This week’s Torah portion begins the story of the Jews.
Issue 1. Is Richard Spencer’s Alt Right college tour good for the Alt Right?
Issue 2. Is the new Netflix documentary, One of Us, about ex-Hasidim, good for the Jews? For the goyim? Were Hasidim killed in the Holocaust because they refused to blend in? Are Jews and Muslims hated for not blending in?
Issue 2.5: How whites, black and latinos differ as patients.
Issue 2.7 : Melchizedek
Issue 3: Were the women who gave in to Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behavior 100% victims? What blame should they shoulder? Should they have spoken out earlier? Was there anything Jewish about Harvey’s perviness? What would Abraham think about Harvey Weinstein? How should Jews feel about Harvey? Will attitudes towards Jews change as a result of these Harvey Weinstein stories? Do goyim look at Harvey primarily as an individual or as a member of the tribe? Was it racist that Harvey did not direct his predatory behavior towards black women (equal to their percentage of the population)? Was Harvey Weinstein a bad man or a sick man?
Buzzfeed publishes this essay by Bim Adewunmi: “Buried beneath the sickening story of Harvey Weinstein’s abuse is another story — the problem of casting women by their fuckability — and who that leaves out.”
Issue 3.5: LAT: More than 30 women come forward to accuse director James Toback of sexual harassment
According to Wikipedia: “Toback was born in New York City. His mother, Selma Judith (née Levy), was a president of The League of Women Voters and a moderator of political debates on NBC.[1] His father, Irwin Lionel Toback, was a stockbroker and former vice president of Dreyfus & Company.”
Issue 4. A video has circulated of actor Jason Biggs peeing on Chelsea Handler. Is this behavior depraved? Are liberals the real predators?
😵🙀HOLY PEE STORM‼️⛈Actor @JasonBiggs peeing🤢On @chelseahandler These DESPICABLE People Thnk #PATRIOTS R Low!🤔#GROSS https://t.co/4ui1Tn16EU
— Patriot Juliet🇺🇸 (@Voices4Humanity) October 22, 2017
Was Chelsea Handler the victim here? Jason is a goy, while Chelsea is half-Jewish (but not Jewish according to orthodox Jewish law). How should that information affect our calculus? Was what Jason did to Chelsea worse than the Holocaust? Is Jason Biggs worse than Hitler?
Issue 5. Does “gentrification” mean a neighborhood is becoming more white? The Guardian: “Are white hipsters hijacking an anti-gentrification fight in Los Angeles? As the Latino neighbourhood of Boyle Heights combats soaring property prices, some condemn outsiders’ involvement – but others welcome their input”
Issue 6. Are Mike Cernovich and Laura Loomer the real Right?
Issue 7. The Las Vegas slaughter. Are the government telling us the truth? Are the media?
Issue 8. The JFK files. Trump says he will release the JFK files in the next few days. What do you expect to find? Was Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone when he shot JFK?
9. When Russia comes to liberate the righteous remnant of white culture from America whore of Babylon, how will we be identified?
10. Sex addiction rehab, does it work? Is there such a thing as sex addiction?
11. Steve Sailer: “JPod Can Identify Filthy Anti-Semites Just from Their Filthy Anti-Semitic Faces” Is physiognomy destiny?
12. Is there history in the book of Genesis or is it mythology?
13. The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.[a]
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
Are Jews a blessing to the world? Does God curse those who curse Jews and bless those who bless Jews?
14. Gen. 12:7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”
Did God give the land of Israel to the Jews? Did God give Japan to the Japanese? Does God support ethno-nationalism?
* Gen. 12:11 As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai [65 yo], “I know what a beautiful woman you are. 12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”
Did Abraham sin? Are ethics situational or absolute or does the situation determine the absolute?
15. Gen: 12:17: “But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai.”
Did Sarai give Pharoah the clap? If so, did she get it from Abraham? If so, did Abraham get it from a shiksa?
16. Why did God choose Abraham? Dennis Prager said in 1993: “If Abraham were a truly righteous person, and Jews came from Abraham, then Jews could say, we’re better than non-Jews because we come from the best ancestor.”
“The Torah doesn’t want the Jews to think they are intrinsically better than anybody.”
“There is no more evil doctrine than racial supremacy because it means that the people who are not members of your race can never change. They are intrinsically bad. You are intrinsically inferior, I may therefore destroy you. Auschwitz was impossible without racial anti-semitism. Regular anti-semitism would not produce extermination. In all previous anti-semitism, if the Jew converted to the anti-semite’s thinking, he was accepted the next day. In racial anti-semitism, the Jew can never change.”
“Just as the different race can never be good, you can never be bad because of your race. It undermines everything God wants in this world — that values be supreme. That people can be better.”
“The most anti-semitism today is to be found in the Arab world. It’s the only part of the world not moving to democracy. The two are related. If they make peace with Israel, there will be unleashed forces of democratization in the Arab world… You cannot hate the Jews and run a good society.”
17. Gen. 13:14: “The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted from him”
Which people do you need to be rid of before God will speak to you?
18. It’s hard to think of any important thinkers in history who were poor. Only the wealthy have the time to ask philosophical questions.
19. Gen. 12:6 “the Canaanites were then in the land.”
Spinoza argued that the last sentence, “The Canaanites were then in the land”, meaning “then as opposed to now”, could not have been written at the time of Moses, as the Canaanites were still in the land. The sentence could only have been written at a time when the Canaanites were no longer in the land, so as to convey needed historical/ethnographic context to contemporary readers.
Spinoza did not see himself as having discovered this; he believed that he was following in the footsteps of the thirteenth century Spanish commentator Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra. Let’s take a look then at Ibn Ezra’s comments to Genesis 12:6:
“והכנעני אז בארץ” – יתכן שארץ כנען תפשה כנען מיד אחר. ואם איננו כן יש לו סוד. והמשכיל ידום:
“The Canaanites were then in the land” – likely that the Land of Canaan was grabbed by Canaan from the hands of another. But if this is not so, it has a secret, and the one who comprehends it will fall silent.
The “secret” Ibn Ezra alludes to here is the “secret of the twelve” that he refers to elsewhere in his commentary, and the other verses he mentions in those contexts also seem to raise the possibility of post-Mosaic editorial insertions. As I have not yet understood any other attempt at explaining the secret, it seems to me fair to cite Ibn Ezra as someone who was theologically okay with there being post-Mosaic insertions in the Torah.
However, Ibn Ezra does not prefer this reading. On literary rather than theological grounds, he suggests that the more likely correct interpretation is that the verse teaches us that the Canaanites had taken the land by force from someone else. In other words, he thinks the better translation of the verse is “The Canaanites were then in the land”, meaning “then as opposed to previously”. That translation allows the verse to be written at the time of Moses.
