Bereishis: We WERE Here First

The Torah famously opens not with the first mitzvah given to Israel but with a cosmic declaration:

“כֹּחַ מַעֲשָׂיו הִגִּיד לְעַמּוֹ, לָתֵת לָהֶם נַחֲלַת גּוֹיִם” (Psalms 111:6)

“He declared the power of His works to His people, to give them the inheritance of nations.”

Rashi famously explains on Genesis 1:1 that the Torah begins with this declaration so that if the nations accuse Israel of being “thieves” for taking the land of Canaan, the response is clear: the land belongs to God, who created it and gave it to whom He pleased. At one point He gave it to the Canaanites; then He took it from them and gave it to Israel. Crucially, this answer is not aimed at the nations of the world but at Israel itself — “koach ma’asav higid le’amo.” 

The point is to prevent moral self-doubt.

This becomes more pointed later in the text. On Genesis 12:6, Rashi comments:

“והכנעני אז בארץ — היה הולך וכובש את ארץ ישראל מזרעו של שם.”

“And the Canaanite was then in the land — he was in the process of conquering the Land of Israel from the descendants of Shem.”

Here the moral and historical frame is flipped on its head: the Canaanites are not the natives; they are the occupiers. The divine promise to Abraham is not conquest ex nihilo but restoration: the return of ancestral territory to its rightful heirs.

A number of modern rabbinic thinkers have stressed that Rashi’s opening comment is directed inward. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and Shlomo Goren all emphasized that the pasuk is not hasbara for the United Nations. It is a theological anchor meant to prevent Jews from apologizing for possessing their own land.

Rashi on Genesis 12:6 adds a second layer. By noting that the Canaanite was already in the act of conquering the land from Shem’s descendants, the Torah presents Israel’s arrival centuries later not as an imperial act but as a rectification of a previous usurpation. This is more than a narrative flourish. It is a fundamental reframing of moral legitimacy: the Jews are not the conquerors but the heirs returning home.

This reading has had a long afterlife. In the modern period, three broad streams — religious Zionist, academic, and secular nationalist — all converged on this verse, each in its own register.

Religious Zionist thinkers such as Goren, Tzvi Yehuda Kook, Shlomo Aviner, and Yoel Bin-Nun have repeatedly cited Rashi on Genesis 12:6 to underline the moral asymmetry of the Jewish return. Aviner even borrowed halakhic language, likening Israel’s modern return to the Land to hashavat aveidah — the mitzvah of returning lost property. “This is not conquest,” he said, “but returning what was stolen from us.”

Academic biblical scholars — notably Yehezkel Kaufmann, Yair Zakovitch, Moshe Weinfeld, Israel Finkelstein, and Shmuel Ahituv — interpret the phrase “והכנעני אז בארץ” as a deliberate ideological marker. It frames the Canaanites as latecomers, not natives, and casts Israel’s conquest as the rectification of an earlier wrong. Even from a strictly historical-critical perspective, the verse is an anti-occupier polemic embedded in the biblical text.

Early secular Zionist leaders embraced this logic as well. David Ben-Gurion explicitly cited Genesis 12:6 in speeches from the 1930s through the early years of statehood: “We are not conquerors. We are returning to our ancient homeland. Others conquered it after us, but it was never truly theirs.” Berl Katznelson and A. D. Gordon likewise used “return” and “restoration” language rather than “conquest.” Ze’ev Jabotinsky, from the opposite end of the political spectrum, said essentially the same thing: “This land is ours — not because we conquered it, but because it was ours and was taken from us.”

For roughly the first half of the 20th century, this restorationist frame was a shared national narrative that transcended religious-secular divides.

By the late 20th century, however, this framing had largely disappeared from mainstream Israeli discourse. Historians and legal scholars have identified several reasons:

Secularization of political language: Post-1948 leaders like Moshe Sharett preferred legalistic and civic nationalism to biblical language. The restoration claim, associated with Genesis and covenant, was seen as too religious and “unmodern.”

Temporal narrowing: After 1948 and especially after 1967, the world framed the conflict around contemporary events — wars, armistice lines, occupation — not 3,000-year-old claims. Israel responded within that narrowed frame, letting the ancient narrative fade from view.

Legal pragmatism: In diplomatic and legal forums, appeals to Bronze Age ownership have no standing. Israeli legal teams emphasized Mandate history, defensive war, and sovereignty — pragmatic arguments that sidelined theological or historical rhetoric.

Ideological polarization: After 1967, biblical language became coded as belonging to the Religious Zionist right (e.g., Tzvi Yehuda Kook, Gush Emunim). Secular centrists recoiled from using language that now felt sectarian, even though the same verses had been invoked by Ben-Gurion a generation earlier.

The result was a kind of rhetorical amnesia: what had once been a powerful shared national narrative — “you were never the original owners” — was no longer part of the mainstream conversation. Internationally, the debate flattened into symmetrical claims: “ours” versus “ours,” as though both peoples stood on identical moral footing.

Here lies the irony. Moshe Sharett and the early diplomatic establishment deliberately avoided biblical language out of a desire to sound pragmatic and modern. But in doing so, they abandoned the single most powerful asymmetric claim available: that Jewish presence in the land is not merely a competing claim but a prior claim, rooted in both sacred text and national memory.

Had they followed the logic of the first Rashi — “Koach ma’asav higid le’amo” — they might have realized that this was never primarily a foreign-policy argument. It was a narrative for themselves: a way of framing their own return without apology or embarrassment. A people that stops telling its own story leaves the stage for others to tell it for them.

Two Rashis — one on Genesis 1:1 and one on 12:6 — contain a remarkably sophisticated land claim. The first teaches that Jewish moral confidence comes from knowing that possession of the land is not theft but divine allocation. The second reframes history: Canaanite occupation was itself an act of conquest, and Israel’s later arrival was an act of restoration.

For centuries this was understood as theological argument. In the early Zionist period, it was secularized into a national-historical narrative that unified religious and secular leaders alike. But in the post-1948 era, that language was gradually abandoned in favor of pragmatic, legal, and security-based rhetoric — a shift that unintentionally weakened Israel’s moral narrative on the world stage.

The irony is striking: the first Rashi, so often read as a religious apologetic, may in fact have been the strongest secular rhetorical asset early Zionism ever had. By ceasing to use it, the movement inadvertently flattened its own claim. The result was not modern sophistication but a self-imposed amnesia — one that reduced a 3,000-year story to a mere border dispute.

Perhaps it is time to listen again to Rashi’s opening line, not as prophecy, but as political clarity:

“כח מעשיו הגיד לְעַמּוֹ”

The point was never to convince the nations.

It was to remind ourselves who was here first.

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.