Social, Political, Cultural Suppression in Contemporary Jewish Society

I was introduced to the term “Social Supression”, which uses words I already know, by a Modern-Orthodox Chabadnik from . This term was used to describe the way in which contemporary politics operate. This term seems to also describe how Jewish people enforce various ideas.

For example, the political divisiveness of Israeli politics is all about “Us vs Them”. And this is more true when it comes to issues pertaining to conflicts between Jewish groups. It’s more true than with the issues between Jewish people and Non-Jewish peoples.

The act of deeming a group of Jews, who merely have a different minhag or derekh of being worthless is due to how the differences they have with the others are perceived, and this is a huge part of how modern society functions. Certain dominant groups have established and enforced their opinions and their ways of life to make it difficult for other groups to exist there.

Of course, there’s a natural difference between strongly religious Jews and strongly irreligious Jews, but the issue it has in politics is that the name-calling is used to prevent authentic progress on a political level that actually affects the average person.

The way in which Ashkenazi Jews treated Sephardic Jews and the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Jews is an example of cultural suppression. These Jews were seen as having never having had exposure to a higher culture even though there.

Neither the Religious Ashkenazi Jews nor the Secular Ashkenazi Jews fully welcomed the Sephardim and MENA Jews in Israel as well as various parts of the English-speaking world such as the Toronto Jewish community. While, French-speaking Jews are mostly Sephardi, due to the colonization of North Africa, the English-speaking Jews are still greatly Ashkenazi. This is probably due to the number of Eastern European Jews that fled Westward during the past two centuries.

One example of the discrimination of Sephardim/MENA in the English-speaking world includes an example of Sephardi Jewish parents in Toronto being told that no one would want to marry their sons because they have a Moroccan-sounding surname. The assumption that a German-sounding name is more ideal than a Spanish/Portuguese, Berber, or Arabic-sounding Jewish name is not inline with Jewish values. That is based on the arrogant idea that one ethnicity of Jews is better than another.

There’s also many cases of Sephardic Jewish men changing their minhag or derekh when marrying Ashkenazi Jewish women which is against our tradition of honoring one’s father by keeping his Minhag. This is true regardless of one’s ethnicity. Another example includes Yemenite Jews being forced to accept the minhagim and culture of Satmar even going as far as to neglect their needs as a method of coercion. This took place in New York. These Yemenite Jews were treated like second-class citizens, and no one has made a statement apologizing for this tragedy. The Hasidic Jewish culture of America has tried to resolve the issue even though the damage has been done.

The American Jews of Lubavitch took advantage of the matzav, with the revolution in Iran, which caused Jewish women and children to emigrate from Iran…The Lubavitchers decided that the unmarried women should marry Chabadniks, and the Persian Jewish children would then go to Chabad schools. Thus, multiple generations of authentic Persian Jewry have been suppressed by a foreign Jewish culture.

Another example is the suppressive attitudes which encourages the learning of Yiddish but not the learning or preservation of the languages that MENA Jews spoke (Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, etc.) as if to assume that Yiddish is worthy of being preserved but not the latter. I’ve even had people shame me for claiming to not want to preserve Yiddish while they think that Ladino and Judeo-Arabic are not culturally relevant. The reasoning(s) for why many Ashkenazic Jews to preserve Yiddish is actually for the same as why Sephardic Jews want to preserve Ladino or Judeo-Arabic. These suppressive attitudes are established by the social norms in Jewish communities to preserve a specific variation of the Jewish identity by creating a stigma on the other groups of Jews.

In many prominent Yeshivos, some higher-level learning requires some knowledge in Yiddish even though none use the languages of Sephardic Jews. Another question could be: What makes any of the aforementioned languages worth preserving?

This is only the cusp of social, political, and cultural suppression as it exists within the greater Nation of Israel. There’s thousands of other examples that one could research if they wanted to. This includes Sephardim discriminating against Non-Sephardic Jews, the conflicts between Tzionists and Anti-Tzionists (including attitudes about Gimmel and Ayin-Tzadi), and the attitudes about Religious Jews as instilled by non-religious Jews.

The usage of name-calling, as an ad hominem, is a a key component in the act of subverting the ability for Klal Yisrael to unite and discuss real change that is needed to improve our communities. Divisiveness is an essential part of brainwashing as well. Stigma is attached to words, and various people, with manipulative intentions, attach a stigma which becomes part of the vicious culture of name-calling. This is part of how some social entities maintain a sense of control and influence on the populous.

For the sake of consistency, we will discuss these things in the order they were mentioned. The first was the act of Sephardim discriminating against Non-Sephardim. The concept, itself, is illogical because like all other forms of subversion mentioned in this article, it takes away from the aḥdut needed to create a functioning Jewish society, and it displays Sephardic Jews as being snobby about being Sephardi. Instead, Sephardim should show how their culture is interesting, and how it’s beneficial for Klal Yisrael.

The topic of Tzionism vs Anti-Tzionism may take more time to explain. The hashkafot that discuss the founding of the State of Israel are relevant in understanding the logic of rabbanim in 1948 which were dealing with a serious change. It does not mean that it is appropriate to label people as Tzionist or Anti-Tzionist when it comes to how we our Hashkafot. It should also be known that Rav Kook and the Rebbe of Satmar agreed on many topics which are still relevant today including the Feminist influence of Gittin.

The attitudes between people that are “Litvish” and “Lubavitch” is common in certain parts of the United States and Canada due to the social differences that these seemingly similar (from afar) cultures represented by minhagim which are not that different than each other, but there’s a divisive language that one has against the other which is embedded into these cultures. The history behind this is very complex, but it is mindboggling that this mentality still exists in the present-day world where most communities have accepted other groups of people into their congregation.

And this issue is of a bigger concern to many Jewish adults than the Hashkafot pertaining to the founding of the modern State of Israel. Why? Because it has an immediate impact on all Jews in all times. The inability for many Religious Jews to talk about Feminism while they will gladly talk about Tzionism is a serious issue in understanding and resolving various contemporary issues.