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.
No comments:
Post a Comment