By the way, are you from Eastern Europe? Or perhaps from Germany?

I’m from Eastern Europe, and I don’t care (really) if you think and claim that (maybe you’re right?). Look how liberal I am. What matters to me is to advance and develop personally; my place in the hierarchy doesn’t matter to me. And that’s how it should be for everyone. After that can come the objective discussion about the real hierarchy (when it has significance for some issue—and presumably it does).

By the way, on the facts: in the Torah world you’re completely wrong. There’s no comparison between the sages of Germany (there were barely any) and the sages of Eastern Europe. Both in the Talmudic realm and in Jewish thought and Kabbalah. German Jews were mostly empty intellectuals. There’s a joke about Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch: they said that he studies Psalms and recites Talmud, unlike a Torah scholar from Eastern Europe, who recites Psalms and studies Talmud.

With Heaven’s help, 25 Shevat 5782

After our rabbis have taught us the essential difference between the inferior Jews of Eastern Europe and the exalted Jews of Germany, my soul is full of questions: (a) What is the law regarding border regions such as Posen, Danzig, and Silesia, and likewise Prague, Nikolsburg, and the other cities of Bohemia and Moravia—are they considered East or West? (b) And where does the “border line” pass—at the Elbe River or along the Oder-Neisse line? (c) And what is the law regarding one who has “one foot in the East and one foot in the West”? (d) And what is the law regarding one born in the East who moved to the West, and vice versa? Does the place of origin determine it, or the place of residence?

Let our rabbis instruct us in all this, and may the Master preserve and sustain them!

With blessing, Azriel Tzemach Halevi Kalischer, from the rising of the sun to its setting

Hello Rabbi Michi.
Of course I don’t think that. It was a provocative question following a post written by you.
You claim that what I wrote—even if I’m right in what I said {that Eastern Europeans are inferior}—would still be something that can be changed. Meaning, Eastern Europeans can change.
In your post you write, and here is the quote:

“Moreover, I do not know where the warriors against racism get the confidence that every such characteristic really can be changed. That is a factual assumption, and as such it too requires substantiation. The claim that every assertion about the essential nature of a trait is racism is a claim that is absurd on its face, and certainly unfounded.”

I made a claim about an essential trait of Eastern European Jews, and here you came out against it furiously. You’re contradicting yourself.
It’s easy for you to make such claims about others: women, blacks, Mizrahim, Haredim.
But when speaking about Eastern Europe, {apparently that’s where you come from} you change your mind. I’d appreciate a substantive response. I’m from Eastern Europe—slow on the uptake….

Noam, you’re free to waste your time, but not mine. So I’m stopping here, and I’m sure that despite your being from Eastern Europe you’ll manage to answer on your own the enormous difficulties you raised in your last message. They certainly do not fall short of the first one in their force.

I’d be glad if someone would answer in the rabbi’s place: where am I mistaken? Did I not understand his response? Did I not understand what he wrote in the post?

Noam’s difficulty: In the column there is criticism of the anti-racists, who assume that a race has no essential personality trait, and therefore on the racial level everything is changeable. On the other hand, here the respondent confidently assumed that the “race” of Eastern Europeans has no essential trait of intellectual inferiority, and therefore even if in practice they are indeed inferior, that can be changed. And the difficulty is: from where does the respondent get this anti-racist assumption that the matter is changeable?
Resolution: In the column there is criticism of the sweeping assumption that a race has no essential personality trait at all. Because it is possible that somewhere there is some essential racial trait. In the answer, the respondent argued that a certain trait—namely intellectual inferiority—is not essential to the race. How, presumably in the respondent’s view, can one see that it is not essential? Because many Eastern Europeans have achieved and succeeded.
To Noam: does this resolution satisfy you?

Noam

Rabbi Michi did not contradict himself. He didn’t come out against you in any furious way. That’s all in your imagination. He said that factually, at least with respect to essence, you are mistaken, and that’s it: Eastern European Jews are not essentially inferior, period. He said “nonsense” because he also thinks that factually this was not true either today or in the past. It is true that Eastern European Jews as a whole were less culturally developed than German Jews, as the simple result of the fact that the peoples of Eastern Europe were less culturally developed than the German people. But with respect to the elite, that was not true (even at the level of scientists and intellectuals). And he did not accuse you of racism, because there is nothing to accuse you of on that score. There is no guilt in it at all. Maybe he could have accused you of arrogance, but that is a sin between man and God and not between man and his fellow, and therefore there is not even a moral flaw in it (in the narrow sense of morality).

It seems that the genetic differences between the Jews of Eastern Europe and those of Western Europe stem from the high proportion of Khazars among Eastern European Jews, whereas among German Jews there are many who came from Spain and are original Jews. Indeed, the Levites in Eastern Europe trace their origin to the descendants of Rabbi Judah Halevi, who went to convert the Khazars.

Accordingly, there is also a difference in the love with which God loves the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim. The Sephardim, who have been from the children of Israel from time immemorial—God loves with an “everlasting love”; whereas the Ashkenazim, who descend from converts, God loves with a “great love,” for He commanded many times in His Torah: “And you shall love the convert.”

With blessing, Levi&Ger, a Sephardi from Karpat