This week’s Torah portion is Beshalach (Exodus 13:17–17:16). Listen.
* Recap: Joseph designs a plan where the world has to turn over its gold to Egypt survive a long famine, and now with all the world’s gold in Egypt, the Jews get it and take it out of Egypt.
* Were the Jews freedom fighters or terrorists? Tweet:
Modern Hindus retrospectively cast 1857 as “war of independence”.Their ancestors in 1857 prayed for British victory over “freedom fighters.”
Every people wants self-determination, even if others can rule over them more efficiently and provide them with more stuff.
* God unleashes plagues on Egypt. Egyptians sees the Jews as a plague. Different peoples have different interests.
* The traditional reading of the Book of Exodus is that the Exodus the event represents life, Egypt represents death.
Egypt represents slavery, the Exodus represents freedom.
Egypt is bad, Israel is good.
The Pharoah is bad, Moses is good.
The Egyptian gods are false, only God is God.
To get an alternative perspective, to get an Alt Right perspective, put yourself in the position of groups competing with the Hebrews, such as the Egyptians.
* What are the chief contributions to the world from Egypt in the past 3,000 years? About 3,500 years ago, Egypt ruled. It was the mightiest empire in the world.
* The Exodus is the central event in Judaism. If the Exodus did not happen, then what is Judaism?
* If the Exodus is the one example of God interening in history, then what? It’s a ridiculous question because there is no empirical way of judging when God intervenes in history.
* Different groups have different traits. Jews tend to be emotional, like other Middle Eastern people, and so they complain more. Jews aren’t often criminally violent, but they do tend to be verbally violent and this “You’re killing me” complaints in the parasha are quintessentially Jewish.
* According to a midrash, only a fifth of the Jews left Egypt. The rest were not ready for the new way of life and died during the plague of darkness.
* According to the Artscroll, when “the wicked are punished, God is glorified.” More liberal Jews are less likely to say such things and to rejoice in the destruction of the wicked.
* Rejoicing over the death of your enemies is normal, natural and healthy. When the Jews saw the Egyptians drowned, they rejoiced. “Israel saw the great hand that HaShem inflicted upon Egypt, and the people revered HaShem, and they had faith in HaShem and in Moses, His servant.” (Ex. 14:31)
Life is often zero sum. Different groups have different interests and we are all competing for survival in a Darwinian world. If the Egyptians had caught up with the Jews, it would have been very bad for the Jews. The Egyptian army drowning, on the other hand, was good for the Jews.
* Ex. 17:16. “…Hashem maintains a war against Amalek, from generation to generation.”
Amalekites are the descendants of Esau.
Artscroll: “[Amalek] attacked Israel because of their ancestor’s [Esau] ancient, implacable hatred of Jacob; they would have continued the attack even if the Jews had retreated toward Egypt.”
All forms of life have a group evolutionary strategy. Jews have one, Arabs have one, Africans have one, Chinese one. It is rare that a member of a group can see his group’s evolutionary strategy.
Every life form has a strong reaction against anything that threatens its survival. Groups normally need cohesion to survive. Threats to group cohesion, such as multiculturalism, should be expected to produce violent responses.
* Goy: “I want to ask about “conversion” and the persuasion that seems to come (to the Jews in this part) *only* when they see physical evidence of god’s intervening on their behalf and ask you more about your conversion, and miracles.”
Do these questions mean anything in a context of Jewish religion? –or is the question of “believing” not important at all?
* What White Supremacists Taught A Torah Scholar About Identity
* Carl Schmitt: The Concept of the Political
* The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Lévi-Strauss and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity (1974)
* The WASP Question by Andrew Fraser.
