Korach and Bilaam: Critical Theorists, Intersectional Progressives…and One-Percenters

Scratch a (most likely) rich intersectional progressive who touts critical theory and is a purported MOT, and you’ve found a spiritual heir to both Korach and Bilaam.

Critical theorist and progressive attacks on Jews and Judaism go all the way back to the time of Moshe Rabbeinu.  In Korach, the parsha’s namesake launches his attack from within; in this week’s parsha, Balak, Bilaam attacks from without.

It has been posited in these pages that Korach was the first Stalinist: he appealed to the rest of Bnei Yisrael by pretending to be a “democrat” [“rav lachem”] and telling the other 250 top-line conspirators that they would share power; he also knew that if Moshe was right about the service with the machtos [pans] would kill anyone unworthy of performing it, and he was right about living to claim his share of power—based upon his near-prophetic visions—he would live and everyone else would die. The fact that he was willing to let everyone else die so that he could claim his prize—and that he thought that this would automatically be Divinely sanctioned—spoke volumes about his worthiness as any leader, let alone spiritual.

In addition to his progressive pretensions, Korach may also have been the first “critical theorist”: he attacks the credibility and authority of Mosaic law first through his cynical false analogy between the techelet thread and the all-blue tallis, and then by attacking the system of tithing as unfair taxation.  In other words, by the time he has managed to questions the very foundations of the Mosaic order, he has rallied a huge portion of B’nei Yisrael to his side—so much that even after the earth opens up and swallows him, so many still accuse Moses of having assassinated Korach that G-d inflicts a deadly plague upon the people.

(This might be vaguely reminiscent of both the “confessions” of old guard Bolshevik victims of the Stalinist purges of the 1930’s, and to a lesser extent, the increasing amount of abject public “apologies” and commitments to “do better” among celebrities and others who are otherwise ostensibly “woke”.)

It is in this vein that the same ostensible spiritual leader who writes “Korach is a classic demagogue…[h]e is not seeking more power for the people, just more for himself” can also force a Korachist moral/theological equivalence between the “obligation of learning about systemic racism and systems of oppression” and the obligation to tell the story of the Exodus on Passover—insisting that the one who refuses that obligation is akin to the “wicked child” at the Seder.  Like Korach, this spiritual leader starts out with a proclamation of “kulam kedoshim”—everyone is holy—while in effect, if not intent, the implication that Jewish theology must give way to a “higher consciousness” in the event of a clash between the two always lurks beneath the surface.  (Never mind that the movements so highly touted by this aforementioned spiritual leader are anti-Judaism, anti-holiness and antisemitic at their core, even more overtly so as of late.)

Korach isn’t hiding behind an “all lives matter” theology—adderabba: he insists that those in power must have ipso facto arranged to systemically arrogated themselves an outsized portion due to “supremacist” motions, and that certain subgroups are ipso facto being treated unfairly and therefore—by dint of their having been “oppressed”—automatically deserve a share of resources and power not necessarily proportionate to what has been earned. 

Like Korach, Bilaam also has prophetic abilities—however marginal—that let him lead himself to believe that his progressive and critical theorist approaches to life ostensibly had Divine sanction.  The very name “Bilaam” has been seen as a mashup of “b’lo ‘am”, an early version of “open borders”, which especially in Bilaam’s case also meant “no boundaries”, both in his private life—the less said about his “nightly consort”, the better—and public, where he not only gives wanton lasciviousness a public sanction it hasn’t had in centuries to that point, but he also weaponizes it based on the spiritual tools he does possess.    Korach and Bilaam used spirituality—an ostensibly Jewish, if distorted, kind—to antagonize Jews, as evidenced by current groups like JVP and INN.  Bilaam took it a step further by using his ”open borders” philosophy to unite disparate factions against all Jews.

The aforementioned spiritual leader also mentions that “unless a lie begins with a little bit of truth, it will not be believed (Rashi, Num. 13:27)”. Both Korach and Bilaam—despite the fact they suffer eternal punishment as per the Talmud—do speak and possess some level of spiritual truths: there is a train of thought—predominantly Chassidic—that Korach will serve as Kohen Gadol in the Messianic era, and Bilaam’s (however forced) visions and proclamations were former codified in the Torah and are part of the daily liturgy.   However, both are indicative of how each were forced to repudiate their ostensibly progressive tenets: Bilaam when he couldn’t curse the Jews no matter how hard he tried and ended up blessing them, and Korach when forced to say “Moses and his Torah are true, but they [Korah's company] are liars [e]very thirty days [while] turn[ed] back like meat in a pot”.

In fact, the true common thread between Korach, Bilaam and critical theory might be envy on steroids: Korach’s entire trigger was based on the fact that Moses and Aaron’s lineage was ostensibly else prestigious than his, and because of that he was willing to go as far as upending the entire Mosaic system;  Bilaam, during one of his visions, states “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let mine end be like his” (Num. 23:10), all while machinating just how to get rid of as many of them as he possibly could.   

Korach and Bilaam's intersectional penchants also did incalculable damage to women and families: Korach took a disparate coalition of ostensibly aggrieved groups with nothing in common other than that they wanted to dislodge Moshe, to the point that they made Moshe a target of South warnings: break up your own family to prove a point.   Bilaam was the outgrowth of the Rashi/Medrash that pointed out that Moav and Midian had hated each other for centuries but “made peace” to fight the Jews, and then Bilaam had both of them sell out their women in a program of nationalized weaponized prostitution to defeat Israel.

Another commonality: Korach and Bilaam—men of the people—were one-percenters.

Korach was incredibly rich: the midrash details how much he owned and how much effort it took for him to get his riches out of Egypt. Also he may have been as assimilated as Dasan and Aviram: he was reputed to have been a chief financier of Pharaoh, which was where he got a lot of his money.  Meaning he took advantage of his Levite status—they weren’t enslaved—in ways that Moshe and Aharon didn’t [Moshe went to be “be among his brethren”] and only now suddenly did he ”get religion”, which is why it might not have been so difficult for him to deny Mosaic law.

Bilaam’s riches aren’t as directly spelled out in the literature, but his status as the premier “curser” of his era indicated that he was very much in demand at the highest levels of power for his talent, which means that he likely could command astronomical fees for his services.   This might be further indicated by his negotiating tactics at the beginning of the parsha which are couched in religious terms [“if Balak will give me a full house of silver and gold”].   While “b’lo am” Bilaam held himself out as a “no borders” guy, all it meant in his case was that he was as ideologically promiscuous as he was personally.  If one needed to find a possible modern day parallel to Bilaam it might be Julian Assange, a red diaper baby now in command of a multimillion dollar operation with pretensions to “openness” but who has proven to be as ideologically promiscuous as he is personally (and the “Ass” in “Assange” might indicate another sort of kinship with Bilaam.)

In fact, where you might have met a cross-section of Korachist and BIlaamist types were in the groups that defended Zimri and attacked Pinchas after Pinchas killed Zimri, when they hailed Zimri as the “Prince in Israel” who was murdered by someone whose grandfather “fattened calves for idolatry”.  You can picture the spiritual descendants of these rabble rousers saying Kaddish for Hamas and running around with signs saying “Zimrey Epstein didn’t kill himself”, to possibly better their chances of assignations with foreign women [as per TB Sanhedrin: “he wants what we want”.]  

Nothing says critical theorist more than using literally G-d given gifts to bring His house down in service of a personal agenda.  

Nothing says intersectionality more than an ersatz universalism united only in its doctrinaire Judeomisia (as a treatment of the recent resurgence of antisemitism in the US put it, “they are ecumenical, these barbarians”).

And nothing says progressive more than one-percenters masquerading as men of the people.

Shoftim: More Police

Parshas Shoftim is bookended by the command at the beginning fo the parsha to appoint judges to decide the law and police to enforce it, and at the end by the mitzvah of egla arufa, the ceremony involving breaking the neck of an unyoked cow when a murder victim is discovered between municipalities and the guilty party has not yet been identified.

An indispensable element of the ritual is that the elders of the town measured to have been closest to the corpse are to wash their hands and declare “our hands did not spill this blood and our eyes did not see” [Dev. 21:7].

Essentially there are two angles to the import of this declaration, answering the possible question of why there is even a premise regarding the ostensible culpability of the leadership of the town: as delineated in M. Sotah 9:6: “Does it ever occur to us that the elders of the local court are murderers? … rather (they are declaring) that we were never approached by this individual and we never deliberately sent him away without food; we never saw him setting out on a journey and are not to be blamed for allowing him to travel without a protective entourage”.  This would seem to indicate that there was a chain of failures in the social order that led to this killing; in fact, one theory is that the person killed was a starving individual engaged in mugging a traveler who killed his attacker in self-defense.

Much is made of this social welfare talking point in chinuch and other circles, especially since it provides an invariable opportunity to instruct about how those “on a higher spiritual level should be acutely aware that their actions do not take place in a vacuum…The Darchei Mussar [says] that had the Elders been flawed in a way that faintly resembles murder, then there would have been a ripple effect to the other people in the city. This is because the behavior of the greatest people in a community filters down to everyone else. Had the elders had a minor flaw in their relating to the value of life then everyone else would also weaken in their respect for the value of life. This could affect those on the lowest level to the extent that it could even be possible that one of them stoop to the level of actually murdering a person.”

However, the emphasis on that mussar angle might possibly detract from the most basic lesson, one sorely in need of forceful repetition in a day and age where there are some who think ending policing is a good idea—nay, a righteous mandate.

Sforno sets it out: “we have not left a stone unturned in (making public) locating the murderer; we are certain that the murderer did not commit this act where he could be seen. Had he been seen, he would have been challenged and prevented from committing the deed. At the very least, such witnesses would have come forward.”  This implies that there is at least a semblance of a robust system of law enforcement, or at least that there is a desire to maintain same and to expend the effort to make it work.

That brings us back to the beginning of the parsha, where Ibn Ezra explains how far this system should extend: “Although you go three times a year to see the Kohanim who serve in the Sanctuary, there to ask them questions about our statutes and laws, you still do not fulfill your duty unless you have judges in each of your city gates…The judge dispenses justice, whereas the officer enforces it.”

One could also posit that egla arufa is a Divine recognition that any system of law enforcement—even a/the Divienly mandated one—is run by humans, and as a result will inevitably incur human failures, sometimes—if not often—with deadly results.  Yet this never is to lead one to believe that the cure is either doing away with the system entirely.  One Mishnah often cited by progressives is Makkos 1:10, where one finds the argument about a Sanhedrin that ostensibly executes even once too often: “A sanhedrin that executes once in seven years, is called murderous. Rabbi Eliezer b. Azariah Says: once in seventy years. Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva say: “Had we been members of a sanhedrin, no person would ever be put to death.”  Progressive types never seem to quote the final clause of that same Mishnah: “Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel remarked: “They would also multiply murderers…”

Avot 3:2 tells us: “pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for the fear it inspires, every man would swallow his neighbor alive.”  It might seem incongruous that the Mishnah uses the term “shlomah” for welfare and then notes that the government in question needs to inspire “morah”, or fear.  And yet this is what we are precisely praying for: a stable system of law enforcement that inspires at least fear of the consequences of attempting to upend the social order.  It’s no accident that demographics who ostensibly have reason to fear overpolicing and inequitable policing still strongly desire that local police presence be maintained or even increased--by an overwhelming majority.

TB Brachot 28b relates that when Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Zakkai was on his deathbed, his students asked him to bless them: “He said: May it be His will that the fear of Heaven shall be upon you like the fear of flesh and blood. His students were puzzled and said: To that point and not beyond? Shouldn’t one fear God more? He said to them: Would that a person achieve that level of fear…Know that when one commits a transgression, he says to himself: I hope that no man will see me.”  

We need to pray for that fear.  

We need more police.

Tisha Ba'v: Kamtza/Bar Kamtza--Punk'd?

"A certain man had a friend named Kamtza and an enemy named Bar Kamtza. He made a banquet and asked his servant to invite Kamtza. The servant mistakenly invited Bar Kamtza" [TB Gittin 55b]

So begins the narrative about the Second Churban and the endless chinch talking points about sinas chinam and public shaming.

There comes a point where you wonder whether the the host's messenger didn't really make a mistake, but rather was punking both the host and Bar Kamtza, although to what end would be hard to fathom. 

Either way, one has to believe that Bar Kamtza was just looking for a pretext, and it was ostensibly handed to him: ultimately, his playing the victim leads to the belief that he gets off way too light both in his lifetime and in the narrative.

While the Gemara at the end of that part of the Churban narrative [57a] indicates that the proximate cause of the second Churban was the public shaming of Bar Kamtza, his obvious overreaction indicates several things about him:

• he was as much a hater as the unnamed host;
• he was an entitled whiner who had no compunction about going places where he wasn't welcome--probably because of his (subsequently revealed) position against both his own people and their leadership;
• as he offered to pay for the whole mesiba in question, he clearly had ample means AND connections...you don't just gain an audience with the Emperor because someone tossed you out of a party, unless you have some kind of political cred;
• while the Gemara indicates that HKBH Himself stood up for as it were for Bar Kamtza's shame, one should remember from Num. 22:33 that He spared Bilaam's shame as well by slaying the talking donkey.  A comparison between Bar Kamtza and Bilaam is not out of order, especially since--as I see it--way too much chinuch capital is spent on Bar Kamtza as a victim rather than analyzing his treachery. 

In fact the story of Bar Kamtza (and the other narrative paradigm of "libun berabim", the ma'aseh of Yehuda/Tamar) both indicate it might be that these cases of never being melaben your sworn enemies are the exceptions that prove the rule:

Haba lemelabenecha, hashkem lemelabno.

As much as BK's shame caused the Churban, R' Yochanan's declaration earlier in the narrative that ill-timed "humility...destroyed our Mikdash, burned our Heichal and exiled us from our land" indicates that pietist quietism was at least equally if not more responsible.

Bar Kamtzas need to be publicly called out.  

You know what they’ll do if they’re not.

Vaera: Lip Snip

Rav Aharon Lichtenstein has written: "Rambam conten[ds] (Guide 3:8) that the sanctity of Hebrew was either derived from or reflected in the paucity of its sexual vocabulary..."

This point can be illustrated in the enigmatic Mosaic self-referential phrase that appears twice in this weeks parsha, "'aral sefasayim", ostensibly translated literally as "uncircumcised [of] lips", but usually translated (by us) as "impeded speech", or (by others) as "faltering lips". 

Rashi on 6:12 provides a series of examples from throughout Tanach which indicate that the primary translation of the root ערל is, in fact, "obstruction", and, in line with the Maimonidean observation, "foreskin" is at best a secondary translation: the association of ערל with numerous parts of anatomy other than the membrum--hearts, ears, and even trees/plants--indicate that "foreskin" as the salient image might be counterintuitive.

Which is why Philologos' recent urgings that "the need to excise profanity from the Bible is fundamentally inane" when discussing how to translate mashtin b’kir; he much prefers the 1599 Geneva Bible's "pisseth against the wall" and Robert Alter's "pisser against the wall" as opposed to "other Bible translators and commentators[/]medieval rabbinic exegetes who have held that sacred scripture would never speak so profanely of the human body".

One can safely assume that Philologos [and, by extension, Alter] doesn't take this approach to make the Bible accessible to those who would desacralize it, even if he does protest that "[a] book that is chock-full of stories about murder, rape, plunder, and assorted acts of human depravity cannot be deemed too dignified for coarse language", a statement which might betray a stunted understanding of Tanach beyond a superficial level.  However, the fact that even he notes that mashtin b’kir appears six times in Tanach, the other five times used by G-d himself in prophetic messages, further undermines his insistence: srely an "edge of vulgarity" doesn't need to be "perfectly right for G-d's anger", whether or not it was right for David's.

If you'll excuse the expression: it takes the piss out of Philologos' argument; rather, the real "inanity" is the compulsion to see vulgarity where there doesn't need to be.  (No matter how many times the word "ass" is used in no matter how many translations.)

Of course, this appraoch can be taken to an extreme, the best example being with the Artscroll translation of Shir HaShirim.  Rabbi Harry Maryles likely explains why better than most:

"Shir HaShirim is an instance where I believe the Charedi obsession with Tznius has lead them astray. Because of it they manage to completely ignore the actual words of Shir HaShirim in translation. Although they are upfront about it and say that it is not meant to be literal and that it is based on Rashi’s allegorical interpretation - I believe it undermines the author’s intent which is to convey God’s love of his people in an allegorically human way...It is one thing to say that Shir HaShirim is an allegory. It is. But to ignore the beauty of Shlomo HaMelech’s actual narrative in my view completely misunderstands why R’ Akiva thought this book is the holy of holies - and why it remained in the canon. Nowhere does it say that we are to distort the translation to fit the allegorical interpretation. And yet this is exactly what ArtScroll did."

Rabbi Aryeh Klapper and the Center for Modern Torah Leadership's translation of Shir HaShirim was developed in part to counter Artscroll's bowdlerization.

Which is also why Rabbi Efrem Goldberg's recent plea against what he calls "the growing problem of profanity" also misses a few crucial points leading one to believe the he doth protest too much.  

The first is that he repeatedly conflates vulgarity and obscenity, to the point that he feels it might be dangerous to listen to a speech delivered by the current President of the United States.  This inaccruate conflation has both cultural and halachic ramifications: the President can never curse on the air, so the notion is self contradictory.

The second is that he dismisses out of hand research he sites: "Shouldn’t we believe the research that says cursing has positive benefits? The answer is no.  Giving in to the urge to use a profanity is to forfeit our very humanity and indulge an animal impulse."  This misses the opportunity for a foundational teachable moment: instead of decrying the effects of vulgarity/obscenity and insisting it can never be beneficial, rather employ the kosher food analog: "it might be tasty, but what can I do, I have been commanded to not partake."

The third point is that subjectivity is injected into what should be an objective analysis: "Whenever I hear someone curse to try to make a point, I can’t help but think if they were more intelligent they would find a more effective way to communicate that point without needing to distract with the shock value of using an obscenity.  I am always less impressed..."  Aside from the subjectivity, the goalposts have been moved: the standard is whether he will be impressed or not by the expletive.

The fact that there exists a "pi'el" and "pu'al" in Hebrew grammar indicates that sometimes there is a need for the emphatic, even if not necessarily the vulgar.

Or, as the eminent sportswriter Paul Zimmerman put it when explaining why NFL coaches swear:

"There's a big difference between an idiot and a @&$%ing idiot."

In fact, one might even ask if in some cases whether using "fighting words" might be appropriate as a matter of personal defense: it might serve to deter a potential attack, or might diffuse a phyiscal altercation into a verbal, an altogether better result.  The cases where such language may be used are likely very rare; but it should be looked into.

Where Rabbi Goldberg might have a salient point is if he feels that speakers feel the need to be vulgar, as if it was almost a "mitzvah" to both be vulgar and for an audience to be foreced to accept that vulgarity.  This would also seem to be the problem with the Philologos/Alter approach to mashtin b’kir:  that one almost must accept that David had to be vulgar in that situation and that the Bible would report it favorably.  If someone insists on vulgarity as a positive necessity--then you start asking questions about both the message and the messenger.

Would give a whole new meaning to "'aral sefasayim."

Chanukah and Intersectionellenism

The late eminent atheist (and, as it turned out, genealogical Jew) Christopher Hitchens had a particularly nasty bug up his nose about Chanukah:

“When the fanatics of Palestine won that victory, and when Judaism repudiated Athens for Jerusalem, the development of the whole of humanity was terribly retarded…. The display of the menorah at this season…has a precise meaning and is an explicit celebration of the original victory of bloody-minded faith over enlightenment and reason.”

Give Hitchens some credit: while he ultimately blames the Jews and Judaism for all ostensible “faith oppression” (how very Voltairean of him, blaming the Jews and Judaism for all types of theocentrism) at the very least, he leveled equal opprobrium at all faiths, unlike many of his erstwhile liberal colleagues who never forgave him for siding with the GOP in the second Gulf War, or maybe even for pegging the beginning of the reign of Islamist terrorism to Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa on Salman Rushdie.  

However, while Hitchens’ aforementioned erstwhile comrades-in-arms never forgave him for his abandonment of progressive tenets vis-à-vis the obligation to grant succor to certain non-Western faith prerogatives no matter how reactionary or violent, they certainly have maintained agreement with his rather dire assessment of Jews and Judaism, especially the nominally Jewish progressives who would certainly find much in common with Hitchens’ Judeophobic sentiments.

Ironically, as Yoram Hazony details in his “The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture”, the “Athens” that Hitchens for all intents and purposes worships (despite—or perhaps because of—the near certainty that Hitchens himself would violently disagree with the characterization) held itself to be a genuine tradition with oracular foundations, while prophetic Judaism was disdained as overly tied to reasoned argument and insufficiently revelatory bases.  Thus, Hitchens and his cohorts find themselves in the unique position of being more self-righteous “religious” advocates than the ostensible theological reactionaries they decry, even if either too obtuse to realize it or too disingenuous to admit it.

Ergo, the Hellenizers of the Chanukah story, who are often viewed as more “open-minded” than their Maccabean counterparts, turn out to not only have been as imperialist as their newly found Greek allies and dually treasonous in both political and theological terms, but also similarly obtuse and/or disingenuous: either they were dumb enough to think that hybridizing Judaism and Hellenism was a salient option; or, more likely, they already knew that what their distortion was very much as faith based—if not more—than the faith of their fathers they felt compelled to abandon, but they needed a marketing ploy to convince some of their brethren to join them in their quislingery.

Unfortunately, it worked: Chanukah is as much a lament as a celebration, as it was the first Jewish civil war where the battles involved a sizable cohort of own openly joining up with our oppressors.  Recent current events indicate that this “tradition” persists, particularly with regard to those of our faith who either try to marry Judaism with progressive tenets which present as more “modern” or “advanced”, but which everyone knows are considered even more inviolate than the most reactionary catechisms by their adherents and promulgators. 

One need not list all the usual suspects of those professing to be of our faith whose primary allegiance until death (usually yours, not theirs) is ultimately intersectionality (they know who they are).  However, a few recent events illuminate the pattern, mostly involving pretending all antisemitism is right wing while either ignoring or allying with actual anti-Semites of the other wing.  In fact, one need not ignore the danger from the right or even downplay it to recognize that the threat from the left—especially the intersectional left—is more dangerous on several fronts, not least because it has culturally misappropriated and distorted otherwise sound Jewish principles and gaslit some otherwise good people into believing that they might be on the wrong side.  And make no mistake: they are more “religious” about intersectional “principles” than the most Ultra of the Orthodox.

Three recent events in the run up to Chanukah should serve as red lines vis a vis with-us-or-against-us, Jews or Intersectionellenists: finally including Jews under Title VI protections that didn’t cover them up to now; the UK’s resounding electoral repudiation of Jeremy Corbyn (and hopefully, his allies in the US); and the revelation of victim blaming from “civil rights” quarters where the terrorist perpetrators of the Jersey City massacre are excused for the atrocity.  The choice is certainly binary now, if it wasn’t before.

Oh, and Happy Chanukah, Mr. Hitchens.  

They probably told you in Hell the oil they boil you in lasts for only one day.  

It lasts for eight.

Lech Lecha--Boundaries

Gen. 12:6--The Canaanites were then in the land

Gen. 13:7--The Canaanites and Perizzites were then dwelling in the land

When Avraham Avinu is sent on his first sojourn, the Torah reports--pace Rashi on 12:6--that the Cannanites were in the process of conquering the local area from the children of Shem, to whom the land was granted after the Flood.

When he returns from his short Egyptian tour, and his sheperd have a territorial rift with Lot's sheperds, the Torah uses a slightly different turn of phrase, as if to say the conquest was at least de facto recognized.

This set of circumstances may or may not be in conflict withthe very first Rashi in the Torah, where the idea that the land of Canaan somehow "belonged" to the Canaanites before we "took" it, but that said appropriation was Divinely justified.

(Aside from the Rashi/Midrashim, "Canaan" is oft used in contemporary times as a pedagogical and political paradigm; pedagogical: to paraphrase Rav Zev Leff, it's no accident that Jews, the ultimate slaves to G-d, are given the land frst given to Canaan, bearer of the curse of eternal servitude; and political, in that some enemies of the Jews from without and within have become enamored with the idea that there are modern "Canaanites" who are the true indigenous inhabitants of Israel, ignoring the fact that making use of the Torah to justify said claim simutaneously undermines it, as the Canaanites are identified as the original "occupiers".  Like the argument of Geviha ben Pesisa (idenitifed as the "first Jewish lawyer") in Chelek (TB San. 91a): "You bring the Torah? I will also [beat] you with the Torah.")

Yet, Rashi also reports at 13:7 that when Lot's sheperds tried to use G-d's future promises to Avraham regarding the land and the fact that at the time Lot was Avraham's sole putative heir to justify their larcenous grazing as if the land was already theirs, the answer from Avraham's camp was "it isn't yours yet"; the actual historical fact of Abrahamic possesion was not yet established, even given the ab initio illegitimacy of the Canaanite conquest.

This might raise separate questions as to when legitimacy is de facto accorded to de jure misappropriation, but at any rate, the immedate result of this wooly imbroglio is that Avraham channels his inner Dylan in 13:9: "you go your way, I go mine", and Lot departs, muttering sotto voce "I want neither Abram nor his God".  The Abrahamic ideal was "tried" by Lot and his sheperds in a rather narcissistic and disngenuous manner--using prophecy/religion to justify theft--and subsequently found wanting and left truly untried: Lot walks away from the the entire enterprise.  (Interestingly, Avraham Avinu, the mekarev par excellence of his time, didn't impose further: at this point he lets Lot choose his own derech, likely realizing from this incident that any pretentions to piety on Lot's part are ultimately self-serving.)

Lot and his minions also have being saying that it was a "mitzvah to steal from the goyim".  This mindset might present itself in contemporary times as either the gross misconception that stealing outside the tribe is ever sanctioned, or that appropriation of disputed private promontories outside proper channels is somehow meritorious.  It's possible that the near-repetition of "Canaanites in the land" might be a hint that this kind of behavior in fact resembles a "ma'aseh eretz Canaan", underscored by the medrash where Canaan tells his children to "love theft" (TB Pesachim 113b).

The contemporary takeaways might be the following: one, never use religion or nationalism as a basis to justify purely personal ends--"the personal is political" as a prescriptive is an anything but Jewish philosophy; two, this has no bearing on proper attitudes towards those who wish us harm because we are Jewish: there are proper religious and extra-religious channels through which they can be dealt with, and none of them have to nor ever should involve misappropriation or personal-level harrassment (or worse); third--and this is a longer, more involved discussion--one might be able to distinguish between an individual as ostensible bigot (because minds can be changed, although in a day and age where evil designs more often than not may be expressed in semi-public digital fora, all declared Judeomisics bear watching) and a Judeomisic public figure cashing in on antisemitism, where public opprobrium is only the first among legitimate options in countering the danger. 

But you still don't take their stuff.

Ki Teitzei--Borders

The various currently suspended halachos regarding which converts of which various nations can marry into Israel might prove to be instructive in another way.  Specifically, they might be indicative of how to draw borders and maintain border security; or, at least, they might obviate the idea that an "open borders" policy is a "Torahdikke" one.

In this week's parsha, we discover that of converts from Edom and Egypt--of either gender--may marry into the Jewish people after three generations, but male Moabite and Ammonite converts may never marry into the Jewish people.

Meanwhile the Jews have been admonished earlier to not harrass the Ammonites and Moabites, ostensibly owing to their being related to us through Lot.  This might explain why--before the incident at Shittim--the Jews are as respectful of the Moabite and Ammonite borders as they are of the Edomite borders; and while the Edomites meet them fully armed at their border, innthe immediate term Moab and Ammon, while not helping ["lo kidmu belechem ve'mayim], weren't overtly hostile.

This begs the question: why do they come in for the most draconia level of exclusion, while the Edomites (who were overtly hostile) and the Egyptians (who enslaved us and attmepted genocide on other occasions) don't come in for the same level of restriction?

Vis a vis Moab, we have a rathe simple explanation: the nonaggression policy wasn't reciprocated by the Moabites.  As Tosfos BK 38a s.v "Nasa Kal Vachomer" explains, the Moabites broke the pact when they hired Bilaam.  

The Kli Yakar explains that Bilaam told the Ammonites and Moabites not to offer bread and water, and in their hunger, the Jews would eat from the altars of Moab's idols, and due to their thirst, the daughters of Moab would be able to ensnare them by giving them wine and then offering themselves on condition that they worship their idols first. 

These incidents explain however indirectly how: there are legitimate ways to defend borders; there are illegitimate ways of gaslighting under the guise of "aid"; and, finally and most importantly--because this bears repeating--a "ger" is not an immigrant.

In a sense, Egypt dealt with us in part in a more legitimate fashion than Moav: the Egyptians invited us in unconditionally as legal immigrants, and then changed their minds.  Moav at first didn't invite us (and we weren't even looking to settle!!!),  and then gaslit us and used our hunger to "invite" us in on their own terms which was to our detriment.  Furthermore, the Egyptians didn't deliberately destroy their own society to get at us--G-d did that for them with the plagues.  Moav did, by pimping out its entire womanhood (which might further explain why only the men were closed out of conversion: the women might have been "drafted").  Also, by engaing Bilaam, Moab's war became as much about annihilation as Egypt's slavery.  In the end, they're a lot cloer to Amalek than Mitzrayim, or even Edom, Amalek's grandfather, Edom, who met us en masse at the border, but didn't make any other hostile pretenses.

So what we have is Egypt, who invited the Hebrews/Jews as guests under legitimate pretenses and then turned on them; Edom, who made no pretenses other than defending their borders; and Moav, who repaid nonaggression with both physical and spiritual war.   

Egypt was severely punished, but the punshiment ended at the Red Sea; the reason to not be “hate Egypt” is because they took you in when their government forced you to and endured wholesale changes to their way of life and then were destroyed when they became xenophobic.  The xenophobia was severely punished, but national integrity and borders were a legitimate issue.  So they get 3 generations, as do Edom, who fares no worse than Egypt.

Moav/Ammon are the most restricted, commensurate with the level of hostility and treachery: they weren’t foreign to you; there may have been least some split in the popular opinion, seeing that the women are exempt from the restriction, and even the ones who were in the avel shittim averaged may have been “drafted”.  Moav, essentially, had less respect for its own borders than the Jews did.

It's been mentioned several times in these pages that no matter how many times the Torah says not to oppress the "ger", it doesn't bring the definition of "ger" any closer to "immigrant" .  BT BM 59a lays out why: the primary reason given to not oppress the ger is that the convert will be tempted to defect, indicating that the primary issue is a religious one rather than a political one.  Even when the same Gemara mentions you were "gerim", it brings us back to our orignal point: you were legal invited immigrants,  THEN you were betrayed.  A "ger" who committed oneself to all the protocols involved in gerus: THAT'S who you're supposed to love and not oppress and not betray.  If gerus were a real model for immigration, we might attempt to dissuade every potential border crosser three times before we considered allowing them in.  

Those who would link shibud mitzrayim with the ostensible plight of border crashers commit a rather egregious form of cultural misappropriation; even worse, they commit it from within.  Not only does advocating for stricter immigration law not violate this injuction, but the two "mumin" of gerus mitzrayim and "Abolish ICE" are not remotely comparable. The analog is at best intellectually dishonest, and at worst--disloyal.