they longed for a more genuine oriental Judaism. The Ashkenazi leadership once again missed the moment and did not make arrangements for Sefardi Hakamim to teach Ashkenazim how once again to become Jewish. By the way, all you grand posqim, nothing in Jewish Law forbids the attacking of a shitah. I do not want to compare myself to great Hakamim but with little trouble I could probably name a dozen great hakamim who have attacked shitot. Note to Rosen: if you will demonstrate a level of learning of humash with Rashi expected of a 14 year old female attending a decent bais yakov receiving mostly b's and maybe an a here and there, I will stop using the term VusVus. There are lots of organization like Or Sameah or 'esh hatorah which would be perfectly willing to teach even an ignorant asshole like you. It's a miswah you know. I have know 4 year olds from Lubovitcher heder who had a deeper understanding of Judaism than you have. Yehoyaqim Martillo