This week, we read the first portion of the entire Torah. It is full of the great origin stories of the Bible: the Creation, the exile from Eden, Cain and Abel.
A rabbi with whom I once studied pointed out that the two first stories about human beings in the Bible are about curiosity and jealousy. These, the Torah seems to suggest, are the two quintessentially human impulses: the desire to know, on the one hand, and envy of what others know, or do, on the other.
The great economist F.A. Hayek identified envy as the essence of socialism, and hence self-destruction. Any philosophy that aimed to redistribute wealth was ultimately based on envy, and was therefore guarantee to destroy freedom.
On the other hand, the portion reminds us that freedom comes with a degree of responsibility. Adam and Eve had near-total freedom, but lost it, tragically, because they could not accept that their freedom had to have boundaries.
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).
Topics:
- The state of the economy
- The fight against crime
- The midterm election fight
- The struggle for peace between Russia and Ukraine
- The airstrike on the Venezuelan drug cartel
- The attempt to sink Kennedy
- The war in Gaza
- The case against Harvard
- The Trump presidency
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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 ...
