Apologies to readers -- I simply forgot to post the usual update for Sunday's Breitbart News Sunday program on SiriusXM Patriot 125. I was preoccupied with my deadline for the final final draft of my biography of Rhoda Kadalie.
I had received a critical review from one of the internal auditors approached by the University of Johannesburg. The first reviewer absolutely loved the book; the second reviewer did not, and wrote a detailed set of critical comments.
I suspect that the first reviewer was someone with liberal political views who knew Rhoda from her public persona, and that the second was someone with left-wing views who knew Rhoda more intimately from her struggle days.
It was important to the first reviewer to see Rhoda's story emerge as a challenge to contemporary South African political narratives; it was important to the second reviewer to preserve the legacy of Rhoda's feminist accomplishments.
I have received these kinds of dueling responses to my writing my entire life. My undergraduate thesis was panned by my graders, but won a Harvard prize. My reviewer disagreed strongly with my graduate thesis, but gave it high marks.
The best reaction to my professional writing I have received was a comment that my mother's friend made to her, which is that she (the friend) disagreed with what I said, but was proud that I had said it. People can be like that.
I could have been discouraged by the criticism, but I decided to use it as a motivation to improve the biography. And -- wow -- it is so much better. And longer: including footnotes, the biography is nearly 210,000 words long.
Anyway, if all goes well, the proofs should be done by the end of November, and the biography will go to print before mid-December, the point at which the entire South African economy seems to take a break for a month or so.
Then -- I hope! -- there will be a book tour in South Africa in February. I am eager to get back there to present the book. I am very proud of it, and writing it was a deeply emotional experience as well as an intellectual, scholarly journey.
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
Tune in: SiriusXM Patriot 125, 7-10 p.m. ET / 4-7 p.m. PT
Call: 866-957-2874
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 ...
