He's brilliant, and a little bit batty, and I think he's a little too forthcoming with personal grievances against close relatives, but I understand his major grievance: he doesn't like being used by anybody. Not Kim, not Jared, not Trump, nobody.
At one point Kanye told Tucker that he believed Jared Kushner was arranging the Middle East peace deals solely to make money. That's a little bit dangerous -- I'm sure there are some who will say West was inching close to antisemitism.
But suppose it's true. So what? The fact that people will make money from Middle East peace is another reason to do it. It's not the main reason to do it, or at least it's not the main reason people like me care about it so deeply.
What I would say to Kanye, as a Jewish man to a Black man (capital B), is that when Israel is accepted by her Arab brothers and sisters, then my soul's days of wandering are at rest. That is what peace means to me, no matter who profits.
I think Ye was just coming from a place of irritation that complete strangers owned a piece of his ideas -- a piece of his wife, really -- and that it was only so they could make more money on the next deal. I think I get that, I really do.
This week's show will be slightly different from the norm: we'll focus on clips and topics, rather than guests -- and that, hopefully, will mean more input from the callers (unless you are all watching football on opening weekend).
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This week's Torah portion includes several laws about conduct in civic and personal life, the common theme of which is boundaries -- setting bounds to what one may do at home, at work, and even in the battlefield.
One noteworthy passage concerns Amalek, the evil nation that attacked the Children of Israel as they made their Exodus from slavery to freedom. Deuteronomy 25:17-19 commands Jews to obliterate Amalek's memory.
The South African government accused Israel of genocide on the basis of a story about Amalek in the Book of Samuel, in which King Saul was commanded to wipe out the entire evil Amalekite nation.
Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted this week's portion -- "Remember what Amalek did to you" (25:17), the South African government claimed he was commanding soldiers to commit genocide.
It was an absurd and malevolent misreading of the Bible and of Jewish tradition. The commandment, as observed by Jews today, is to remember the evil of Amalek and fight ...