This Week’s Parasha: Vayakhel, Exodus 35:1–38:20

Posted on March 18, 2017 by Luke Ford

This week’s Torah portion is Vayakhel, Exodus 35:1–38:20. Last week’s Torah portion covers Exodus 30:11–34:35. Listen.

* Chayenu on Exodus 1: “After Joseph settled his brothers and their families in Goshen, their extraordinary fertility quickly aroused the concern of Pharoah, who feared what he perceived as an imminent demographic time bomb. He lost no time in doing his best to instill the nascent Jewish people, who in any case were grateful guests in his kingdom, with feelings of patriotic loyalty to Egypt. But fearful that this would not be sufficient, he initiated a program of voluntary public service, which soon became obligatory and was subsequently transformed into outright slavery.”

The Jews reacted to this persecution by deciding to not have any more kids until they were persuaded otherwise by the women.

What is your first priority as a people? Survival, prosperity or acting morally, even if it means your own extinction?

* Why does skin pigmentation matter? We’re all God’s children. Skin pigmentation matters for the same reason insignia on computers matter — they signal a different operating system. You don’t want to try to install Window products on an Apple computer and vice versa.

* Who wrote the Torah? God or people?

*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.

* 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.”

* Ex. 34:6: 6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”

8 Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped. 9 “Lord,” he said, “if I have found favor in your eyes, then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance.”

10 Then the Lord said: “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the Lord, will do for you. 11 Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 12 Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. 13 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles.[a] 14 Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

15 “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. 16 And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.”

* When God tells Israel to not make peace, and not make a covenant with the people of the land, it illustrates to me that for every people, there are opposing people who are poison, just as there are invasive species that are poison for natives. Cats, for example, are poison for millions of birds. You have to push out other nations for your own nation to thrive. Israel has this problem with its millions of Arabs. If your people wants to prosper, they sometimes have to lay the hurt on other people. If Native Americans wanted to prosper, they had to resist the invasion of Europeans. If the Abos and Aztecs wanted to prosper, they had to get rid of the Europeans coming to their shores.

If you want a safe community without drug dealers and criminals and disruption, you have to keep out those likely to engage in socially destructive behavior. If you want a consistently tranquil hotel or restaurant, you need to keep out people likely to be loud and disruptive.

How does one reconcile religious tolerance with God’s command to destroy the altars of other religions? When the Allies won WWII, they forbade any resurgence of Nazism in Germany and any resurgence of fascism in Japan and changed Japan’s flag.

* Kevin Grace said, “politics, as conventionally understood, died in that bunker in Berlin when Hitler put a bullet in his brain.” What does that mean?

* Casey: My opening is from Confucius: “He who by reanimating (literally ‘warming up’) the Old can gain knowledge of the New is fit to be a teacher.”

Confucius: “Govern the people by regulations, keep order among them by chastisements, and they will flee from you, and lose all self-respect. Govern them by moral force, keep order among them by ritual and they will keep their self-respect and come to you of their own accord.”

–compare all that to Aaron smelting a golden calf and Moses chastising in Ex 32:2-4 and 32:31 (where he doesn’t quite chastise the people directly, but…)

Could Moses have been a better leader? How? More like Trump? More like… Patriarch Kirill?

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Dennis Prager Visits Japan, Asks Why Crime Is Low: “Because We Don’t Allow Immigration.”

Posted on March 17, 2017 by Luke Ford

Paul Nachman writes:

Conservative columnist and talk-radio host Dennis Prager has attracted attention here at VDARE.com a number of times. Most recently, I pointed out that Prager—who is Jewish and takes his religion seriously—has said (with dismay), “Of course there’s a war on Christmas!”

However, regarding VDARE.com’s central subject of immigration, I’m unaware that Prager has ever shown much interest or concern. In fact, the late, greatly-lamented Terry Anderson, whose Sunday-evening talk-radio program in Los Angeles was laser-focused on illegal immigration, once told me that Prager had declined to meet with him, even though they shared the same “home” station, KRLA-AM.

But Prager looks to be having an awakening, which is much to be welcomed, as he’s a serious person with a substantial following. In his February 28 column, A Nation of Immigrants — Only If They Assimilate, Prager began:

I am writing this column in Japan, a country whose crime rate is the lowest among countries with large populations. I asked my Japanese translator, a middle-aged woman, what she thought.

“Why is there is so little crime in Japan?” I asked.

Without taking a moment to reflect, she responded, “Because we don’t allow immigration.”

Anyone who visits Japan is struck by the ethnic homogeneity of the nation. If you meet a Caucasian, a black or a Hispanic in Japan, you can be all but certain that the person is visiting or studying there, not a citizen.

I wonder if Prager’s head exploded—maybe just a little?—when he heard those magic words “Because we don’t allow immigration.” Of course, this concept isn’t news, as Jared Taylor (who spent much of his youth in Japan) has covered it repeatedly (e.g. at VDARE.com in 2003 and in 2011)

Anyway, Prager continued on, seemingly unperturbed:

Likewise in the United States, there is direct correlation between ethnic homogeneity and low levels of violence. According to 2016-2017 data, the four states with the lowest percentages of violence are:

  1. Vermont — where 95 percent of the population is one race (white).
  2. Maine — where 95 percent of the population is one race (white).
  3. Wyoming — where roughly 93 percent of the population is one race (white).
  4. New Hampshire — where roughly 94 percent of the population is one race (white).

Sweden, which for much of its modern history has had among the world’s lowest rates of violent crime, was almost always as homogenous as Japan. Now that it has admitted hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, it is no longer a homogenous country, and its levels of violence have increased dramatically.

All this leads to a particular rule, which is, in order to maintain a low crime rate and social stability, a country has only two choices: Do not allow immigrants into the country, or allow immigrants into the country, but be certain to assimilate them into the native population as quickly as possible.

The eclipse of assimilation is the main subject of the brief (about 720 words) piece, and Prager concludes with:

If you want to understand the immigration crisis, just know that because the left has undone the second choice, it has made the first choice — Japan’s choice — look tenable to many for the first time in American history.

Still dangling is the matter of numbers: Even if we get immigrants who assimilate, how many should we accept? It’s likely a bridge too far to hope that Prager will, anytime soon, combine those critical words from the Constitution’s Preamble, “… secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity …, with an observation of 2017’s facts on the ground to conclude that WE REALLY DON’T NEED IMMIGRATION AT ALL.

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George Soros: No Hate at Middlebury!

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer writes: “You’ll notice that there is no Hate in Vermont. It’s just a blessedly blank spot on Soros’s map of Hate Incidents. No Hate there!

Now, you might have thought that a mob of masked vigilantes putting Middlebury College professor Allison Stanger in the hospital with a concussion and whiplash would qualify as a hate incident.

But the fact that incident sounds like hate to you just proves you are one of the Hateful.”

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* George Soros actually had the colossal gall to pay BLM thugs to riot in Ferguson and other places when Obama and Holder were in charge.

Will Soros try to pull the same paymaster stunt with Trump in the White House? – – – and if Soros does, will Jeff Sessions give Soros a free pass like Holder did?

Wasn’t paying people to cross state lines and riot a serious violation of the US Code once upon a time?

* Politics of Hate is a gimmick. It is really a Politics of Power. The powers-that-be get to define and decide what is ‘hate’ to discredit their enemies. So, acts of hatred carried out by their side or their minions isn’t ‘hate’. But anyone who opposes their agenda is ‘hate’, even if he is acting in self-defense.

That’s all it is. ‘Hate’ is a gimmick, a tool of mind control. Pure political ploy.

Of course, all sides do this. Usually, ‘war crimes’ are what the OTHER side does, never what your side does.
US bitches about torture and ‘human rights’ abuses in Syria but overlooks its role at Abu Gharib that no one talks about anymore.

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NYT: ‘California Today: A Gallery Flees and Neighborhood Activists Cheer’

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* I used to hear “vulnerable” used to describe, e.g. poor children who don’t have anybody who will notice signs of abuse, or prostitutes, who might not be noticed if a serial killer starts picking them off.

Women in general, being half the adult population, seem like a stretch to include in that category. PoCs, too, by similar reasoning. “Queer” people are vulnerable insofar as the behavior that they’ve come to define themselves by is extremely risky (might be a bad idea to raw dog it on meth with >200 dudes a year, but God forbid you say that). Hard to see how that makes them a “vulnerable community”. Even the sainted Matthew Shepard died due to his crystal meth dealing.

I have a grudging respect for the Left’s tightening stranglehold on the English language.

* The kind of art exhibited in the gallery: http://www.barnettcohen.com/recent-work

My favorite piece is entitled “Oxford Shoe, sand, cat piss and shit.”

* Up against determination, Mexers are hopeless and useless.

But, paradoxically, that is one of the Mexers’ strength. Their sheer mediocrity seems so non-threatening that people ignore the rise in Mexer numbers for too long until there are too many of them and may even be poised to take over. Mexers know that their power resides ONLY IN NUMBERS.

You don’t need too many Muslims to realize that, uh oh, they mean trouble!! Even less with blacks.

But with Mexicans, you figure they will always be like Guillermo, a smiling servant people who say, “Yes Jimmy”.

* On the other hand, here is the gallery’s nemesis: http://www.onda.la/2016/pssst-stinks

PSSST is but the most recent result of the world of art as it exists within racialized capitalism.

Of course it is. Here are their tips for disrupting your neighborhood gentrifying gallery:

– Attend, drink all their wine and leave
– As you leave perhaps think of opening up a stink bomb or two to clear the space
– Bring noisemakers like fart bombs, horns and matracas to bring a festive mood to their dead spaces that will be sure to startle the attendees
– Invite friends to mob the whole gallery and throw an impromptu party (see: the scene in La Haine)
– Be creative! Have fun! Don’t get caught! Wear a mask if necessary!

From their “About” page:

We know that […] the question of violence is not a question at all; that decolonization is not a metaphor but a threat backed by material violence; that the legal system offers nothing compared to revenge; that […] work is a drudgery imposed

Fun guys.

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Converts Talk Torah: Parasha Ki Sisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35)

Posted on March 12, 2017 by Luke Ford

This week’s Torah portion covers Exodus 30:11–34:35. It is the 21st parasha after Simchat Torah.

MP3.

* The Jews waiting for Moses seemed to have insecure attachment. They got anxious when he didn’t return and they acted out.

* God is angry about the Golden Calf. He tells Moshe in Ex. 33:5: “Say to the Children of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people. If I ascend among you, I may annihilate you in an instant.'”

Ex. 34:6: 6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”

8 Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped. 9 “Lord,” he said, “if I have found favor in your eyes, then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance.”

10 Then the Lord said: “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the Lord, will do for you. 11 Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 12 Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. 13 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles.[a] 14 Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

15 “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. 16 And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.

17 “Do not make any idols.

* Ex. 34:28. Moshe stayed with God for 40 days and did not eat or drink.

Here are LeeAnne’s notes:

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