Va’eschanan: Peor-gressivism

“You saw with your own eyes what G-d did in the matter of Baal-peor, that your G-d wiped out from among you every person who followed Baal-peor” 

“I’m sorry, I’m afraid the Jews were right” 

As the war in Gaza has taken a different turn with the change of US Presidential administrations and the just punishment meted out to the intransigent loyal civillain subjects of Hamas rule intensifies, the virulence of the blood libeling that started even before October 7 has gotten exponentially more inflammatory as the battles rage on.   What might be unique about this recent conflict is the prominence of those who not only identify as Jews raising their voices to try to be the loudest in this Dantean chorus, but also who claim to do so based on their proclaimed adherence to Jewish values.

 

They should foll no one, really.  This mindset goes back to the days of the Sadducees, who outwardly professed a loyalty to the Written Law and a disdain for the Oral Tradition, but who, as Maimonides explained, were ultimately almost completely Epicurean — they truly believed in nothing legitimately Jewish, their Bibliolatry being a marketing tactic.

 

We find something similar nowadays.  Jewish pundits pretending to descriptively warn of a breaking point between American Jews and Israel while platforming accused terrorist stateside organizers and supporters who openly proclaim that Hamas has to execute October 7 to prevent a deal with Saudi Arabia that would preclude the Palestinians.  

 

The events of the mass Peor worship that are fleeting referenced in this week’s reading gives an open window into the mindset of these members of our tribe who engage in this public act of mass defection amid possibly the worst sustained level of overt antisemitism that has been seen since 1945.  The fact that a lot of their motivation is stated to be in service of an ersatz Judaism echoes a number of point in the narrative of that incident as related mostly in TB Sanhedrin 82b.

 

Call it Peor-gressivism.

 

To boils down that narrative to essentials, the prophet/soothsayer Bilaam — having found himself frustrated in his attempts to curse the Jewish people even to the point of eradication — advises Balak that a mass seduction employing a huge portion of his female population as honey traps to seduce the Jews into Peor worship might succeed in incurring Divine wrath in a way that Balaamic curses failed to do.   Tragically, the plan is wildly successful to the point that approximately 180000 Jewish males of military age engage in the sordid evacuatory rite of Peor worship and are either wiped out by execution or plague.

 

A closer look at how they succumbed to the seduction technique indicated how they were pathetically ensnared: when the honeytrapper had inflamed the passions of her target to the point that he would demand “Yield to me”, she would remove a mini-Peor and say “this first”, to which he would reply “but avoda zara”, to which she would reply “all you gotta do is evacuate to it” (taking advantage of the lack of knowledge that this was the actual form of worship), to which he would comply, along with a submission to her demand that he “repudiate the Torah of Moses”.  One might not have to expend too much mental effort to imagine that one ensnared in the rite, the honeytrapper wasn’t dispensing any honey, and the now disgraced quisling would attempt to slink back to his own camp an try to hide his treason only — pace Rashi — to face execution when the Clouds of Glory part from atop all the guilty parties who are ultimately executed for their treason.

 

A further parallel to current event might be the vicious irony in the eminent possibility that in an event that is renowned for mass licentiousness, the only individual who ever got to actually commit “license” as it were -- was Zimri.  No one else got farther than evacuating themselves to Peor before their honeytrappers simply evacuated them, having achieved their mission to induce treason.

 

That might illustrate one element of this growing tendency to mass defect: a rather pathetic and gross attempt to cleave to a culture at large that shows less and less tendency to hide its Judeocidal hostility while ultimately gaining nothing, and in fact literally soiling themselves in the attempt.  This could be exemplified by the recent post by a leader of In Our Lifetime complaining about how the antizionist Jew are beginning to “colonize the movement” the way the Jews have “colonized Palestine”, or how an observer in the Middle East notes that of all the Jews hated in that region, it is the publicly antizionist Jews who elicit the greatest feelings of utter contempt and disgust.  

 

But it doesn’t stop there.  The pressing need of members of this quisling clique to couch their self-righteous cause in Jewish terms harks back to the two most prominent offenders in the narrative:  Bilaam and Zimri.  Bilaam, whose prophetic ambitions and possible talents thinly mask a fierce loathing of any moral or other boundaries, professes at one point that he desires the “death of the righteous”.  Zimri and his tribal cohort begin to defend his public liaison with Kozbi with a pseudo-“shailah” to Moses, and finally are duped into proclaiming “these abstainers [perushim] have now declared the matter permissible” when Phineas fools the Simeonites into thinking he’s joined them, which is how he gains access to Zimri to slay him and stop the carnage.

 

Either way, you now have the spectre of various organizations “Jews for ____”, “Jewish Voice for ____”, even a “Halachic Left” — basically Jews for anyone/anything else BUT Jews.  (In 2018 one such aspiring high-school age peor-gressive complained that her formally nondenominational institution suffered from “Judaism First” for refusing to participate in a gun control march led by a notorious antisemite).  The need to legitimate peor-gressivism through misappropriation of classic Jewish concepts dates back to Bilaam — a non Jewish gun for hire — and his biggest public “catch”, a tribal prince who had once offered one of the original sacrifices at the Inauguration of the Tabernacle.

 

A few ostensible Orthodox theologians have either been gaslighted or have joined in the gaslighting surrounding the now proven false and staged imagery of starving Gazan civillains, on some occasions going as far as asking “Did our hands not shed this blood?”  I remind said theologians of the verses from last week’s Haftara in Isaiah 1, where after the prophet laments “we were like Sodom”, prompting the Divine response “Harken, Sodomite Officers!!”  Fair warning—you’re may get what you wish for: being held responsible for the dual Hamasian attempted genocides, those being to ongoing crime associated with the atrocities of October 7 and the autogenocide Hamas continues to perpetrate against its own ostensible civillain population with aid and comfort from media, pop culture, most governments and NGO’s — and the peor-gressives who adhere to the narratives dictated by those implacably Judeomisic entities. 

 

Further, in New York, you have the spectre of Zohran Mamdani leading among Jewish voters, despite fearing that their safety might be compromised as a result,

as if they follow the lead of the mesis umediach who, when asked about their persistence in enticing their fellow tribesmen to idolatry, can only answer: kach hi chovesenu kach hi yafa lanu, this is our obligation, this is good for us.  These are the coprophiliac quislings of Shittim who have been contemporarily recast as the coprocephalic quislings of Gaza, those who “do the deeds of Zimri and seek the reward of Phineas”.  

 

So the only response:  make sure they have no reward at all.  Peor-gressive  asajews—who can’t be made into non jews as was done with the Cutheans—can be labeled unJews, especially as a communal matter:  for example, take IfNotNow at their word—you can’t really threaten to leave the community if you’ve already left.

 

There are many paradigms for this in Jewish history — the ostensibly 80% who never left Egypt and the perpetually unwelcome wicked guest at the seder— but the peor episode involving almost a quarter of military age males disappearing in a very short period of time after exemplary military success and on the verge of entering the promised land is instructive.   We just have experienced a series of major successes in Lebanon and Iran, and we’re about to actually win and the peor-gressives can’t stand it so they join the blood libelers in taking down as many Jews as they can before the end, like Bilaam’s advice to Balak and the Nazis in 1945.  

 

Like the neurotic who knows 2+2=4 but can’t stand it, the biggest fear of the peor-gressive unJews is that “they’re afraid the Jews [are] right”.

Matos: The Horseshoe Within

There has been much attention recently paid to “horseshoe” phenomenon as it pertains to antisemitism, as the point where the far-right and far-left converge to almost jointly express their virulent hostility to all things Jewish. Parshat Matos indirectly highlights where that horseshoe might manifest from inside our community, two internal battles that the Israelites were fighting within their own camp: one against the “As-a-Jews,” exemplified by Zimri, and one against the “Only Jews,” exemplified by the spies (meraglim).

In 1997, Sephardic Chief Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron caused a firestorm when he suggested Zimri was the first “Reform Jew.” Whether or not that label was appropriate, a more accurate statement would have been that Zimri was the first “As-a-Jew” of the post-desert generation: a rebel who cloaked his actions in religious justification. 

Indeed, signs of “As-a-Jew” behavior predate Zimri. Much of the rebellion and unrest during the wilderness years were attributed to the Erev Rav (mixed multitude), whose Jewish lineage was uncertain; but consider the “native” “As-a-Jew” hall of fame: the spies (meraglim), Korach, Datan (especially his audacious retort to Moshe in Shemos after Moshe had saved him), and even Bilaam—who, though not Jewish, trafficked heavily in Jewish themes and famously declared a desire to “die the death of the righteous.”

Zimri, however, takes the crown: his rebellion was uniquely cloaked in religious language. As recorded in Sanhedrin 82b, he challenges Moshe: “Is this woman forbidden to me when you married a Midianite yourself?” Later, with his tribe guarding him, Zimri brazenly brings Cozbi into his tent. Pinchas approaches under the guise of joining in, tricking Zimri’s guards. They proclaim, “Even the religious ones [prushim] now permit it!”—a clear indication that this act was couched not as rebellion against Judaism, but as an expression of Judaism.

This is what makes Zimri the paradigmatic “As-a-Jew.” He didn’t just sin—he claimed his sin was Torah. He misappropriated Judaism to justify treason. And that’s a pattern still visible today—not just among those with denominational disagreements, but among those who use the language of Torah to justify siding with our enemies.  We could— and should— name names: even just in New York—Nadler, Schumer, Lander, any Mamdani voter—and many more who mask their betrayal as religious or moral imperative (Jews for ____, Jewish Voice for _____, Rabbis for _____ etc).

Meanwhile, at the other end of the horseshoe, one might argue that certain ultra-Orthodox factions today, who continue to demand blanket exemptions from army service, reflect a theological hybrid of the meraglim—insisting that their specific lifestyle of Torah learning is too spiritually pure to be disrupted by national responsibility, as the true pillar of the existence of the nation—and the biryonim,  threatening to tear the system down if their exact demands aren’t met (at least the biryonim insisted everyone should fight the Romans), famously declaring recently they’d rather be ruled by Arabs than compromise on their draft status.

At this point, one wonders whether the endless tantrums around military exemption are simply a manifestation of this theological two-front—and whether some sort of governmental upsherin (a traditional symbolic haircut at age 3) might finally settle the matter. After all, even within ultra-Orthodox circles, there’s occasional quiet acknowledgment that compromise might be necessary, but there seems to be little inclination to follow through on that ostensible commitment.

In Matos, the horeshoe may not get buried, but it is finally significantly marginalized.  Pinchas leads the military campaign against the Midianites and their women—who, as “honey traps,” had caused the deadly plague at the end of Parshat Balak and the Zimri rebellion. Bilaam, the mastermind behind the scheme, is killed in the process. Meanwhile, the tribes of Reuven, Gad, and half of Menashe pledge to join the conquest of Canaan, assuaging Moshe’s fear that their request to settle east of the Jordan echoed the sins of the meraglim.  Still, there is backlash against Pinchas, which also echoes today: critics claimed his lineage made him unworthy, as he “descended from idol-worshippers” and had “slain a tribal prince”, an attempt to employ adhominy to delegitimize Pinchas’ action that was ultimately literally and sanctioned by G-d Himself.  There is elitist resentment against Pinchas resmbling the “As-a-Jew” Zimri camp, and the echoes of the mergalim in the “Only Jews” camp that is only resolved with the military pledge on the part of the two and a half tribes.

Some may object that now, during the Three Weeks, is not the time to raise such criticisms at the cost of Jewish unity or because it might lead to the spread of sinas chinam, the baseless hatred that led to the destruction of the Second Temple and the subsequent long exile.  However, it is precisely during this period that we are meant to reflect on the historical sins that led to our destruction. The rebellions of the meraglim and biryonim are central to that story as told in TB Gittin 55-58, and the Parshos of Pinchas and Matos are always read during the Three Weeks.

In fact — for all the focus on the ostensible humiliation of Bar Kamtza that kicks off the narrative and serves as the time-worn education paradigm of unjustified humiliation and baseless hatred as the cause of the exile—the more telling and even more explicit maxim laying blame for the churban comes later in the narrative: “Rabbi Yoḥanan says: The excessive humility of Rabbi Zekharya ben Avkolas destroyed our Temple, burned our Sanctuary, and exiled us from our land.”   A case can be made that there might be some parallels between this excessive humility and the current phenomenon of “suicidal empathy” that  hamstrings our efforts to fight an existential war against a resolutely explicit Judeocial enemy which would love nothing more than the engineer another churban—making that parallel very timely.

However, more to the point regarding the aforementioned horseshoe, the moral confusion and handwringing exemplified by R Zekharya tying his own hands AND everyone else’s— he was too pious to either allow a one-time suspension of sacrificial rules or prevent Bar Kamtza from continuing his treason, all from fears of what “people will say”—illustrates the possibility of paralysis in face of existentially threats from within and without when trying to fulfill all moral criteria—even contradictory ones—simultaneously.  This is not the time for “excessive humiiity”: this is the time to call out the threats .  Otherwise the kingdom will be lost because of a horsehoe.

Easy stock response to NK supporters of Hamas

NK Facebook comment:

"Abraham was not from the land of Israel"

Response:

Avraham was mizar'o shel Shem, and also learned in his Bes Medrash, as did his son and grandson]. The Canaanites were the original occupiers, having been bequeathed nothing but servitude from Noach but then somehow went and conquered the land from Shem [cf. Rashi, Gen,. 12:6]. The land was already ours before it was ours; Joshua just took it back. Additionally, any defense of the population currently occupying Gaza--especially after 10/7--make said defender not only an accessory after the fact to murder, rape and Judeocide, but also maskim in maa'aseh eretz Mitzrayim and ma'aseh Eretz C'naan.

Post-Purim Post-Part(y)m

Note/Disclaimer:  for some reason, this piece, which was published in 2010, ended gp getting bounced all the way to 2024.  Suffice it to say that now I'm way more jaundiced in my view of the former President whom I refer to alternatively as Farrakh Obama or Son of Stan.  He's on the level of a Bilaam more than an Achashverosh, and should be regarded accordingly.

So here's what I wrtoe in 2011.

As I did last year, I spent the bulk of the past three weeks expending my journalistic energies writing and producing the local Purim Shpiel, basically our version of the State of the Upper West Side. Unlike last year’s production however, I did manage to slip in a political statement of sorts, almost partly unwillingly: during our “Purim Update” [modeled on SNL’s “Weekend Update”], I came onstage as the President for a mock interview, in oversized ears…and a kaffiyeh draped around my shoulders.

I had actually run this by a few people around the neighborhood during the scripting phase of the shpiel and I was surprised by the number of people who seemed to be find the notion offensive…not so much the physical alteration [grudgingly admitting that I was not, exactly, employing a caricature analogous to blackface], but the implication—or implications—regarding the President’s perceived religious and Judeophobic inclinations. It occurred to me that, obviously, some Orthodox Jews with more liberal political inclinations who voted for Obama may feel somewhat defensive about their electoral choice, as if they are trying to pre-empt accusations of placing personal sentiment over communal responsibility [as you will see below, I would not nearly go that far], and my costume was another reminder of how they felt. It also occurred to me that, like the New Yorker cover of the Obamas as, respectively, an African Muslim and an Angela Davis clone, my costume may have been a slight dig at those in my community who actually believe the absolute worst about the President.

As can be evidenced by my writings in this [and my other] blog, I have had serious misgivings about this President and his Administration, not only [but certainly not least] due to his Middle East policies—although, again, I have been fully open about that particular “bias”. However, I have been equally uncomfortable with the tactics of the far-right tarring the President as either Muslim, or a terrorist, or a communist. [V’hki teima that he’s a socialist—well, keep in mind that at a recent CPAC conference, Newt Gingrich quoted Camus and Orwell to warn against the dangers of socialism, forgetting that both Camus and Orwell were democratic socialists. Lomed mikol adam, indeed.] This may be due to my LEFTOVER goyish college-nurtured liberal sentiments. It also might be because, sometimes, extremism in defense of anything is a vice, as can be evidenced the damage done to cause of anti-communism by Joe McCarthy.

However, should one need more “traditional” evidence, one need only look at the Purim story.

One of the best treatments of Megillas Esther I have seen is Yoram Hazony’s The Dawn, which is basically a political analysis of the sefer. One of the points Hazony makes is that Mordechai’s refusal to bow down before Haman was not necessarily just a religious statement [although Rabbi Howard Jachter’s Why Did Mordechai Refuse to Bow Down to Haman? basically covers the issue of Haman’s questionable status as Avoda Zara], but also a political statement: Mordechai was essentially protesting Achashversosh’s dispensing of the political process and instituting a totalitarian dictatorship through Haman in a specific response to Bigsan and Teresh’ assassination attempt.

With regard to my point about an extremist ad hominem approach to opposing Obama and his policies, my points from the Esther story would be this: one, we see that Mordechai’s response was measured, in that it took nine years from the assassination attempt to the genocide decree; two, his refusal to bow down was not even unanimously approved by the rabbinnic authorities of the time; and three, as the gemara points out, Achashverosh was as much an eliminationist antisemite as Haman, but Mordechai never takes any political action against him.

I don’t think anyone can characterize Obama as an eliminationist anti-Semite, and although I would certainly agree that his foreign policy is on the whole not friendly to Israel, I can think of at least three other Presidents whose policies were even less favorable [Carter, Bush I, and Eisenhower]. I think any communal effort expended at painting Obama himself as an anti-Semite on the level of, say, Bin Laden or Ahmadinejad only serves to hurt our credibility in our fight against the real antisemites. The story of Mordechai’s political machinations may teach us this: mistakes will be made, possibly even ones of life or death; but we must always be judicious and never prejudicial.

Tazria-Metzora: Houses

(Originally published in 2010.  Not sure how it ended up here.)

This series of double parshiyot that deal with what might be considered the simultaneous signs of physical and spiritual decay, and their sometime attendant internal exiles, being with a most interesting version of internal exile: birth. A new mother is immediately tamei on the level of a nidah and, depending on the sex of the child, is barred from entering sanctuaries for either 40 or 80 days.

As was discussed last week, even the most sublime simchas have elements of pain built into them; this is another example.

Yet while the bulk of these parshiyot deal with insults to one's physical body, towards the end of Metzora we are introduced to the nig'ei habayis, which can cause either removal from one's residence [another from of exile], or even the destruction of the building.

Rashi notes that these occasional demolitions were blessings in disguise: they would lead to the revelation of riches hidden by the Emorites in anticipation of the Israealite invasion of Canaan. Yet, Rav Dessler brings down a Rambam in Shlach that notes that one of the "ruses" used to convince Moshe Rabbeinu to send the meraglim--or, what was touted as the most salient reason--was that they needed to find these purported riches, or there would be a chilul hashem involved in the possible perception of a false prophecy. And it worked.

This brings two inyanim full circle: the "blessing" of one internal exile [the negaim] indirectly leading to a longer exile [the 40 years in the midbar], and said "blessing" that was [usually] deemed to be a corrective to lashon hara leading--however tortuously--to what was is presented to us as one of the pardigmatic cases of lashon hara, the report of the meraglim. [And, since the chet took place on tisha b'av, it led to the ultimate demolition[s]: the churbanos.]

This ostensibly bizarre series of loosely connecting patterns are further indicative of the circular, rather than linear, nature of spiritual battles and the rewards and correctives inherent in them. However, one might find an even more interesting angle. Inherent in much of chassidus is the notion that one really doesn't have bechira chofshis, in line with the insistence that G-d is the direct force behind even the smallest leaf movement. [As far as I'm concerned, the conflict between hakol tzafui and reshus nitna has been largely reconciled, but bear with me.]

The element of bechira tha IS left according to chassidus is in the moral realm: in other words, in every occurrence is an opportunity--or, taken to another level, THE opportunity--to decide which side you're on, or possibly, just to give some import to the event that one might not perceive to be there.

Regardless of chassidus, one doesn't necessarily enter the realm of human choice to see the point. Rather, one can [see gemara in Berachos 9th perek on bracha al tova me'ein rahaand vice versa]

Beshalach: Pharaoh vs Amalek--Two Party System?

A prominent USA rabbi was known to have said that America might not be our enemy, but they are not necessarily our friend.

The encomia for Pat Buchanan following his recent retirement illustrated that this tendency is still alive among out ostensible allies on the Right, if not as much as their counterparts on the left.  None of the tributes in journals that are usually sympathetic to genuine Jewish causes saw fit to mention Buchanan’s more than three-decade record of rabid antisemitism; one even went farther by mentioning how Buchanan convinced Nixon to airlift arms to Israel during the Yom Kippur war, as if Buchanan was an ardent Zionist.

It was vaguely reminiscent of this week’s parsha, Beshalach, with Pharaoh and the Egyptians’ apparent volte-face after releasing the Jews, now all hell-bent on returning them to servitude if not driving them into the sea: another erstwhile ally turned implacable foe.  That then brought up the question of whether the Pharaonic analog would also apply to our former President, one Donald J. Trump, who according to a significant portion of the punditry was the primary vehicle in making Buchanan’s once-fringe “America First” political philosophy and actual political reality.  

The Pharaonic analogy had been made before: Bernard-Henri Levy had once compared Trump to the Pharaoh of Parshas Shemos “who knew not Joseph”, though at the time that BHL made that assessment, Trump had not yet put in place his at the time groundbreaking philosemitic policies, including the embassy move to Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords, so until more recent events, it had looked like the Pharaonic analogies were wildly off base, though this write cautioned that there might later prove to be a more accurate analog, the Darius mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Rosh Hashanah 3b-4a, who made sure when he allowed the Jews to rebuild the Temple to insist that the support beams be made of wood, so he could pull down the edifice in case of disloyalty; the Rabbis’ view of Darius’ ostensible philosemitism was rather jaundiced as a result.   I suggret that perspective is the correct one, at least as long as Trump doesn’t get back into office.

But who else could Trump be then, really?  

Esav?  Was his “kiss” a genuine attempt at brotherhood or a cover for something more sinister?   So did Trump really mean everything did with his ostenisbly philo-semitic policies, or was it just a prolonged Esav kiss?

In fact, his speeches that the Jews “owe” him sound less like Esav and more like Lavan’s “everything you see is mine”.  At least Esav said “let is what yours be yours”.  So he may be even worse than Esav on that score. 

Further, any “debt” we might have incurred was wiped off the books once he had a powwow with Nick Fuentes, Kanye West and Milo Yiannopolous, the three of who might be reminiscent of Pharaoh’s three advisers at the beginning of the Exodus story who advised him about how to manage his genocidal intentions.   Trump might have been under the impression that he had to choose between orthodox jews and the alt right and since he “gave us Israel”, we’d be disloyal by criticizing his association with the alt right.  The fact that Milo accused Trump of TLing the Jews — and that Trump is the one is debt to the alt right, and yet Trump would accuse the Jews of stabbing in the back—is a rather clear indicator of where Trump’s true loyalties ultimately lie.  

One might even draw—however loosely—a parallel between Trump and Martin Luther, who expressed sympathy for the way the Church treated Jews around the time of the Theses but who turned on them spectacularly when he realized a mass conversion was not imminent, possibly giving voice to what might have been a blueprint for a Holocaust.  One might even draw a parallel with another President, one Mr. Barack Obama, whose acolytes love to tout “Obama signed the $38B MOU” and “Obama funded Iron Dome”, while ignoring that the former was really the work of Congress and was laced with political “poison pills” by Obama and his Cabinet, and that Iron Dome was basically a method of control to keep the Israelis form taking what would have been completely justified if draconian defensive military actions but which were perceived by various hand wringers as disproportionate.  In the case of Trump, one wonder whether the Jerusalem Embassy move was really all the work of David Friedman and whether the Abraham Accords were ultimately Jared Kushner’s brainchild, for which their boss reaps all rewards.

Trump, of course, has absolutely no salient historical frame of reference due to what one might call self-imposed intellectual limitations, so all of this would be completely lost on him.  What shouldn’t be is that Friedman basically convinced Trump to not pursue his dreams of the “Deal Of The Century” because Mahmoud Abbas was unreliable, and that Jared—despite his efforts paying off with the Abraham Accords because of his connections in the Middle East—will never be good enough for Don because he was born Jewish.  (Don’t be fooled into thinking that Trump is any more or less philosemitics because of Ivanka’s conversion: as far as Don is concerned the marriage was another good business deal, and he probably hasn’t forgiven Ivanka for making him modify his second post-Charlottesville message in 2017.)

Do I regret my vote?  I didn’t vote for him in 2016; I voted 3rd party.  For most of his term, I was actually pleasantly surprised that he did carry out what he committed to do, especially after he forced Tillerson and McMaster out, and especially after the predictions of quislings like Peter Beinart that the embassy move would lead to a third intifada proved to be completely unfounded.  The shtadlanim like Friedman, Mort Klein at the ZOA et al have nothing to be ashamed of.  They did their jobs.  Some people did go overboard, mostly at the beginning, with what sounded like a near messianic lauding of then-candidate Trump, and there were more than a few admonitions that it was almost a mitzvah to vote for him, which—considering his being a policy neophyte at the time—was at the very least a questionable “psak”.  However, in 2020, one could find Orthodox-driven admonitions about it being a mitzvah to vote for Biden, so again, the Left has no moral ground to stand on here either.

Was Liz Cheney right?  No.  In fact, if Trump is Lavan, Cheney is Korach.  She voted with Trump 98% of the time, so January 6 couldn’t have been much of a shock for the spawn of the Patriot Act.  Her “principled” (in this case, “prin[sic]pled”) opposition was never about “democracy”: it  was about a perceived power vacuum, like Korach saw with Moshe after the meraglim, and she would move in to the top GOP spot in Congress and restore her daddy’s legacy after it had been trashed by Trump.  You don’t go on HaMaSNBC as a “conservative” unless it’s all about you.  So ultimately she’s just as “principled”  as she thinks Trump is.

What does that say about the Orthos who supported him?  Nothing.  It was shtadlanus, and it miraculously worked for a time.  Consider Yaakov was forced to run to Lavan.  We were forced to run to Trump.  Now we can better deal with the Esavs of the Democratic party who pretend to be our “achi”  (e.g. Obama proclaiming “I’m a liberal jew”; condemning Ye, but not Jay Electronica.)

What about the “I told you so’s”?  

Come off it.  Most of those come from people who either backed or wouldn’t criticize the Dems for working with the Squad—who remain more dangerous than even a Kanye or Milo or Fuentes, because they MAKE policy and are considered crusaders [sic] for freedom.  The “Torah Trumps Hate” people may have had a point for about 5 minutes in 2016, until they ran and kissed aoc’s hindquarters on twitter, proving it wasn’t about protecting Judaism, but about making wokeism a mitzvah.  If you didn’t like Trump in 2016, you didn’t vote for the equally or worse other side that photo-opted with Linda Sarsour, celebrated aoc and Ilhan Omar and never disavowed Farrakahn.  You could have sat out or voted for Johnson.  But no—you were ultimately as progressive as Trump was ostensibly “fascist”.   So you have no moral standing to complain either.

Now, there are thankfully viable GOP candidates who can win even by keeping the bulk of the good Trump policies but without the baggage.  So you can vote for them.

The one legitimate critique that can be leveled at Trump’s Orthodox Jewish supporters is that much as there was no hakaras hatov for some of the really Judeophilic Trump policies in quarters other than the Orthodox, there really was — even from the beginning — way too much willingness to view Trump in quasi-messianic terms, however remotely.  Hopefully that has now been cured. Ultimately, this may prove to be less of a case of “Esav sonei es Yaakov” more than “Al Tivtechu Bindivim”, which in any case is supposed to be the beauty of the American system.

In fact it isn’t the “Jews” that owe Trump.  He owes us for being his steadiest supporter in the face on some of what was at the time the worst adhominy in the history of politics, even if some if was invited and self inflicted.  He is actually the ungrateful one by turning on his most ardent supporters, as opposed to the Milo/Ye/Nick cabal who were trying to make him look bad while he still chasing after their approval.  He never thought we were the cool kids.  We were the nerds with yarmulkes who did his taxes.  He now deserves even worse opprobrium from us than anyone else.

Yayechi: When Mega Is Malign

Reading a few different articles on the parsha this past week, a piece about Yaakov Avinu on his deathbed by Rabbi Ari Kahn stood out: what was Yaakov’s biggest fear as all his sons all stand before him?

Yaakov thought: maybe some of my sons are like Yishmael and Esav?  

Why was Yaakov so afraid of this?  In a certain sense, the conflict between Yosef and his brothers almost mirrored what happened with Yaakov’s brother and uncle: they were permanently detached from the family’s mission because of an irrevocable split between siblings.

Rabbi Kahn details why the fear might have manifested itself: Esav and Yishmael each exemplified a particular corruption of as aspect of the mission represented by the first two Avos, and Yaakov Avinu thought that corruption might have filtered into the shevatim.

To wit:

Avraham Avinu represents chesed; Yishmael represented the corruption of chesed, using chesed to seduce women, who ostensibly “owed” him the “chesed” of “free love”.   According to one medrash hunted and abused both single and married women, and may have even abused [or attempted to abuse] a very young Yitzchak [based on the term “metzachek”].

Yitzchak Avinu represents Din and gevurah; Esav, as Rabbi Kahn explains, corrupted din by twisting self control into control of others, including his penchant for murder and rapine, which itself turns “gevurah” into crude strong-arming.  It made sense that Esav married Yishmael’s daughter: he had a lot in common with his father in law.

Esav and Yishmael came to mind with the recent arrest of mega-influencer Andrew Tate, the revelations that he seems to have backed up his proudly proclaimed misogyny by allegedly engaging in human trafficking, and the further disturbing revelations that he’s amassed a cult-like following among school age males seem to indicate that not only does Tate represent a modern day-“marriage” of Biblical Esavic and Yishmaelite tendencies, but his cult-like persona recalls some of the worst tendencies of  of Bilaam, and pagan tendencies of the “Voluptuaries” of Bamidbar 11 and 12.

Let’s start with the paganism first, as that was how Tate got caught in the first place: aside from Tate’s penchant for lauding his financial wealth and his sexual conquests, Tate was apparently so obsessed with his collection of Bugattis that he felt compelled to tweet at a girl half his age about how many he possessed and their “enormous emissions”.  Rav Joseph Soloveitchik [“The Rev”] used to refer to the incident at Kivrot Hataa’vah as “The Graves of the Voluptuaries” which he asserted was a paradigm of paganism: in the people’s frenzied collective attempt to collect heaps of quail, “infinite gathering became an end in itself”.  

The persistence of Tate’s paganism might be more ironic considering Tate’s recent public religious conversion and his professions of “women are precious” in the face of his alleged rapine and slavedriving.  These are reminiscent of the fake religious persona Esav presented for his father Yitzchak [“How do we tithe straw”?]  It also matches with the sentiments of Bilaam: “tamus nafhsi most yesharim” —let me die the death of the righteous [as long as I don’t have to live like one.  St. Augustine—before he became a “ba'al teshuva”—once said “Give me chastity, but not yet.”  Tate apparently never planned on getting that far.]  While some of Tate’s new co-religionists—female ones, particularly—have seen through the ruse of his his ostensible spiritual transformation, others—especially those who celebrate terrorism and theofascism—have celebrated it, and he himself has sung the praises of the Taliban enough that they expressed “worry” about his arrest.  Again: a perfect marriage of Esav and Yishmael.

And another: Esav and Yishmael were both hunters; Tate has parlayed his MMA championships into his career as a violent exploiter of women, as well as his expressed sentiments in interviews that ultimately violence is the only solution to anything.

One more look between Tate and Esav is how Esav admired [to a point] his father, so much so that Chazal occasionally hold up Esav as a model of “kibud av”.  However, Esav also was known to hate his mother, despite the fact that—as Rashi notes—he trusted his mother more than his wives. Tate admires his father: what about his mother who raised him after their parents divorce? [Esav Harasha and Andrew Tate: serious mommy issues?]

Further, take both Esav's and Yishmael's penchant for rapine, and Yishmael's aforementioned possible tendency toward exploitation of children: taking into account both Tate's statements about younger women and the allegations that he may not even drawn the line that high, and we have yet another parallel.

Finally, Tate’s cultic following on and off the internet brings to mind “Bilaam”, the “worldly” prophet sought out by everyone for his presumed powers who essentially set himself up as the “guru” or amorality in his time. The Talmud [TB Sanhedrin 106] notes that “any possible explanation you can derive to Bilaam’s detriment, always derive to his detriment”.   It is imperative that one derive what can about Tate to his absolute detriment in a Balaamic sense.  Too many adult men—and, more disturbingly, too many school-age males—admire this man and have been manning the barricades to defend him.  The man has no redeeming qualities, and it must be made apparent that if you admire him to the point that you think he can help you with your life, you’re a sucker, and if you genuinely admire his ideology and way of life, you have a serious character issue.   For starters.

I guess the one thing we might be be gald about is that while Tate manifests the tendencies of Esav, Yishmael, Bilaam, and the erev rav of at Kivros haTaavah, he hasn't shown his full Amalekite side.

Yet.