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.
The story of Noah is familiar; the details, less so.
Noah is often seen as an ambivalent figure. He was righteous -- but only for his generation. What was his deficiency?
One answer suggests itself: knowing that the world was about to be flooded, he built an Ark for the animals and for his own family -- but did not try to save anyone else or to convince them to repent and change their ways (the prophet Jonah, later, would share that reluctance).
Abraham, later, would set himself apart by arguing with God -- with the Lord Himself! -- against the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, saying that they should be saved if there were enough righteous people to be found (there were not).
Still, Noah was good enough -- and sometimes, that really is sufficient to save the world. We don't need heroes every time -- just ordinary decency.
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An interesting weekend -- one of the last of Daylight Savings Time -- in which there is much to celebrate, much to contemplate, and a bit to worry about.
The Gaza peace deal is shaky, but holding, after the living hostages returned; the shutdown is still going on, with no end in sight; the China trade war is heating up; and the confrontation with Venezuela continues to escalate.
The "No Kings" protest was a dud, despite the media's attempt to inflate it. What I find fascinating is that the Democrats have basically stolen the rhetoric and the imagery of the Tea Party protests, circa 2009. They claim they are defending the Constitution -- just like the Tea Party did.
On the one hand, this is good. How wonderful to have a political system in which both sides, bitterly opposed though they are, articulate differences through the Constitution -- and not, as in so many other countries, outside it.
On the other, this is sheer hypocrisy for the Democrats. Not only did they malign the Tea Party as ...
