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Sephardic Heritage Update
 
 A collection of current Essays, Articles, Events and Information
 
 Impacting our community and our culture
 
 A Publication of the Center for Sephardic Heritage
 
“Service is the rent we pay for living. It is the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time.Education is improving the lives of others and leaving your community and world better than you found it.” -MarianWright Edelman
Contents 4 May 2011
Maimonides and Spinoza in Contemporary JewishThinking: The Case of David Biale
By: David Shasha
Book Review: Spinoza’s Children: The History of Jewish Secularism
By: Steven Frankel
Of Conversos and the Loss of Sephardic Identity
By: David Ramirez
On Writing as a Jew
By: Cynthia Ozick 
Are the Israeli Settlers Human?
By: Bret Stephens
The New Power of a Latino-Jewish Coalition inLos Angeles
By: Jonah Lowenfeld
A
 Latino
-Israeli Alliance? Really!
By: David Ramirez
Moshe Sakal: Lost in Translation
By: Maya Sela
Israel’s Falafel Food Fight
By: Sousan Hammad
Eisenhower and the Suez Crisis
By: David A. Nichols
Maimonides and Spinoza in Contemporary JewishThinking: The Case of David Biale
We first broached the ideas of David Biale’s new book in ashort interview with him conducted by The JerusalemPost’s Shmuel Rosner in SHU 467. In that interview wewere introduced to the basic ideas that are more carefullydiscussed in the academic review of the book by StevenFrankel presented below.The review makes it quite clear how contemporary scholarsof Jewish culture understand the Jewish past. Theprofound clash between Maimonidean traditionalism andSpinoza’s secularism is often papered over by redrawingthe historical categories through which we understand thesubject.The Ashkenazi tradition is deeply conflicted over the matter of Maimonides and this new attempt to transformMaimonides into a conceptual unity with Spinoza is onethat emerges out of the Enlightenment/Haskala ideal thatredraws Maimonidean thinking to reflect the rebellionagainst the Talmudic tradition that was a central part of themore general Maskilic rejection of the normative Jewishtradition.Biale’s attempt to bring Maimonides and Spinoza together is not altogether novel, even if it is patently absurd. Yearsago I heard a lecture by Alfred Ivry where he asserted thatMaimonides was at heart a philosopher who rejected theLaw and only presented a normative Jewish viewpoint as aphilosophical ploy to protect his esoteric ideas which wereantithetical to that normative tradition.For those familiar with the work of Leo Strauss, such aview is quite familiar as an extreme affirmation of Strauss’basic position in his widely-read book
Persecution and the Art of Writing
. Maimonides, according to Strauss, harboredheretical thoughts that had to be carefully hidden frompublic view. In this sense, Ivry, and now Biale in hisdiscussion of Jewish secularism, forces Maimonides to bean Ashkenazi Maskil in light of the image of Maimonidesformulated in the Orthodox Ashkenazi rabbinical traditionwhich is clearly that of an apostate. It allows Maimonidesto function in an Ashkenazi Jewish world that had rejectedhis philosophical insights and legal methodology.
 
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 The Maimonidean Controversy permeates Ashkenazirabbinical tradition in its forceful rejection of philosophicaland scientific thought. In my writings on the subject I havereferred to contemporary Judaic scholars dealing withmysticism who have reaffirmed the anti-Maimonidean biasinherent in the Ashkenazi rabbinical tradition. Ignored inthis discussion has been the pioneering work of Jose Faur who has understood Maimonides from the perspective of what he has called “Religious Humanism.” Thisformulation is critical in extricating Maimonides from theshackles of Eurocentric categories and Ashkenazirabbinical thinking.So long as Maimonides is framed within a Eurocentricphilosophical context, the problems inherent in theReligion/Secular binarism will continue to fester. According to Faur’s teaching Religious Humanism is afusion of Halakhic Judaism with the sciences of man andnature. Maimonides himself makes this clear in the firstvolume of his Mishneh Torah, the Book of Knowledge,Sefer ha-Madda’. In that volume Maimonides provides anethical-scientific introduction to the science of the Law thatfuses Aristotelian concepts with Talmudic politico-ethicalvalues. The book is structured along the lines of thecommandments, but integrates the commandments into alarger framework enabled by the advances of Greco-Roman civilization as translated by Arab thinkers in anIslamic context.For Maimonides “religion” cannot be separated from thestudy of nature and the study of humanity. Science andphilosophy are not deemed a separate aspect of religiousepistemology, but are integrally connected to Torah. Thetwo systems are joined together and cannot be separated.Of course, as would be expected, the Judeo-Arabsynthesis embodied in Religious Humanism was firmlyrejected by the Ashkenazi rabbis. As pursuers of “heresy,”like their Christian counterparts in France and Germany,the Ashkenazi rabbis hunted for Gentile sources inMaimonides’ writings and carefully picked them out,determining what in Maimonides was “kosher” and whatwas “traif.” As Faur reasonably points out, Maimonides was simplyfollowing in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors,most prominently the extraordinary polymath Se’adyaGa’on, former head of one of the Talmudic academies inBabylonia. Religious Humanism was articulated by themost eminent and respected rabbinical authorities, not bysome marginal figures.In addition, Faur’s discussion closely examines the chain of tradition in Ashkenazi circles where dogmaticpronouncements were made about the Talmud, but wherethere was no formal relationship between the Babylonianacademies and the study halls of Europe, as was the casein Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East.Where did the Ashkenazi rabbis get their authority asTalmudists, and by what right did they castigateMaimonides whose own tradition, from Lucena, Cordobaand Fez, was directly connected to those same Babylonianacademies?Faur looks at the subject in a way that is most logical but isoff the beaten path today. He forcefully asserts that it wasMaimonides who was the true Talmudic scion as he hadreceived the tradition from its most authoritative expositors.The converse is thus true: It was the Ashkenazim whowere “re-inventing” the Talmudic tradition by their self-imposed “fidelity” to a supposed “literal” understanding of the tradition. It is amazing that Ashkenazi rabbis such asRashi saw themselves fit to formally emend the actual textof the Talmud, seeing that they had no formal juridicalauthority to do so.The heresy-mongering of prominent Ashkenazi rabbis like Abraham ben David (RABAD) and their Sephardic discipleslike Nahmanides and Solomon ben Adret was grounded ina romantic idealization of a perceived Talmudic past thatwas literally cut off from the organic sources of thathistorical transmission. It is a fantasy that remains at thecore of the Maimonidean Controversy and explains itsgreat significance in Jewish history.Spinoza emerges out of a profound malaise withinEuropean thinking. His rejection of the old Scholasticsystem is a rejection not only of the scientific andphilosophical weltanschauung inherent in medieval Aristotelianism, but a rejection of the values inherent in thefusion that was Religious Humanism. Henceforth, Secular Humanism would become totally divorced from thereligious parochialism of the Monotheistic traditions.The famous excommunication of Spinoza in Amsterdam isa contentious flashpoint in the ongoing struggle over hislegacy. The decree was signed by Saul Morteira,Menasseh ben Israel and Isaac Aboab, men trained in theMaimonidean tradition of Religious Humanism. It wasdirected at the threat Spinoza presented to the Jewishcommunity in its subservient relationship to the DutchProtestant authorities. Spinoza’s revolt was not simplyaimed at the Jewish tradition, but was part of a larger attempt to undermine the very basis of religious belief inthe European Christian world. As Dutch Jews lived at themercy of the Protestant authorities, Spinoza represented aclear and present danger to the community and needed tobe publicly severed from it for the protection of the Jewishpeople. All this is relevant to any discussion of Jewish “secularism” – a non-sequitor and truly paradoxical formulation. Secular Humanism would never allow it to be spoken in good faith.
 
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 As the father of Secular Humanism, Spinoza divorced“Humanism” from “Religion” in a way that would have beenunderstood by the Anti-Maimonideans. Far from affirming“religion” in an Orthodox vein, Spinoza completelyabandoned the Scholastic tradition and promoted the ideaof a fully independent and authoritative understanding of rationality that broke from all the accepted norms thenoperative, thus inaugurating a binary opposition betweenreligion and science.To tie Spinoza to Maimonides in any positive way is thusquite absurd.Spinoza was setting an authoritarian view of knowledge, anabsolutist epistemology, against a pluralistic system thatsought to balance the parochial needs of Monotheism andthe Law with the dictates of science and philosophy. Bylopping off the head of revealed religion Spinoza wasrejecting in absolute terms the synthesis of SephardicReligious Humanism that he had been taught by Morteirain the Amsterdam Yeshiva and affirming an independentform of knowledge that transcended the parochial and thepossibility of multiple truths.Following the lead of Plato, Spinoza affirmed a unitary andmonolingual epistemological reality that would eliminatedifference and promote its own ortho-doxy – a singlecorrect way of knowing truth.The development of “secularism” is thus a profound breakwith the Jewish tradition, leaving us – affirming the Ashkenazi rabbinic view – with a binary division betweenJudaism and general civilization. Secular Humanism iscomplete in itself. It is the master narrative that serves tofix an absolute meaning on all natural and humanphenomena. It explains everything and allows no other system, religion included, to infringe on its absoluteauthority.This critical point about secularism has been addressed bythe great thinker Karl Popper in his epic work
The OpenSociety and its Enemies
. There we see the profounddilemma of absolutist thinking and its role in the emergenceof totalitarianism. The dangerous linkage of philosophicaltruth and the mighty power of the state led to the all-outwars that have encompassed Western societies since thelate 19
th
century and which led to the tragic outbreak of disparate movements like Commmunism, Imperialism, andFascism which emerged from Enlightenment secular thinking. Ironically, these movements became newreligions; a religious thinking bereft of the pluralism thathad once existed in older times.It is interesting that by recasting Maimonides for their ownpurposes – something that Spinoza himself never did – thepost-Enlightenment Ashkenazi Jewish thinkers, like Bialeand those Orthodox authorities who reject Gentile wisdom,serve to affirm their own belief and not that of Maimonides.It is a battle over differing Ashkenazi viewpoints usingMaimonides as a battering ram. At the very same time that the Jewish Enlightenmentemerges in Europe during the 19
th
century, the tradition of Sephardic Religious Humanism continues in the work of rabbis like Elijah Benamozegh, Israel Moses Hazzan, andSabato Morais; figures once well-known to Judaic scholars,but now left on the side of the road, unloved and unknown. Anglophone Jewish writers like Moses Angel and Grace Aguilar showed just how central this tradition of ReligiousHumanism continued to be in Sephardic circles.These brilliant scholars and writers filtered theMaimonidean tradition through the evolution of Westernthought, sometimes making use of the categoriesdeveloped by the great Italian thinker Giambattista Vico,whose work affirmed many of the central tenets of Religious Humanism. Vico too has been largely absentfrom much of this discussion and his work, like that of Maimonides, is often distorted to reflect the “secular”perspective.The work of David Biale is thus based on some extremelyfaulty assumptions and mischaracterizations that speak toan Ashkenazi mindset which refuses to accept theSephardic basis of Jewish enlightenment along theauthentic terms of Maimonidean tradition. This forcedacculturation and transformation of Religious Humanismseeks to turn Maimonides into something he never was for the purposes of affirming an understanding of the Jewishtradition that comports with the highly-chargedcontroversies inherent to a dysfunctional Ashkenazi culturethat continues to struggle over religious observance andphilosophical knowledge.When we speak of “Jewish secularism” we must becognizant of the rhetorical and epistemological shifts thathave taken place over the course of Jewish history and theway that it has been understood and taught bycontemporary Judaic scholars. The figure of Maimonideshas been transformed into some variation of Spinoza asviolating the spirit and letter of the Talmudic-Halakhictradition. On the other hand, an “Orthodox” Maimonideshas been presented by many religious Jews whoconveniently ignore the contempt that their progenitors hadfor the Great Eagle.In both cases, we are left with a rejection of the basicprinciples and values of Religious Humanism which hastragically ceased to be a functioning category incontemporary Judaism.David Shasha
Book Review: Spinoza's Children: The History of Jewish Secularism
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