Last night I sat down with Tim Pool and his crew to record three hours of discussion -- two for his livestream and one for his members-only forum. It was a great experience. One of the issues we addressed in the members-only portion was Occupy Wall Street.
Tim made his name as a journalist by streaming from the protest in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan -- the main Occupy site. He has long argued that conservatives -- including Andrew Breitbart -- made a mistake by dismissing the movement instead of listening to it.
Tim saw the protest -- at least until it was taken over by trust fund babies and professional left-wing activists -- as an important populist movement that challenged the union of political and financial power. It took Donald Trump to make conservatives listen.
I pointed out that Andrew Breitbart did, indeed, visit and listen to the Occupy protesters -- though he also made fun of them and the fact that they were undoing fundamental values, not just capitalism and law and order, but individualism itself (think: human microphone).
Perhaps Andrew's take on Occupy was also affected by the fact that the protest site we visited was in L.A., where unions were much more directly and visibly involved. It was an institutional-left set-piece. Perhaps it had been less so in the early days in New York.
Regardless, we agreed on a few points. 1. Conservatives should have listened to the populist critique, because their refusal to do so led the GOP to nominate Mitt Romney, who was an emblem of all that both left and right disliked about politics and the establishment.
2. Occupy Wall Street was, in fact, taken over by left-wing crazies who inaugurated an era of wokism. I think that was present at the outset, but Tim points out that it accelerated when people like Sean Hannity bashed the movement. Tribalism hurt political dialogue.
3. The "mic check" stuff really was creepy, as was the movement's descent into identity politics, in which white people were not even allowed to speak (this was years before Black Lives Matter). The crushing of individual liberty was something we all lamented.
This week'd portion begins the book of Numbers. Interestingly, the Hebrew name for the book is "In the Desert," not "Numbers." The portion, which happens to be my bar mitzvah portion, focuses almost as much on the names of the princes of each tribe as the number of soldiers it fielded. It also focuses on the configuration of the tribal camps around the central Tabernacle and the Levites.
So why "Numbers" instead of "Names" or "Places"? The numbers are, to be sure, a unique feature of the opening of this Biblical book -- but they are not the focus of the rest of the narrative. The Hebrew focuses on the place where the events in the book take place, because essentially this is the narrative of the Israelites' wanderings from Egypt to Israel, across 40 years. We move from the giving of the Torah and the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus and Leviticus, to the final valediction of Moses in Deuteronomy -- Bamidbar is the story of wandering that happened in between.
The question of ...
This week's portion begins with the laws of the Sabbath and the Sabbatical year, and the Jubilee year that restores all land to its original (tribal) owners. It also explores laws of property and labor that will apply in the Land of Israel, and the laws of vows and inheritance.
The Israelites are presented -- not for the last time -- with the essential moral choice that they must face, and the rewards for choosing well, along with the consequences for choosing poorly.
We learn that doing good things will earn God's protection from enemies. That does not mean that victims of terror, God forbid, were sinful. But it does mean that we can respond to evil by committing ourselves to a higher path.
This week's portion describes the major sacrifices that are to be offered by the Jewish people, including those that are offered only by the priestly Kohen class, and physical requirements of the people (men) who serve in that role.
Inter alia, there are interesting commandments -- such as an injection to treat animals with respect and care, first, by letting a mother animal nurse her offspring for a week before being offered in any sacrifice; and second, by refraining from slaughtering an animal and its offspring on the same day.
The commandments regarding animals remind us of the purpose of those regarding human beings: to uphold a divine connection, through ritual.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111878/jewish/Rabbi-Isaac-Luria-The-Ari-Hakodosh.htm
