Shavuos - Not Necessarily Ruthless

A number of years ago, a prominent Jewish educator gave a shiur with the central theme that the Book of Ruth has no real antagonists. Everyone, the speaker maintained, simply makes understandable—if sometimes tragic—choices in a difficult world. I was bewildered, to say the least: I asked her afterward about the litany of critiques leveled at Elimelech, Machlon and Chilyon just from TB Baba Basra 91, and Orpah in TB Sanhedrin 95a.  I didn’t get a clear answer, just a reiteration of the theme that there were really “no bad people” in the Megillah.

More recently, another prominent educator gave a shiur arguing not only that there are no real villains in Ruth, but that even Orpah has been given a bad rap. This second speaker paralleled Orpah with Vashti, suggesting Chazal amplified both women’s flaws to make Ruth and Esther appear more “tznius”. (I have discussed the “progsplaining” of Vashti elsewhere; suffice it to say, however, that this shiur remained firmly within Chazal’s framework and was not an attempt to impose an intersectional revisionism, even if the sources were outliers.)

Sandwiched between these two whitewashing interpretations was a clarifying shiur from an educator who has written a book on Ruth. She presented a far less rosy picture of the era of the Judges and fully endorsed my initial hava amina: Boaz knew exactly what kind of people worked his fields: those who would piously declare it “assur” to marry a Moabite convert, yet would not hesitate to take advantage of a vulnerable Moabite widow for extracurricular activity, assuming she would be more readily available. In her view, the true protagonists—Boaz, Ruth, and Naomi—stand out precisely because the surrounding society does not come off well.  In fact , while – as we’ll see further with Ploni Almoni – there is room for nuance when it comes to labeling antagonists, I thought the first and third approaches were exercises in whitewashing and in need of some deconstruction, if not necessarily a “Ruthless” one (sorry).

Even granting the medrash that Ruth is more a narrative of “chesed” than law, it is not a feel-good tale of universal moral grayness. Set against the lawlessness of the period of the Judges—famine, tribalism, moral drift—it dramatizes stark differences in character, commitment, and redemptive vision. Elimelech’s prominent family flees Judah to Moab in an act of prisha min hatzibbur. His sons Machlon and Chilyon out-marry: Orpah and Ruth. After the men die, Naomi begins a return home in shame with the two women.  Both daughters-in-law weep and begin the journey with Naomi, yet diverge decisively: Orpah kisses and returns “to her people and her gods” (Ruth 1:15); Ruth practices devekut.

One might say that – to ironically quote former US President George HW Bush – Ruth, Naomi and Boaz all had the “vision thing” that Orpah and even Ploni Almoni lacked.  Further, as Ruth ends with the narrative of the Davidic lineage and seeds of ultimate redemption, a line kickstarted by the vision of Tamar, mother of Peretz, forefather of the Messianic line.  Tamar saw what Yehuda could not: that he would be responsible for siring the redemption

Naomi had that vision: after ten years of shared life in Moab, Naomi knew Ruth and Orpah intimately. Their marriages likely involved some form of local integration or conversion, making their status precarious back in Judah amid lingering questions about “Moavi” versus “Moavis.” Orpah’s retreat was not a cartoonish moral collapse but a revelation of disposition: pragmatic self-preservation when covenantal commitment became socially and existentially costly.   Yet she miscalculates on several levels: she likely sees Naomi as giving her an “out” on her already possibly questionable conversion, and she takes that out, possibly surmising that she can go back to her prior royal status in Moav.  Only – as Naomi knew right away, she was “going back to her gods”, and as Chazal’s harsher aggadot in Sotah and Chelek note – the almost immediate dramatic promiscuity that ensues likely serves as a brutal reminder that her previous status is not only unobtainable, but that the locals may not have appreciated her outmarriage, and now she’s left with nothing but to become almost a Biblical Ma Barker to Goliath and his giant siblings.  In fact, she may share a treacherous commonality with another Biblical figure with a dubious conversion: Delilah, who eventually betrays Samson to the Philistines with whom she’s been working with all along.

Ruth has the vision Orpah lacks: embracing radical uncertainty—poverty, marginality, possible rejection—for the sake of Naomi’s God and people.  Once Naomi put her through the “3 question” conversion paces normative to Jewish conversion law, Naomi knew she and Ruth could work together toward that shared vision, and the rest of the Megillah bears that out.

Boaz has the vision: he emerges as the quiet hero in a flawed society. The nearer redeemer, Ploni Almoni, presents a more nuanced case than traditional derision suggests. Boaz inherits Tamar’s vision. He recognizes Ruth’s legitimacy, navigates halachic process with care, and stewards the Davidic line.  Ploni Almoni sees only the risks—social stigma, uncertain status. He is not depicted as indolent or villainous; he simply lacks the prophetic insight to embrace the redemptive opening. When Boaz presents the matter publicly before the elders, Ploni opts out. His anonymity (“Ploni Almoni”) is less punitive erasure than narrative acknowledgment: he steps aside from the redemptive arc because he cannot see it. The episode tests and confirms Boaz’s unique role.

On Shavuos, as we reaffirm “na’aseh v’nishma,” Ruth challenges comfortable flattening. Commitment is not generic decency or rational calculation. It is Ruth’s clinging through ambiguity. It is Boaz’s Tamaric sight—perceiving holiness in the marginal and foreign. The book rejects both moral universalism (“no antagonists”) and easy rehabilitation. The era was broken; choices mattered. Yet within that brokenness, extraordinary fidelity and discernment forge the lineage of Mashiach.

This Shavuos, may we see like Naomi, Ruth, like Boaz, and meet our own uncertainties with tenacity and clear-eyed vision. The Torah was given in the wilderness—a place of instability—so that covenant could emerge not from comfort, but from deliberate, seeing commitment.

Bamidbar: "Numbers" Isn't Our Translation

Parshat Bamidbar begins with a count. Tribe by tribe, family by family, the Torah constructs a census of remarkable precision. Yet Chazal simultaneously express discomfort with counting Jews directly, associating it with plague, vulnerability, and a kind of spiritual reductionism. The Torah counts, but it never confuses counting with control. Numbers matter, but one does not “count” morals.

A viral thought experiment circulating online presents humanity with a choice: press a blue button, and if more than half the world also presses blue, everyone survives. Press red, and if fewer than half choose blue, only the red-pressers survive. The framing is intentionally stark. Blue represents altruism; red represents selfishness. The moral conclusion is meant to feel obvious.  In fact, not only is the setup less philosophically serious than it first appears, it ultimately lies somewhere between psychological gaslighting and blackmail, with little if any intellectual salience.

At first glance, the discussion seems to concern the participants: who is noble enough to risk themselves for humanity? Yet the more fundamental moral – or, not ot put too fine a point on it, in this case, immoral - actor is the designer of the scenario itself, who has imposed an artificial, coercive system onto the world and then framed compliance with that system as virtue. The morality does not begin when the buttons appear. It begins when someone self-arrogates the right to place all of humanity into a hostage-style coordination trap.

One shouldn’t even have to debate whether that qualifies as moral language in the first place.  Certainly one cannot claim with any degree of credibility that that would ever qualify as Torah’s moral language.

If someone wires explosives to a city and announces that survival depends on perfect public compliance with a threshold condition, the central moral problem is not merely whether citizens cooperate. The primary moral fact is that a coercive system was created in the first place. Yet modern thought experiments often conceal this move. They isolate the participants from the architecture surrounding them and then moralize the responses in abstraction.  One would not be overly hyperbolic in labeling this thought experiment as a form of philosophical terrorism.

One of the most famous disputes in the Talmud concerns two travelers in the desert with only enough water for one to survive. Ben Petura argues that both should drink and die together rather than watch one another perish. Rabbi Akiva disagrees: “your life takes precedence over your fellow’s.” The debate is not about selfishness versus compassion. It is about whether morality requires a person to ignore the realities of survival in pursuit of an emotionally compelling ideal.

What is striking is that the tradition does not instinctively absolutize the “save the maximum number” intuition. Even in a desert, even in tragedy, obligation remains tethered to reality, agency, and what a person can actually control.  

Pressing the blue button does not itself save anyone. The outcome depends entirely on uncertain mass coordination among strangers. The participant is therefore not performing a direct act of rescue; rather, the participant has been forced into a probabilistic gamble contingent on countless independent actors behaving in precisely the right way. Under those conditions, choosing the risk-dominant option is not obviously immoral. It may simply reflect the recognition that human beings do not possess certainty about collective behavior.

This is where the deeper conceptual confusion emerges. The scenario underhandedly collapses the distinction between desirable outcomes and binding obligations. Saving everyone is treated not merely as a hoped-for result, but as the sole morally legitimate framework for decision-making. Yet serious moral systems rarely function that way. They weigh outcomes alongside uncertainty, responsibility, coercion, human limitation, and the structure of the situation itself.

Judaism, in particular, consistently resists visions of moral life built on universal perfection or guaranteed collective compliance. The Torah repeatedly deals with human beings as they are: divided, uncertain, inconsistent, frightened, aspirational, and bounded. It seeks responsibility, not utopia.

That may also explain the Torah’s ambivalence toward counting. Counting is necessary. Societies require organization, planning, and structure. But counting can also create the illusion that human beings are reliably aggregable—that if enough people simply choose correctly, history can be engineered toward guaranteed outcomes.  

Yet it has often been precisely the kinds of thought experiments embodied in the tweet that have historically led to the types of engineered outcomes resulting in the egregiously high body counts that the designers of the experiment claim to be trying to avoid.  In a 1994 BBC interview with Michael Ignatieff, renowned Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm stated that if the Soviet Union had succeeded in creating a true communist society, the deaths of 15 to 20 million people under Stalin would have been worth a "radiant tomorrow," for the "chance of a new world being born in great suffering".  Push a Blue Buttoner enough and they would tell you without a trace of irony that they ultimately believe the same thing.

Blue Buttoners aren’t just wrong on the fact, the history, or the morals.

They’re wrong on the Numbers.

Behar: The Other CRT

Parshat Behar introduces Yovel, the Jubilee year. Every fifty years the shofar is sounded and we are commanded, “U’krasem dror ba’aretz l’chol yoshveha” – “You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Vayikra 25:10). Those exact words are etched on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, the physical symbol of the American founding. 

The Torah does not treat dror as a slogan. It is a recurring national reset – debts forgiven, land restored, families redeemed. It is the Torah’s great “no” to permanent servitude.  The American experiment took the Liberty Bell’s verse seriously enough to enshrine “all men are created equal” in the Declaration and to fight a war that ended chattel slavery. That is dror – liberty proclaimed to all inhabitants.

What some voices now offer is the mirror image of the very Critical Race Theory they rightly criticize. Call it the Other CRT: Confederate Rehabilitation Theory. Matt Walsh’s recent project and Ben Shapiro’s related commentary try to launder the Confederacy as “states’ rights,” “brave soldiers,” and “noble Lee defending his home.” This is not American conservatism: it is Confederate ideology disguised in a pilfered Union uniform. It chooses an ostensible Torah concession – l’olam bahem ta’avodu, later in Chapter 25 – and makes it the moral and political Cornerstone, exactly as the Confederacy did. The American founding leaned toward dror; the Confederacy doubled down on permanent, race-based hierarchy.

In Yirmiyahu 34, during the Babylonian siege, King Zedekiah and the people of Judah made a covenant to free all Hebrew slaves – a dramatic, one-time Jubilee in extremis. They complied briefly, but then “changed their minds and took back the slaves they had freed and enslaved them again” (Yirmiyahu 34:11). God’s response is devastating: you re-enslaved your brothers; I will hand you over to the sword, pestilence, and famine. The re-enslavement becomes a proximate cause of the Churban.

David M. Goldenberg’s seminal The Curse of Ham (Princeton, 2003) explodes any claim that the Torah or rabbinic tradition ever provided a genuine biblical basis for racial chattel slavery. The Curse of Ham is a later graft – a medieval-to-modern invention born of linguistic error and cultural stereotyping.  Early Jewish sources know nothing of a divine decree condemning anyone to perpetual servitude on purely racial grounds. Even l’olam bahem ta’avodu was never racialized in our tradition; that reading was an after-the-fact graft to justify economic and political power.

But the Daily Wire’s rehabilitation project doesn’t just fall on hashkafic grounds; its premises are repeatedly exploded by the historical record. Alexander Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech (1861) declares without euphemism that the Confederacy’s “foundations are laid… upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man” – the exact opposite of the Declaration and closer to l’olam bahem ta’avodu than to dror. The South pushed the original Thirteenth Amendment (Corwin Amendment) to enshrine slavery federally and forever, immune to repeal – a mockery of “states’ rights.” George Fitzhugh, their leading theorist, rejected capitalism as “white slavery” and praised slavery as the “beau ideal of Communism,” sounding more like a reactionary socialist than a limited-government conservative. Southern Democrats were the backbone of the New Deal – and made sure that Black workers were carved out. 

Even the military narrative fails. Robert E. Lee captured John Brown at Harpers Ferry and saw him hanged for treason and inciting slave revolt – the very crime of seizing federal property. The Confederacy then stole every federal arsenal, fort, and warship in the South and fired on Fort Sumter with them. The Minutemen brought their own muskets; Lee fought with stolen arms on home turf against hesitant Northern generals. The real casus belli was the mass theft, not abstract states’ rights.  Lee was not a hero fighting for his home state: he was exponentially guiltier of the ostensible crimes of terrorism and theft than John Brown was, in the service of a cause that by 1860 was already morally dubious at best.

Both versions of CRT – the 1619 left-wing version and the Other CRT of Confederate nostalgia – flatten history into racial grievance. Both reject the Torah’s nuanced tension and America’s universalist core. Both are ultimately anti-Jewish (denying the Jubilee’s dror as the moral north star) and anti-American (denying “all men are created equal”). Parshat Behar demands intellectual honesty: proclaim liberty to all inhabitants, call perpetual racial hierarchy by its name, and refuse any ideology that makes avdut – whether “equity” or “heritage” – the Cornerstone.  Only dror can redeem us.

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.

 

 

Vayeshev – Executive Function

 Vayeshev is about executive capacity: when vision outruns judgment, when authority precedes restraint, and when leadership instincts appear before the internal structures to carry them.  Yosef has to learn executive function the hard way, and eventually—according to the Gemara in Sotah, which says he conducted himself with “rabbanus”—it may literally be what nearly kills him before his brothers. 

Still: Yosef cannot suppress his dreams. They are not fantasy; they border on nevuah. The Torah never criticizes him for dreaming. But it does criticize how he handles those dreams. Like Yaakov before him—laughing silently while Esav cries over the loss of the brachos, dooming later generations—Yosef may possess truth, but lacks executive modulation. Vision without restraint becomes provocation. Not malice, not arrogance—irrational exuberance. This is his first executive failure:  knowing something true does not license saying it unfiltered.

Yosef’s second failure is subtler. Chazal describe him as mesalsel b’se’aro; not vanity per se — premature self-presentation: acting like a ruler before being one.  Enter Mrs. Potiphar—not just as a seductress, but also a stress test. Yosef is not saved by willpower. He is saved by dmus d'yukno shel aviv: an external regulator.  And the Midrash’s edge is sharp: had he believed he could “do it once” and shut her up (“Olam haba? With you? The things I do for Egypt”)—he might have rationalized himself out of eternity.

Instead, he’s falsely imprisoned, but the ten years aren’t enough, yet.  R. Shimon Shkop’s insight is surgical: the extra two years are not because Yosef asked the sar ha-mashkim to remember him—but because he asked twice: initiative turns into over-management. Yosef is almost there — and when he finally exits prison, he is transformed. He plans. He delegates. He delays. He controls information. He governs hunger, fear, and timing.  He has learned executive function.

Now contrast Yehuda, the other executive.  Yehuda does not endanger himself; he endangers everyone else: his proposal to sell Yosef succeeds—and he is blamed for that success; he goes OTD in form if not in substance by marrying a Canaanite, leading to the deaths of his first two sons, and then he compounds their gross (literally and figuratively) mistreatment of Tamar—publicly and structurally—even with Yaakov and Yitzchak, according to Midrash trying to cover for him, apparently unaware of what has happened inside Yehuda’s home.  Only when Tamar forces recognition—tzadkah mimeni—does Yehuda experience executive awakening, learning not through temptation but through consequence.

So why is it that Yosef suffers for his “rabbanus”?  Yosef’s challenge is not morality. It is power calibration.  He is outward-facing, system-oriented, globally necessary. Egypt cannot survive without him. The brothers—by contrast—are inward-facing, identity-preserving, covenantal.   The hint of reconciliation comes with Yehuda and Tamar at the end of Chapter 38—the Davidic lineage: enduring, corrected executive power.  Yosef represents competence refined by restraint; Yehuda represents authority refined by accountability. The Torah does not choose between them: it teaches the need to learn when vision becomes authority—and when authority must learn restraint.