1 May 2022
In Honor of Baghdad-born Joseph Samuels, one of the last survivors of the Farhud, a Nazi-Islamist antisemitic attack on Iraqi Jews, 1-2 June 1941. Joseph has written about the Farhud in the Wall Street Journal, spoken about the Farhud on the John Batchelor Show with Malcolm Hoenlein, and joined Hoenlein & the ASF for a special Shoah survivors meeting at New York
Click here to dedicate a future issue in honor or memory of a loved one
The American Sephardi Federation’s Sephardi Ideas Monthly is a continuing series of essays and interviews from the rich, multi-dimensional world of Sephardi thought and culture that is delivered to your inbox every month.
Last month’s issue of Sephardi Ideas Monthly was dedicated to the present-day Islamic political-religious movement to cultivate a tolerant form of Islam. In this month’s issue, we continue our exploration of the changing political, religious, and cultural dynamics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) by examining the life and thought of Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), the most important and influential Islamist thinker of the 20th century and a man whose work stands directly in the path of a more pluralist MENA, from Morocco to the Gulf.
An Egyptian-born intellectual heavyweight, Qutb migrated from Cairo’s literati (he was an early champion of Nagib Mahfouz) to the revolutionary vanguard of the Muslim Brotherhood. The author of literary criticism, novels, poetry, travelogues, an influential call to action entitled Milestones, and a thirty-volume commentary on the Quran, Qutb’s interpretation of Islam, though rejected by many Muslim scholars, remains spiritual fuel for extremists around the world.
A large part of Qutb’s intense impact and influence comes from his conceptualization of the battle against “Jahiliya.” Many Muslim sources refer to Jahaliya as a period of time preceding the appearance of Islam. Qutb, however, accepted the interpretation that Jahiliya doesn’t refer to a historical period but to a state of being, a spiritual condition that is possible at any time and in any place. He then took that idea to new extremes. Jahaliya, for Qutb, doesn’t just refer to the capitalist West or to the communist East; Jahaliya refers to any society that doesn’t live by the Shari’a (the Law of Islam). Without the Shari’a, all that remains is, “the rule of humans by humans.” Is there a more fundamental violation of God’s sovereignty than this?
The consequences to Qutb’s interpretation are extreme. Since, in Qutb’s time, there wasn’t a single “Muslim” state that ruled according to the Shari’a, then by his standard, all of the so-called Muslim states were also Jahili and, as such, illegitimate.
It’s worthwhile meditating on Qutb’s understanding of Jahiliya in order to appreciate the way in which it has entranced, and through his books and myriad followers, continues to beguile the minds of some Muslims.
Imagine a young Muslim wondering at the weakness of Muslim states and communities, whether in the MENA region or around the globe. According to the Quran:
You are the best nation raised up for mankind. You enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and you believe in Allah.
In reality, however, Muslim states and individuals mimic aspects of Western politics and culture while the West remains politically ascendant and culturally dominant. What’s going on?
Qutb explains that the West, armed with science and technology and claiming to be the height of cultural and political progress, has created the most comprehensive Jahaliya ever to cover the face of the earth. It’s so deep that many don’t see it. The West doesn’t just colonize lands, it colonizes minds.
But according to Qutb the problem goes even deeper. Do you see those states and kingdoms that call themselves Islamic? They’re not Islamic at all, because authentic Muslim states live by the Shari’a. Otherwise, there’s only exploitation. As for the masses of so-called “Muslims,” they’re blind to their condition. Thus, said Qutb:
We call for the restoration of Islamic life in an Islamic society governed by the Islamic creed and the Islamic conception as well as by the Islamic shari’a and the Islamic order. We know that Islamic life – in this sense – stopped a long time ago in all parts of the world and that the “existence” of Islam itself has therefore stopped. And we state this last fact openly, in spite of the shock, alarm, and loss of hope it may cause to many who like to think of themselves as ‘Muslims’!
(Trans. in “Sayyid Qutb’s Doctrine of “Jāhiliyya”.” William E. Shepard. International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Nov., 2003), pp. 521-545)
In Qutb’s hands, the concept of Jahiliya is the red pill that you take in order to see through the Matrix-like character of contemporary life, a world of deceiving surfaces in which Modernity is Jahaliya—just like in the Prophet’s time, but deeper—and Islam, in practice, no longer exists.
Qutb was hanged by Nasser in 1966, but his militant ideology continues to generate fanatics.
In examining the various factors that shaped Qutb’s thinking, one of the curious aspects of his biography is that he was radicalized shortly after spending 1948-50 in the United States on an Egyptian Ministry of Education scholarship to study American pedagogical methods. We know that Qutb was scandalized by what he saw at a small church social in Greeley, Colorado (population 20,000), because he wrote about it:
The dance floor was lit with red and yellow and blue lights… Arms embraced hips, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests.
You know what was playing? “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”:
A famous American song… composed of a dialogue between a boy and a girl returning from their evening date. The boy took the girl to his home and kept her from leaving. She entreated him to let her return home, for it was getting late, and her mother was waiting but every time she would make an excuse, he would reply to her with this line: but baby, it’s cold outside!
It’s tempting to laugh at Qutb and to wonder how he would have responded to Elvis. Or Lil Nas X. His followers think he saw it all coming.
Upon returning to Egypt, Qutb published his three-part essay, ““The America I Have Seen”: In the Scale of Human Values,” and declared the Americans to be the real primitives.
Qutb’s influence, it’s important to note, isn’t restricted to the Sunni world. His works also inspired Islamist revolutionaries in Iran. A little-known but astounding fact is that Ali Khamenei, the “supreme leader” of the Iranian regime for the past thirty-three years, translated four of Qutb’s books into Persian. Khamenei didn’t translate four books by anyone else.
A future issue of Sephardi Ideas Monthly will explore “Reading Qutb in Tehran,” while next month’s issue will feature our original interview with Tarek Heggy, an Egyptian liberal intellectual and harsh critic of Political Islam.
This month, Sephardi Ideas Monthly introduces our readers to the man whose thought is fuel for fanatics and essential for understanding Islamism, Sayyid Qutb.
Click here to read ““The America I Have Seen”: In the Scale of Human Values”: an English-language translation of the three-part essay that Sayyid Qutb wrote upon returning to Egypt after spending two years in the United States.
Click here to watch Yad Vashem’s “Islamist Antisemitism.” Listen to Prof. Bassam Tibi and Dr. Esther Webman discuss Sayyid Qutb and his role in the development of Islamist antisemitism.
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Please also support the ASF with a generous, tax-deductible contribution so we can continue to cultivate and advocate, preserve and promote, as well as educate and empower!
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The Monthly Sage החכם החודשי
The sage for the month of April, 2022, is Hakham Jacob Sasportas (1610-1698).
Born in 1610 in Oran, Algeria, young Hakham Jacob Sasportas moved to Tlemcen to serve as rabbi in 1628. Then, in 1634, he assumed leadership of the Tlemcen rabbinic court.
Imprisoned because of trumped-up charges, Hakham Sasportas fled to Morocco, where he wed Rachel, the daughter of Hakham Daniel Toledano, the Rabbi of Meknes. In 1651 Hakham Sasportas migrated to Amsterdam and published an index of Biblical verses appearing in the Jerusalem Talmud (Toldot Yaakov, 1652).
A public figure, in 1655, Hakham Sasportas was part the delegation to London led by Hakham Menashe Ben Israel that argued for the return of the Jews to England in front of Oliver Cromwell. In 1658 he was sent on a mission by the Moroccan Monarch to Spain.
Hakham Sasportas was appointed to serve as a rabbi at London, but the 1666 plague compelled him move to Hamburg, Germany. In 1667, Hakham Sasportas received reports regarding the false messiah, Shabbetai Tzvi, and he wrote a four-volume work, Tzitzat Nobel Tzvi, completed in 1673, to convince the masses not to follow the megalomaniacal imposter.
Not a young man, Hakham Sasportas continued his public and educational activities nonetheless. In 1675, he moved to Livorno, Italy, to teach in the city’s yeshiva, while in 1680 he travelled to the Hague to help obtain permission from the authorities to install an eruv (ritual Shabbat enclosure). Hakham Sasportas returned to Amsterdam in 1684, where he led the Etz Haim Yeshiva, and, in 1693, at the young age of 83, he was appointed Rabbi of Amsterdam.
Hakham Jacob Sasportas passed away on the 4th of Iyar, 5458 (1698), and was buried in the Beit Haim Portuguese cemetery near Amsterdam. His tombstone still remains intact.
Hakham Sasportas’ works include the books referred to above, Toldot Yaakov and Tzitzat Nobel Tzvi. A collection of his responsa, Ohel Yaakov, was published posthumously in Amsterdam in 1737 by Hakham’s Sasportas’ son, Hakham Abraham.
In the following passage from Ohel Yaakov, Hakham Sasportas emphasizes the importance of questioning and criticism in clarifying the truth:
I have been told by a certain student that his honor, our great master and rabbi, Rabbi Shaul Levi Mortina, has expressed his doubts about that ruling and has ineffectively sought to prove its contradiction. I wrote him in protest about this a second time, asking that he present his arguments to me, and advise me of the true course…not for my honor’s sake, but to honor God’s Torah and reveal the truth concerning my approach with the great masters from all regions, who share their inner thoughts with me both in writing and in person, and who write me from distant lands requesting my opinion. For if I haven’t the knowledge, how will my words revive their spirit and fulfill their need for a response? This is my way of expressing affection and respect for them. On the contrary, thanks to the criticism of scholars, and by sharing my true feelings with him, if he has erred I will understand and not humiliate him, and if it is I who have erred I will admit the truth. And I will not be embarrassed if he tells me I am mistaken, for I am no better than Rabbi Akiva, who interpreted “the bread of knights” to mean the bread of ministering angels, and was told by Rabbi Yishmael: You are mistaken. Moreover, I do not merit the honor of Rabbi Yishmael’s teaching, nor am I Rabbi Akiva, yet I will nevertheless not cease debating, so that the rabbi may point out my errors, and I will pursue the truth, not to be annoying nor out of love of victory. And if this, to his mind, places me in error, it is actually he who is mistaken. – Ohel Yaakov, Responsum 10 to the city of Livorno
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Our Story: The Jews of Sepharad; Celebrations and Stories
By Lea-Nora Kordova Annette and Eugene Labovitz
Celebrations and Stories, a special publication of the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education with the American Sephardi Federation, is an essential work that enhances the teaching of Sephardi history, traditions, and cultures.
The life cycle and calendar sections are designed to horizontally connect to the teaching of customs and ceremonies from the Spanish & Portuguese, Syrian, Judeo-Spanish, and Moroccan traditions. Other sections include translations of classic texts and poetry, tales of our history’s heroes, and classroom activities.
Jewish Women from Muslim Societies Speak
Published by the American Sephardi Federation and Hadassah International Research Institute on Jewish Woman at Brandeis University
Jewish women from Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iran were invited to share their personal stories. It could be said that these women’s voices are from the last generation of Jews to have an intimate personal knowledge of the Muslim world, the enormous diversity within and among Middle Eastern Jewish communities.
We hope that these essays, told through the medium of vivid personal stories, will stimulate discussion about contemporary dynamics in the Muslim world and raise awareness of Jewish women’s history in North Africa and the Middle-East.
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Upcoming Events or Opportunities
The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
The Path to On Eagles’ Wings: The Story of Yisrael Yesh‘ayahu-Shar‘abi
After his arrival in the Land of Israel, Yisrael Yesh‘ayahu-Shar’abi got to work advocating for Yemeni Jewish needs, including a path to ‘aliyah for those fleeing Yemen. Although Yesh‘ayahu eventually served as Speaker of the Knesset, among other government roles, the focus of this talk will be on his advocacy for Operation On Eagles’ Wings, the large-scale migration of Yemeni and ‘Adeni Jews to Israel in 1949-50. As head of the Histadrut “Department of Yemenis and Oriental Communities,” Yesh‘ayahu articulated an inclusive vision of Zionism and pressed the Labor leadership to support ‘aliyah from Yemen. The ‘aliyah of most of the Yemeni Jewish community was not inevitable – it was the culmination of decades of work by Yesh‘ayahu and other Labor Zionist Yemeni Jews. This is not just Yesh‘ayahu’s story; it is the story of Mizraḥi migration, of a forgotten school of thought, and of how the “Ingathering of Exiles” came to include non-European Jews.
Monday, 2 May at 12:00PM EST
(Ticket: $10)
Sign-up Now!
About the speaker:
Benjamin Berman-Gladstone, an ASF Broome & Allen Fellow, is a doctoral student at the Skirball Department for Hebrew and Judaic Studies and the Department of History at New York University. He graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Middle East Studies and Judaic Studies and received honors for his thesis on the idea of an “Ingathering of Exiles” in relations between the American, Israeli, and Yemeni Jewish communities during Operation On Eagles’ Wings. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 2018 and spent the 2018-2019 year in Jerusalem on a Fulbright research scholarship. His writing about issues related to Israel, American Jewry, and Southwest Asian affairs has been published in the New York Times, Haaretz, Tablet Magazine, the Jewish Daily Forward, Tower Magazine, the Times of Israel, the Jewish Advocate, the Hill, the Brown Daily Herald, and the Brown Political Review.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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The American Sephardi Federation presents:
The Ten Commandments, The Musical
(U.S. Premiere)
One of France’s most successful musicals, The Ten Commandments, is coming to America. The Ten Commandments’ Off-Broadway cast features new diverse talent from musical theater and operatic backgrounds. Twelve artists will bring to life the story of Moses and the Jewish people.
Thursday, 5 May at 3:00PM EST
Sunday, 8 may at 6:00PM EST
Tuesday, 10 May at 8:00PM EST
Thursday, 12 May at 8:00PM EST
Sunday, 15 may at 6:00PM EST
(Tickets: $26 G/A; $36 VIP)
The Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York City
Sign-up Now!
About the musical:
David Serero, starring as Moses, will lead the cast composed of DaShaun Williams (Ramses), Aria Critchley (Nefertari), Stephanie Craven (Sephora), Lisa Monde (Bithia), Cale Rausch (Joshua), Zachary Harris Martin (Aaron), Kristyn Vario (Myriam), Shane Patrick Watson and Julia Anne Cohen (Various roles and U/S).
All performers will sing the beautiful music of Pascal Obispo, one of France’s most famous composers, with original lyrics by Lionel Florence and Patrice Guirao. The musical was originally created by Elie Chouraqui (ASF Pomegranate Awardee, 2020), who wrote the book. David Serero adapted the musical to English and is staging the show with respect to Broadway standards and culture.
“The Ten Commandments” dramatizes the biblical story of the life of Moses, an adopted Egyptian prince who becomes the deliverer of his real brethren, the enslaved Hebrews, and after that leads the Exodus to Mount Sinai, where he receives, from God, the Ten Commandments.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
The Five Pillars of Islam – A Jewish Perspective
Rick Sopher will explain the so-called “Five Pillars of Islam” (declaration of faith, prayer, giving, fasting and pilgrimage) and look at connections, similarities and differences with Jewish Practise. He will explore the basis of these practises and how one might have influenced the other.
Bonus: Rick will also look at the basis of the very close practises of Jewish and Muslim dietary laws and explain the history of this connection, which was first stated explicitly in the Qur’an.
Monday, 9 May at 12:00PM EST
(Ticket: $10)
Sign-up Now!
About the author:
Rick has a financial background and is the CEO of Edmond de Rothschild Capital Holdings, which he joined in 1993. He is the Chairman of the world’s longest established investment fund of its type. Prior to that he worked at BDO Stoy Hayward, where he was appointed the youngest ever partner. He has received various industry awards including the Outstanding Contribution Award from Hedge Fund Review and the Decade of Excellence Award by Financial News.
Rick graduated from Cambridge University and has more recently worked in the area of interfaith relations with the Woolf Institute, Cambridge as a member of their Council.
During the lockdown period, Rick convened an online dialogue between Professors of Religion at the world’s leading universities to discuss the relationship between the Qur’an and the Bible and has himself dialogued with Muslim leaders on the subject.
Rick was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur in 2007 from President Chirac for his contribution to religious education in France and is Chairman or Director of several educational charities in the UK.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
Between Baghdad and Asia
Beginning in the mid-19th century, a vibrant network of Jews primarily from Iraq but also from the Levant and Iran formed communities throughout the Indian sub-continent and East Asia. These communities flourished for over a decade and the remnants of these communities can still be seen to this day in places like Bombay, Singapore, and Hong Kong through the institutions they built and the communities which continue to exist. This talk traces the history of Baghdadi Jews in Asia from its earliest beginning until the present day, exploring the relevance of these communities both to Baghdad and the larger Jewish world.
Tuesday, 10 May at 12:00PM EST
(Ticket: $10)
Sign-up Now!
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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The Department of Anthropology & Archeology at the University of Calgary, Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Brandeis University and Belzberg Program in Israel Studies, University of Calgary, & the American Sephardi Federation present:
Sephardi Thought and Modernity 2022 Webinar Series
Continuity and Rupture in Sephardi Modernities
(Second Edition)
On Wednesdays at 1:00PM EST
(10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6pm UK / 8pm Israel / 9:30pm Iran)
(Complimentary RSVP)
11 May
(10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 5pm UK / 7pm Israel / 8:30pm Iran – note time – US Daylight Savings)
Vanessa Paloma Elbaz (University of Cambridge; ASF Broome & Allen Fellow) Rhizomic networks of unruptured continuity from 16th c. Italy to 21st c. Casablanca: Music, Power, Mysticism and Neo-Platonism
In this second edition of the Sephardi Thought and Modernity Series we will focus on the question of continuity and rupture as a way to deepen our dialogue about the different forms that modernity has adopted throughout Sephardi history. We will discuss questions such as the meaning of the concept of “modernity” in non-European contexts such as the Levant and/or the Arab world. We will explore how non-European Jewish societies developed ways of life and practices that synthesized tradition, change and cultural diversity throughout time. We will delve into Sephardi intellectual life, cosmopolitanism, cultural belongings, language, translation and mobility.
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Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and Museum presents:
The Seventh Annual Greek Jewish Festival
Sunday, 15 May 12:00-6:00PM EST
Join us as we celebrate the unique Romaniote and Sephardic heritage of the Jews of Greece!
Experience a feast for the senses including authentic kosher Greek foods and homemade Greek pastries, traditional Greek dancing and live Greek and Sephardic music, an outdoor marketplace full of vendors, arts and educational activities for kids, and much more!
The ASF is once again proud to be a Festival Sponsor.
Learn more at www.GreekJewishFestival.com
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The Greek Jewish & Sephardic Young Professionals Network in partnership with the Association of Friends of Greek Jewry present:
Special Young Professionals Tour of Jewish Greece
(Summer 2022)
Join to trace the roots of our families, visit the beautiful cities of Thessaloniki (Salonika), Veroia, Kastoria, Ioannina, Athens, and Rhodes, and connect with other young Jews in Greece.
Check out the full itinerary here!
For more information email GreekJewishYPN@gmail.com