My tradition teaches a message of radical inclusion and love. Will you sit down and learn Torah with me, and learn love? Listen here and here.
Wikipedia: “The parashah tells of the Israelites’ affliction in Egypt, the hiding and rescuing of the infant Moses, Moses in Midian, the calling of Moses, circumcision on the way, meeting the elders, and Moses before Pharaoh.” My show with Rabbi Rabbs on this Torah portion from 2010.
Morality and abstract thought.
* Meir Kahane’s 1985 debate with Dennis Prager.
The Alt Right has many definitions. One is that it is not the conservatism ruling in the Republican party which stands for, “Invade the world, invite the world.” Another explanation is that it is an entry vehicle for white nationalism which is inherently racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic.
Is racism, xenophobic and anti-Semitism ever rational? Ever self-interested? Or is it always crazy and destructive to the hater?
Dissident Right tweets: “Every time I read the Culture of Critique [By Kevin MacDonald], I can feel my heart hardening like Pharoah.”
* Exodus 1:7: “but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.”
So what percentage of the Egyptian population were the Israelites? This is important because we have no example from history of Jews comprising more than 5% of a nation and that country was not convulsed by anti-semitism.
Would the country of Israel be thrilled if non-Jews in their midst multiplied greatly? Of course not.
As the Torah lays it out, any other nation would have been racked by ethnic hostility in this situation. We don’t have examples in history where the ethnic balance in a nation changes dramatically and there’s not conflict and killing. If Exodus 1:7 was about Hutus and Tutsis or white and Mexicans or Poles and Germans or Malays and Chinese or Muslims and non-Muslims you would have the same sort of reaction. Viewed from this perspective, the Pharoah and the Egyptians had considerably less freedom of will than is generally supposed.
An Israeli who captured Adolf Eichman said the man did not hate Jews, he simply had a job to do. The Pharoah may not have hated Jews, he simply had a job to do for his people.
* After Egypt kicks out the Jews, did it decline in power and influence? Perhaps it missed its high IQ Jews? Before WWII, Germany was the most important cultural and academic influence on the world, after WWII, not so much. How many people can name a living German aside from Angela Merkel?
According to the History Channel: “For almost 30 centuries—from its unification around 3100 B.C. to its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.—ancient Egypt was the preeminent civilization in the Mediterranean world.”
* Steve Sailer writes: “There is not really that much of a market for Jewish self-awareness. It’s not as if a novelist as talented as Roth is incapable of it, but there’s simply little demand these days for Roth to go very deep into these kind of patterns.”
* The Pharoah’s daughter saves Moses. Why? Because women rarely have national or racial loyalty above and beyond their feelings. She sees this baby and her heart goes out to it, even though it is a child of her country’s enemy (in the eyes of Pharoah). And she adopts him.
* Ex. 2:12. If Moses saw a Hebrew beating an Egyptian, would he also have intervened and beat the Hebrew?
What is Alt Right Torah?
* Alt Right Torah means treating non-Jews as if they were every bit as human as you, had the same hopes and dreams for their people, and extending to these goyim the same sympathy Jews want for themselves. It means putting yourself in their position. How would it have felt to be the Pharoah of the Exodus and Esav and Cain and Haman and Amalek and Balaam and to wrestle with the particular challenges of Jews. What about the desires of goyim for cohesion, unity, strength and the development of their people and how does that clash with Jewish interests?
* Alt Right Torah means never seeking anything for your group that you wouldn’t wish for other groups. When there are fundamental conflicts of interest, your enemy is your enemy, but not diabolical. There are no objectively good guys and bad guys in the universe. Without faith, life is a fight over scarce resources. With faith, life can be anything. You may not care about evolution, but evolution will remove those who don’t adapt.
* The purpose of the nation state is to develop a particular people.
* When you let women into policy, what are the consequences?
* Why did Cain kill Abel? Because Abel wanted to be sacrificed and brought it about.
* Why did Esav hate Jacob? Because Jacob hated Esav after cheating him out of his birthright.
* Why did the Pharoah want to enslave the Israelites? Because he didn’t want Egypt to become multicultural.
* Why did Amalek hate Israel? Because it had fundamental conflicts of interest with Israel.
* Why did Haman want to kill the Jews? Because he thought the Jews would kill him and his people if they could.
* The Spanish Inquisition was a reaction to Jews ostensibly converting to Christianity but remaining Jewish in their secret identity and practices.
* Every horrible thing you ascribe to your enemies’ motivation is likely a projection of your own thinking.
* What was the Golden Age? When Muslims took over the Iberian Peninsula from the Christians with perhaps a little help from the Jews to make things super multi culti. Would Jews regard it as a Golden Age if Muslims took over the Jewish state of Israel with help from the Druze or Christians?
In the Book of Exodus, we have a Pharoah who wants to make Egypt great again but putting Egypt first, not Israel first. This rise in Egyptian nationalism is dangerous to residents of Egypt who don’t identify as Egyptian, such as the descendants of Jacob. The Torah uses the word “Am” to mean “blood nation” when quoting the new Pharoah about the threat of the Jews. It is one blood nation threatened by another blood nation.
The other Hebrew word for nation is “goy” which does not have the same connotation of blood ties.
The Jews apparently moved throughout Egypt, and didn’t just stick to Goshen. It could have been Hitler speaking in Ex. 1:9. From a racial perspective, a Jew can’t stop being a Jew, while from a religious perspective, Jews can convert to your religion. You could not convert to being an Egyptian or Greek (though you could become a Roman) perhaps today to being French or German.
Exodus 1:8: “A new king arose on Egypt who did not know Joseph.”
The Bible doesn’t say a new king arose in Egypt, but on Egypt, signifying he is a tyrant.
Dennis Prager: “Joseph had saved Egypt… I owe nothing to this group that saved Egypt.”
“To use a Jewish parallel in the contemporary era, when I hear black anti-semitism, I think of this verse. Jews played a phenomenally disproportionate role in the civil rights movement… It was Jewish lawyers who argued civil rights legislation in the 1950s before the Supreme Court. This has come to haunt the Jews. There’s resentment from black nationalists.”
Dennis Prager: “The Jewish dream is that the world not be based on blood ties. It is the only dream ultimately that will save humanity given the horrors of blood historically. Blood beliefs are the greatest source of cruelty in history because if you are not my blood, you are not valuable. That’s how people have lived.”
“The reason that Hitler so hated the Jews was a belief in blood. The Jews are the world’s polluters of blood purity. If you are into the purity of blood, the Jews are your quintessential enemy because wherever the Jews are, they assimilate in part and stay Jewish in part. They are part of you but not fully part of you because of their blood. If they fully assimilate, they are still dangerous… The assimilated Jew was the ultimate polluter of German purity. If you believe in the purity of the nation, the Jews are the quintessence of the opposition to you because Jews are all over the place. Historically, the only nation to keep its identity and still be all over was the Jews. Jews stayed a nation and still became a part of other nations.”
“It could have been Hitler speaking in verse nine. He [Pharoah] doesn’t like that the Jews are all over Egypt, maintaining their identity but also a part of Egyptian life. He was interested in blood purity.
“Christian anti-semitism was not racist, it was theological. If you become Christian, you are fine with us, but you can never give up being Jewish to a racist because you can’t change your blood. That is why Christianity could never have produced the Holocaust.” (Dennis’s lecture on Exodus 1, as part of his Torah verse by verse project.)
Exodus 1:9-10: ““Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”
Dennis: “The Jewish nation was unique in that it took converts. You couldn’t convert to being Greek or Egyptian [but you could become a Roman]. Can you imagine a black showing up in Alexandria and saying I’d like to become an Egyptian? That’s ludicrous. It’s like a man showing up and saying I’d like to be a woman.”
“Jewish assimilation is a problem for host peoples. It is the old issues of dual loyalties — are you an American or are you a Jew? Jews are both. There’s no problem with that. Why would they conflict? Are you first a Christian and then an American?”
“For all of us, our religious values should come before our blood-based values.”
“Jewish assimilation is a problem. The Jews would be plentiful, do well, and yet retain their distinct identity, which if they wanted to give up, they couldn’t because the Egyptians wouldn’t let them. When Jews assimilate, they are called a Fifth Column. When they don’t assimilate, they’re called insular and tribal and parochial and provincial. That’s why Zionism was founded — let the Jews normalize and live in their own country like every other nation. The world is not ready, said Theodore Herzl, for having an Other in its midst. Egypt was not ready to have an Other in its midst. We have no inkling that the Jews were disloyal or bothering them in any way.”
Converts have accounted for only a small number of Jews (Jewish DNA is distinctive, it would not be with a large number of converts). Fewer than 100 people convert to Orthodox Judaism each year.
Another way of understanding “blood purity” is that you know who your parents are. Ninety eight percent of whites in America have no black DNA. That’s a result of “blood purity” in North America as opposed to the assimilation of Latin America.
Being against “blood ties” is being against the importance of family and relations. Family means blood ties. Families not connected by blood ties are not as close. Parents do not provide the same support for children who are not theirs biologically. Genetic similarity fuels bonds, self-sacrifice, and nationalism. The closer the genetic tie, the more likely people will get along.
I think there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Egypt because at this point in time Egypt and its new Pharoah had not yet learned how to be multicultural. And I think Jews were going to be part of the throes of that transformation, which had to take place. Egypt was not going to be the monolithic society they once were in the last century. Jews were going to be at the centre of that. It’s a huge transformation for Egypt to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode and Jews will be resented because of our leading role. But without that leading role and without that transformation, Egypt will not survive.
* In Exodus 1:10, the Pharoah says let’s out-smart the Hebrews. Because this strategy has rarely worked, we get more brutal strategies such as Hitler’s genocide.
As a Jew, I think of how Jews have saved gentile countries such as Joseph saving Egypt from famine. But I understand how non-Jews can read the same texts and study the same history and come to different conclusions.
From the Torah perspective, in the first chapter of Exodus, a Pharoah arises who feels no gratitude to the group that saved his country.
Jews feel the same lack of gratitude from blacks. Jews funded and led black civil rights but the more educated the black, the more likely they are today to be anti-Semitic.
More than two years ago, I wrote:
Was It Rational For Egypt To Enslave The Israelites?
From this week’s Torah portion:
8 Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”
11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.
I suspect the Israelites did not identify as Egyptians. I doubt they had Egypt’s best interests at heart as much as they had their own interests at heart. I suspect they viewed the goyim as Torah Jews tend to do. So why wouldn’t Egypt want to deal harshly with them?
This problem has come up again and again in Jewish history. Host nations (aside from English-speaking ones and a few others) have consistently doubted the patriotism of their Jews. Professor Lindemann writes in his book Esau’s Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews: “For many Russians [at the turn of the 20th Century], their country’s Jewish population appeared as a rapidly growing and increasingly hostile body, actively if secretly collaborating with those enemies.” (Pg. 280)
I always ask, what if goyim acted as Jews would act in a given situation? I don’t think a Jewish state would have much patience with a fifth column in their midst. I don’t think Jews think much about what would happen if others acted as Jews act, or how Jews would act if they had control of a Jewish state.
Israel abstains today from expelling the fifth column in its midst for pragmatic reasons, for fear of offending western democracies, not because Torah and the Jewish tradition have any problem with expelling the fifth column.
The Jewish commentaries I consulted argued about whether the Egyptians were sinning primarily against God or against their fellow human beings when they enslaved the Israelites. I don’t see any sin here by the Pharoah. It sounds to me like the new Pharoah rationally saw the Israelites as a rising fifth column in his midst and so he took action to deal with the problem.
The modern state of Israel has a similar problem with its Arabs and I am sure most Jewish Israelis would love for the Arabs to leave Israel. Under Torah law, the Jewish state would expel non-Jews who were problems. Every strong nation will expel or enslave a rising fifth column in their midst.
France has this problem with its Muslims. Europe has this problem with its Muslims. Perhaps the best solution for Europe would be to expel their Muslims, just as the Egyptians eventually expelled the Israelites?
The Pharoah feared that the Israelites would “join our enemies, fight against us.” Let’s look at the immigration policy of Agudas Israel, the Orthodox lobby group: “Finally, in the area of immigration, Agudath Israel urges that American borders continue to be open to Jewish and other refugees who seek to come to the United States after escaping from oppressive political environments. The United States is a nation of immigrants and has long been distinguished by its generosity toward refugees from all across the globe. It is essential that such generosity continue to be maintained in today’s era of international volatil ity. Agudath Israel accordingly opposes any efforts to impose caps or quotas on refugees seeking safe haven in the United States. Agudath Israel further supports the provision of welfare benefits to needy non-citizen immigrants.”
This policy effectively calls for the end of the historic American white nation by replacing it by hostile refugees. Do you think Mexicans, Guatemalans, black Africans and Muslims really care for the historic white American Christian nation? Do you think they venerate George Washington and Thomas Jefferson? I don’t. For their own understandable reasons, these groups are hostile to the historic American nation. All closely identifying in-groups, such as Muslims, tend to be have suspicion of, if not outright hostility towards, out-groups. Why would any rational nation want to import this diversity, conflict and hostility? And yet every major Jewish organization wants amnesty for the approximately 20 million illegals living in the United States, thus inviting countless more millions to come in. This is effectively a call for the overthrow of America and its replacement by hostile groups. This is effectively a call for treason.
Sure, if this immigration amnesty goes through, there will be still be a land mass called the United States of America, but the historic white people who created it will be overwhelmed by hostile outsiders and America as we have known this nation will be finished. Already, without immigration amnesty, whites are set to become a minority in America by 2042 and latinos are set to become a majority by 2060.
An Orthodox rabbi says: “Was Haman acting in self interest or Hitler? Pharoah didn’t expel them, he enslaved them. If he expelled them, it would [have] be[en] a different situation.”
To expel would have meant in Pharoah’s eyes to kill them all because they could not be expected to survive in the desert.
Another Orthodox rabbi tells me: “I think the Torah is telling us with ‘who did not know Joseph’, that had he understood the Jews and their role in Egypt he would have grasped the benefit.”
A Jewish friend says:
Pharaoh was concerned that the Jews would join ‘enemies,’ which could be many things. In addition to an invasion, it could be an underclass, slaves, minorities; any sort of outsiders. Why join ‘unto’ our enemies? Because the Jew will hide his hatred behind the stated motive of the enemy he is abetting.
While Jews only recognize an irrational hatred of Jews, the Torah is clear that Pharaoh believes he has reason to fear Hebrew talents and hostility.
An Orthodox friend says:
I disagree. The Jews weren’t a “captured” nation or a subservient nation. They lived there as equals for many years, assisting in building the economy and creating immense success for the Egyptians. Enslavement came via manipulation of their hard work and nationalistic attitude toward Egypt.
The Jews enslaved the Canaanites via capture, however, they gave them opportunity to a) leave, b) have a peace treaty, c) fight.
Another friend says:
Some commentators say that only a fifth of the Jewish population was freed from Egypt that is because 80 percent of the Jews assimilated into the Egyptian culture.
And unless your are a neo-nazi, I don’t see any reason in the world to expel Jews from your country. Jews are instructed to respect the laws of the land (a clear Halacha) and abide by it.
I think Jews contribute more to the society when they identify as Jews first and nationality second.
One rabbi opines:
Genesis 47:20-27 indicates the viceroy Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharoah, excluding only two groups: the pagan priestly class and the Israelites. “I have bought you today and your land… Only the land of the priests alone was not Pharoah’s… And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen, and they held onto it.” The general population was then to be an ownerless lower class with a fifth of their harvest going to the kingdom’s storehouses.
Perhaps Joseph, knowing of the prophecy made to Abraham that his descendants would dwell in a strange land, wanted to insure that the Egyptian masses would not be able to oppress them and may even need them because of their economic power. During the years of famine with this arrangement sustaining the Egyptians, the nation was grateful being enslaved. “You have saved our lives… We will be Pharaoh’s bondmen,” they declared.
However, this preferential treatment in property rights backfired as Exodus 1:9 has the new Pharoah tell his nation, “the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us.” In fact, Exodus 1:11 has the new slaves building “store-cities, Pithom and Raamses.” 2 Chronicles 32:28 uses the same Hebrew word to describe building of “treasuries for the harvest of corn and wine and oil, and stables for all types of beasts, and folds for sheep.” Now the tables have turned. They who were one of only two owners in Egypt while the rest of the Egyptians were stripped of their property and working in part for the storehouses, have the Jews made slaves to fill the new generation’s storehouses.
Efrem writes:
I think if you learn nothing else about the story of Exodus, except Pharoah seeing the “fifth column”, and enslaving them, you may, in a great effort of giving him benefit of the doubt, allow a thought of him “simply acting” in Egypt’s best interest. Once you learn about him ordering baby boys thrown into the river, you may start suspecting that there may be something else going on in his mind, besides “Egypt’s Best Interests”. When he subjects his entire nation to 10 plagues, just to stop the “fifth column” from leaving the country, you have to be a Pharoah himself, or one of his very loyal friends, to continue to maintain that he was “simply …..”. Finally after Pharoah drowns his entire elite force, trying to chase the “fifth column”, and himself realizes that he was wrong, you will have to be a blogger who is trying to promote some kind of agenda 3000+ yrs later, to suggest that Paroh was asking in Egypt’s best interest.
Not sure why you are bringing up Jewish state here, as I don’t recall anything similar happening there. (maybe there was a plague that I have missed, you tell me)
“Expel the fifth column” doesn’t seem to fit either, as this was exactly what Pharoah refused to do. I mean, you would think, that if he genuinely thought that he had a fifth column, why didn’t he make it easier for everyone, and did exactly that: expel them? Maybe, and I’m just speculating here, he didn’t think that there was a fifth column.
You could also say that it’s relevant to Europe’s situation, if you are going to suggest, that some of the children of Israel were murdering ancient Egyptians for daring to offend the Patriarchs, or that modern day Europe is trying to enslave an entire nation in its borders, but that’s the kind of thing, for which people use terms like “alternate reality” and “parallel universe”.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill said: “When we think of the insane ambition and insatiable appetite which have caused this vast and melancholy extension of the war, we can only feel that Hitler’s madness has infected the Japanese mind, and that the root of the evil and its branch must be extirpated together.”
Or we could look at Japan and Germany as acting in their national self-interest just like other nations do.
What is the significance of the mesorah’s lack of interest in what motivates hatred of Jews?
A rabbi tells me: “They take it as an existential reality. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai called it a halacha – a spiritual law that Esav hates Yakov.”
* What is the state of the Alt Right today? The year 2017 began with giddy optimism that the Alt Right would influence the Trump administration. There’s not much reason to believe that today.
In this recent interview, Jared Taylor says: “We are growing in numbers and influence because the arguments we make are correct.”
“I am more optimistic than I have been at any time since I started white advocacy 25 years ago.”
Millenial Woes: “When I started my channel in January of 2014, there was despair. Now it feels like we are making progress.”
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