This week’s Torah portion begins the Book of Leviticus.
* Who wrote the Torah? God or people?
* Deut: 32:8: “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.”
*The presence of God comes with a price — divine justice. (Dennis Prager)
* When we study Torah, are we mainly studying the progression of ideas (such as monotheism) or the development of a particular people with a particular genetic code interacting with other particular peoples in particular environments? Culture is a product of genes and environment.
* One key Torah idea may be that the land of Israel demands a certain level of holiness and decency from the people living there, and if they don’t live up to this demand, the land vomits them out. Or is that an elaborate justification and propaganda for kicking out the original inhabitants to make it a Jewish homeland? Is the Torah fair to the natives of Canaan by describing them as child sacrificers? Or is this propaganda? Chaim Potok claimed this was propaganda.
* Is Jewish cohesion and love based on commonly shared ideas or on peoplehood (genetic ties aka kinship)? When you go to shul, people are not divided up, generally speaking, based on their ideas about abortion.
Would you abort your unborn baby if it had a "serious genetic defect"? Most Jews would, most goys wouldn'thttps://t.co/szAEL0o91s pic.twitter.com/5kVMv4wlzx
— Audacious Epigone (@AudaciousEpigon) March 19, 2017
* This week’s parasha is about creating a place for God to dwell among the people and repeats sections of the three previous parshiot.
* From last week’s parasha, Ki Tisa, Artscroll says: “The equal participation of all of the people symbolizes that all Jews must share in achieving the national goals, that everyone should pass through the census by giving up his selfish, personal interests for the sake of the nation. One who does so gains infinite benefit, because the mission of Israel is dependent on the unity of the whole.” That the welfare of the nation is more important than the happiness of the individual, well, if the goyim talked like this, it would sound fascist and dangerous to Jews.
Artscroll: “There is great power in the unity of a nation striving toward a common goal.” Judaism prefers that men pray in a quorum (minyan) rather than alone.
* Last December in Texas, Rabbi Matt Rosenberg said to Richard Spencer: “You come here with a message of radical exclusion. My tradition teaches a message of radical inclusion, as embodied by Torah. Would you sit down and study Torah with me and learn love?”
“Do you really want radical inclusion into the State of Israel?” Spencer responded. “Jews exist precisely because you did not assimilate to the gentiles… I respect that about you. I want my people to have that same sense of themselves.”
* If I Were A Gentile White Nationalist, How Would I Feel About Jews?
* If I Were A Black Gentile, How Would I Feel About Jews?
* If I Were Born An Orthodox Jew, How Would I Feel About Luke Ford?
* If you were a Muslim, how would you feel about Jews?
* Casey: If I were Rod Dreher, and so concerned about secular-liberalism encroaching on my conservative Catholicism that I proposed setting up intentionally identity-retrenched Christian communities amid a Babylonish empire, I would be realistic about how many people would be coming with me — possible 10% of existing Christians, or (generously) 7% of Americans. That would leave us a small minority in every location we found ourselves, and what could we do then, politically? — how would we advocate? Ironically, we would advocate for the broadest and most open liberalism possible… ?
And if I were a middle class daughter of an Iranian immigrant, a born US citizen, I would cling to my religious identity until and unless I saw evidence of a “consensus center” identity emerging to which I might then consider assimilating… but I’d look around in America and all I would see is degenerates like Nicki Minaj and Beyonce dancing like whores and uptight academic lesbians on the other hand, owning cats and working as pharmacists, and I would decide I wanted none of that… and I would think to myself, I hope I can find a strong Muslim man who isn’t going to let himself or his children turn into water-down cosmopolitan working units… and so to attract that kind of a man, I need to guard my hymen with my life, study cooking, and wear the veil everywhere I go.
If I were an unmarried white woman in my mid-20s I would be nervous about not finding a husband, and I wouldn’t realize that I had made my job become “my identity,” so I would throw myself into my job, where I would become more and more “professional” and androgynous and therefore less and less appealing to men. I’d have sex with men not because I enjoyed it, but as a kind of duty to prove my strong independence to myself. I would vote against Trump, but only because I didn’t have a husband to steer me to better judgment. But again, this would make me still less attractive to men… except!! If *i* were this young woman, I’d be smart enough to figure this out and so I’d quickly marry any guy I could find.
