The NY Times Platforms Chamas

 The New York Times just published a glowing discussion titled “The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?” —a textbook case of the exact sin the Torah calls chamas.

In Parshas Noach (Bereishit 6:11), the world was “filled with chamas” (וַתִּמָּלֵא הָאָרֶץ חָמָס). Rashi and the Midrashim explain this wasn’t grand-scale robbery or violence. It was petty theft — people stealing tiny amounts less than a peruta, the smallest coin, amounts too trivial for any court to enforce. Everyone took just a little. No single act seemed criminal. But together it destroyed the moral fabric of society. The Midrash records God’s rebuke to the Dor HaMabul: “I gave you everything, and it still wasn’t enough.”

That is precisely what the April 22, 2026 NYT Opinions podcast is normalizing.

Three affluent cultural figures — Nadja Spiegelman (NYT Opinion culture editor), Jia Tolentino (New Yorker writer), and Hasan Piker (wealthy political streamer) — spend the episode coining and defending “microlooting”: stealing small items from big corporations like Whole Foods. Tolentino casually admits she repeatedly stole lemons. Piker declares himself “pro stealing from big corporations” because “they steal quite a bit more from their own workers” and shrinkage is already “factored in.” Spiegelman probes whether it’s justified political protest since “the rich don’t play by the rules.”

This is modern chamas in real time: small, low-consequence thefts justified by resentment toward the wealthy. The same dynamic that filled the earth before the Flood.

They even contrast it with “microaggressions,” exposing the full inversion: intersectional morality obsesses over tiny perceived slights while excusing actual micro-theft when the target is a corporation. The 7 Noahide Laws — binding on all humanity — explicitly forbid theft. Period. Yet today’s discourse treats property rights as optional when the “right” people are doing the stealing.

Bonus echo: Chamas (חמס) sounds like Hamas (חמאס). And one of the panelists is Hasan Piker — a vocal supporter of causes aligned with that group. The New York Times is now platforming Dor HaMabul behavior and giving prime space to voices that have shilled for Hamas.

When elites romanticize breaking the most basic moral law because “the system is unfair,” they are repeating the exact pattern that once brought the Flood. The Torah diagnosed it 3,300+ years ago. The NYT just gave us the 2026 exhibit.

Pro Chamas = Pro Hamas.

Intersectionality.

Tazria/Metzora -- The Pontiff: More Porcine than Leonine

It has been noted that this week’s parsha, Tazria-Metzora, comes right after Shemini to remind us that just as there are consequences for what we put in our mouths, there are also consequences for what comes out of our mouths. In fact, the Talmud in Pesachim 3b records how Rav rebuked a student who metaphorically referred to exhaustion by comparing it to a “tired chazir — a pig,” while accepting the more refined comparison to a “tired gedi — a kid.” The Sages teach that the Torah itself goes to great lengths to avoid even coarse language.

A well-known mussar parable builds on this theme: when one disciple recoils at the sight of a pig and says, in essence, “Uch, look at this pig,” the other gently replies, “Oh, how white are its teeth!” On the surface, this encourages seeing some good even in something repulsive. But the parable also warns against the opposite danger — using superficial refinement or “white teeth” compliments to whitewash what is fundamentally impure and dangerous.

Rabbi Jonathan Muskat — who is absolutely clear about where one should stand on the current matzav in the Middle East and does not shy away from saying so — still remains concerned enough about what comes out of our mouths that he seems to exemplify the second rabbi in that parable. In a recent piece, he forthrightly states that the Pope’s position is “morally wrong and ultimately damaging,” yet he still insists on giving the pontiff the benefit of respectful dialogue and worries that President Trump’s blunt tone does not foster the thoughtful exchange serious moral issues demand.

Instead of worrying about the tone of those confronting the Pope, Rabbi Muskat would have done better to train his eye on the deeper issue: the glaring disconnect between the Pope’s public performance of piety and the moral failure it conceals—and remember the Talmudic Roman analog that points to what this Pope really is: way more porcine than Leonine, irrespective of his Vatican station.  Way more native Chicago than adopted Rome; it seems the stockyards rubbed off on him in more ways than one. Just like the Edomite Roman pig, he stretches out his “kosher feet” in the shoes of the fisherman for all to see — publicly praying for peace, issuing platitudes about dialogue, and posturing as a moral voice — whie the silence on the slaughter of his own flock and the selective pressure against those defending Jewish and American lives — reveals what’s in his innards.

He has offered almost no named condemnations, no emergency visits, and no urgent outcry as hundreds of Christians are murdered this year in Nigeria, the Sahel, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Syria. Churches have been burned to the ground, pastors kidnapped and killed, and entire communities with centuries of faith wiped out. Yet when those fighting actual terrorists in Iran and Gaza act decisively, the rhetoric sharpens: viral messages, media interviews, coordinated appearances by American cardinals, coordinated by a certain political office in his hometown.

The Chazal compared Rome to the pig precisely because it boasts of justice and civilization while committing robbery and violence. This Pope does the same in our day: he shills for restraint toward terrorism’s sponsors in the name of “peace,” all while his own Christians bleed. In Tazria-Metzora we learn that tzara’at can afflict the body for the sins of the tongue. In our day, the greater affliction may be the polished silence and public posturing that follows when we insist on admiring the pig’s feet instead of confronting the pig itself.

It's also been said that one reason that, among the offerings brought to cure the tzaraas we find in parshas metzora, one brings cedar wood to atone for haughtiness – and hyssop to possibly atone for agonizing self-doubt that might have led to the infractions that caused the affliction. Excessive refinement in the face of this papal office’s porcine posturing is not moral sophistication — it is as injurious as the self-deprecation that led to a particular tzaraas sufferer needing atonement.   This pope needs to be called out for who and what he is.  And if President Trump did it for us and made our job easier, that’s the example we should have followed in this case – and grant him hakaras hatov for it.

Chalice Malice: Leo's Balaamic Vinegar

In an age when too many voices blur moral lines, Rabbi Jonathan Muskat’s recent piece, “When Restraint Becomes a Moral Failure,” forthrightly declares that Pope Leo XIV’s position on the current conflict is not merely mistaken but “morally wrong and ultimately damaging for the good of the world.” When an adversary repeatedly declares its intent to destroy Israel, labels America the “Great Satan,” and sustains decades of proxy terrorism, nuclear brinkmanship, and ideological war, Torah does not counsel endless restraint. It demands milchemet mitzvah—defensive war that is obligatory, not optional. Rabbi Muskat’s invocation of that category shows what is at stake.

Yet Rabbi Muskat still commits a category error that Chazal would recognize as perilous. By granting Pope Leo XIV the status of a legitimate religious authority whose “voice” merits respectful engagement—while fretting over President Trump’s “dismissive and personal” tone—the rabbi inadvertently extends a chut hasa’arah of  credibility to a figure whose actions place him firmly in the category of oyev, not even dubious ally. That misplacement risks the very merachem al ha-achzarim of Shaul Hamelech and misplaced anivus of Rav Zecharia ben Avkilus that Chazal warned led to national catastrophe.

Chazal draw sharp distinctions among potentates. There are those who, while scrutinized, function as limited allies: the Pharaohs of Yosef’s era; Koresh; Daryavesh (TB RB 3b-4a). Motivations are probed, but transaction is possible without cozy embrace. There might be a middle ground—Achashverosh—whom the Megillah treats warily; starting out as hostile as Haman, moved by reality and eventually just defaulting to indifference once the perceived Jewish threat to his throne proves illusory. 

And then there are the outright enemies: the Pharaohs of Shemot through Beshalach, Bilaam, Sichon, Og, the thirty-one kings, Nebuchadnezzar, Titus, and the rest of the nevi’im rishonim’s catalogue of destroyers. These are not interlocutors. Their “blessings” are curses with silver linings; their peace-talk masks Judeocidal intent.

President Trump belongs—generously—in the first category, and arguably exceeds it. He has moved decisively against the Islamic Republic rather than mollifying it as Obama and Biden did. He has not earned the benefit of every doubt, but he has earned far more zechut than his critics concede.  He’s been called Achashverosh, but other than hanging Haman, Achashverosh made the Jews do the defensive gruntwork.  President Trump has worked in an open alliance with Israel not only to the fury of the left but also a loud portion of the base which is humiliated by his open and repeated support for Jewish initiatives which they see as a personal betrayal.  Ax did not have that kind of backbone.

Pope Leo XIV, by contrast, has placed himself squarely among the second. A Chicago-born pontiff who met privately with Obama strategist David Axelrod just days before escalating tensions, he has offered no named condemnations of the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, the Sahel, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Syria, or the burning of churches across those regions. Pastors kidnapped, communities wiped out—centuries of faith erased—yet silence. When Trump’s strikes target actual terrorists in Iran and Gaza, however, the rhetoric shifts. Viral messages, media interviews, American cardinals on 60 Minutes—sudden moral urgency appears. This is not Augustine or Aquinas speaking; it is Obamanian social-justice theology wearing clerical robes, a third Obama term run from the Vatican.

Even his own flock sees the pattern. A practicing Catholic, Dakota Andrade, wrote this week: “I’m a practicing Catholic. And I need to say something that’s going to make a lot of people uncomfortable… Pope Leo XIV has said almost nothing. No named condemnations. No emergency visits… Just quiet platitudes about dialogue and peace—directed at nobody in particular. But the week Trump escalated the Iran conflict… three American Cardinals appear on 60 Minutes in what felt like a coordinated response.” This is not shepherding; this is the state religion of Tuckercarlstan hiding behind a frock and skullcap.  It has far more in common with the “peace” that Bilaam peddled than with any authentic Catholic Just War tradition.

Defending the Pope’s right to “apply his religious teachings to contemporary global issues” –especially this pope--and worrying that Trump’s bluntness “does not foster… respectful dialogue” conflates kavod ha-Torah with respect for a theology has proven Judeomisic. Why grant credibility to a system whose current representative aids—by silence and selective pressure—precisely the Judeocidal enemies we face? Forty Democratic senators now seek to restrict arms to Israel even as America and Israel confront Iran and Hezbollah together. The DNC and the Vatican, in parallel, function as neo-Confederates of a sort: traitorous voices cheering, however indirectly, another Holocaust while Pius XII’s ghost nods approvingly from the wings.

Rabbi Muskat is not woke. He wants to win this war. Yet hand-wringing over tone while extending religious legitimacy to Leo XIV repeats Saul’s mercy on Amalek and R. Zechariah ben Avkilus’s fatal anivus at the time of the churban. Trump’s “vulgarity,” in context, is restrained compared to the stakes. There is no cheftza shel Torah that requires even a scintilla of deference here. The hour calls for drosh lignai: scathing public opprobrium of the kind Chazal reserved for Bilaam and his spiritual heirs–possibly even vulgar and adhominous, poetically befitting the character of Bilaam.

We can—and must—support the war effort Rabbi Muskat rightly champions. But we do so by keeping categories straight. Trump deserves the presumption of good faith his critics have forfeited. Leo XIV does not. To blur that line is not nuance; it is the diplomacy of defeat. In 2026, with Jewish lives and American interests on the line, we cannot afford another round of Saulite equivocation. 

Leo’s Communion Chalice drips with Balaamic Vinegar.  And, like Bilaam, everything about him should be nidrosh lignai.  The only question is whether it’s a mitzvah or a chovah.  Either way, he’s at war with us—and the US—in the name of “peace” and we do ourselves no favors by according any respect to his theology which is more Chicago than Rome, and all of it Orwell.