Truth Over Tyranny: Biblical wisdom for defeating the Technocrats.
These are my insights for defeating the Transhumanist Technocracy movement, based on the teachings of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, on the weekly Bible portion.
One of the underlying themes of these essays is that the Jewish world view, and the Jewish experience, can serve as templates for understanding — and defeating — the rise of tyranny in the free world today, especially in America.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks holds the Torah as a guidebook for the creation of a free society. Yet, ever since we were given the Torah in the Covenant at Mt. Sinai over 3500 years ago, the Jewish people has struggled with trying to comprehend and follow its rich instruction and narrative.
In Egypt, we were liberated from physical bondage. But the escape from “spiritual slavery,” in terms of mastering the human inclination towards evil, remains a “work in progress.”
Our successes and our failures, both, hold lessons for today’s Freedom Lovers who oppose the medical tyranny being waged by the Technocracy movement.
Perhaps the most difficult evil inclination to master, has been the one towards “evil speech.” All the Freedom-Loving people of the world — especially in America — are being given the opportunity to learn the same lesson.
Some of us are indeed learning this lesson. One notable example is Naomi Wolf, who recently issued a sweeping public apology to American Conservatives, Republicans, and MAGA — for her role in perpetuating “evil speech.” Dr. Wolf realized that she, along with many others on her “side” of the American political spectrum, was manipulated by the elites to attack her fellow Freedom Lovers.
Rabbi Sacks discusses this challenge in his commentary on Parshiot Tazria-Metzora called “The Plague of Evil Speech.” We will see that there are many parallels to today’s battle for a free society.
https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/tazria/the-plague-of-evil-speech/
Rabbi Sacks begins by emphasizing that the condition of tzara’at that is mentioned in these parshiot – commonly mistranslated as leprosy – is a punishment for evil speech (lashon hara):
“The Rabbis moralised the condition of tzara’at – often translated as leprosy – the subject that dominates both Tazria and Metzora. It was, they said, a punishment rather than a medical condition. Their interpretation was based on the internal evidence of the Mosaic books themselves. Moses’ hand became leprous when he expressed doubt about the willingness of the people to believe in his mission (Ex. 4:6-7). Miriam was struck by leprosy when she spoke against Moses (Num. 12:1-15). The metzora (leper) was a motzi shem ra: a person who spoke slightingly about others.
“Evil speech, lashon hara, was considered by the Sages to be one of the worst sins of all. Here is how Maimonides summarises it:
‘The Sages said: there are three transgressions for which a person is punished in this world and has no share in the world come – idolatry, illicit sex, and bloodshed – and evil speech is as bad as all three combined. They also said: whoever speaks with an evil tongue is as if he denied God . . . Evil speech kills three people – the one who says it, the one who accepts it, and the one about whom it is said.’ Hilchot Deot 7:3″
He gives just two of the many examples of the destructive nature of evil speech throughout Jewish history. The first concerns Maimonides himself:
“Is it so? Consider just two of many examples. In the early 13th century, a bitter dispute broke out between devotees and critics of Maimonides. For the former, he was one of the greatest Jewish minds of all time. For the latter, he was a dangerous thinker whose works contained heresy and whose influence led people to abandon the commandments.
“There were ferocious exchanges. Each side issued condemnations and excommunications against the other. There were pamphlets and counter-pamphlets, sermons and counter-sermons, and for while French and Spanish Jewry were convulsed by the controversy. Then, in 1232, Maimonides’ books were burned by the Dominicans. The shock brought a brief respite; then extremists desecrated Maimonides’ tomb in Tiberius. In the early 1240s, following the Disputation of Paris, Christians burned all the copies of the Talmud they could find. It was one of the great tragedies of the Middle Ages.
“What was the connection between the internal Jewish struggle and the Christian burning of Jewish books? Did the Dominicans take advantage of Jewish accusations of heresy against Maimonides, to level their own charges? Was it simply that they were able to take advantage of the internal split within Jewry, to proceed with their own persecutions without fear of concerted Jewish reprisals? One way or another, throughout the Middle Ages, many of the worst Christian persecutions of Jews were either incited by converted Jews, or exploited internal weaknesses of the Jewish community.”
For me, the tragic persecution and censorship of Maimonides is being replayed today as the persecution and censorship of the physicians and scientists who dare challenge the government narrative that the “Covid vaccine” is safe and effective. These people are also considered to be dangerous; their work is deemed to be heresy; and their critics are afraid their influence will lead people to abandon government mandates.
Their on-line publications are being censored – the modern version of book burning. They are being fired from their jobs with schools and hospitals. And the coalition of Big Government/Big Pharma/Big Health System is taking advantage of the repression of dissent, to assert more control over our health care.
(It must be noted that the internal Jewish struggle over Maimonides took place at a time when Jewish-Christian relations were not as convivial as they are today. To a large extent we were enemies, at least with certain Christian sects. These people took advantage of Jewish division to persecute us. In our time, the nemesis is the Regulatory Bureaucracy, and the “converts” inciting its exploitation, are the medical professionals who have abandoned medical ethics to promote the Party Line.)
The other example Rabbi Sacks provides concerns the Malbim – Rabbi Meir Loeb ben Yechiel Michal:
“Moving to the modern age, one of the most brilliant exponents of Orthodoxy was R. Meir Loeb ben Yechiel Michall Malbim (1809-1879), Chief Rabbi of Rumania. An outstanding scholar, whose commentary to Tanach is one of the glories of the nineteenth century, he was at first welcomed by all groups in the Jewish community as a man of learning and religious integrity. Soon, however, the more ‘enlightened’ Jews discovered to their dismay that he was a vigorous traditionalist, and they began to incite the civil authorities against him. In posters and pamphlets they portrayed him as a benighted relic of the Middle Ages, a man opposed to progress and the spirit of the age.
“One Purim, they sent him a gift of a parcel of food which included pork and crabs, with an accompanying message: ‘We, the local progressives, are honoured to present these delicacies and tasty dishes from our table as a gift to our luminary.’ Eventually, in response to the campaign, the government withdrew its official recognition of the Jewish community, and of Malbim as its Chief Rabbi, and banned him from delivering sermons in the Great Synagogue. On Friday, 18 March 1864, policemen surrounded his house early in the morning, arrested and imprisoned him. After the Sabbath, he was placed on a ship and taken to the Bulgarian border, where he was released on condition that he never return to Rumania. This is how the Encyclopaedia Judaica describes the campaign:
“‘M. Rosen has published various documents which disclose the false accusations and calumnies Malbim’s Jewish-assimilationist enemies wrote against him to the Rumanian government. They accused him of disloyalty and of impeding social assimilation between Jews and non-Jews by insisting on adherence to the dietary laws, and said, ‘This Rabbi by his conduct and prohibitions wishes to impede our progress.’ As a result of this, the Prime Minister of Rumania issued a proclamation against the ‘ignorant and insolent’ Rabbi… In consequence the minister refused to grant rights to the Jews of Bucharest, on the grounds that the Rabbi of the community was ‘the sworn enemy of progress’.'”
As I see it, history is repeating itself. The persecution of the “traditionalist” Malbim by “progressives” — both Jewish and Christian — is being replayed today by the transhumanists.
Today’s “progressives” are attacking religious Americans — especially Christians — for rejecting non-traditional views about gender, sex, and human evolution. Our human and civil rights are being denied, and in some cases, we are being physically attacked. We are even being targeted for murder by transhumanist terrorists — such as in the recent case of the transgender assailant who murdered innocent nine-year old children inside their Christian elementary school, in a deliberate act of “retaliation” against Judeo-Christian traditionalists.
In a way, “Transgenderism” is becoming a “state religion” of sorts; a secular cult with the power of the government to enforce its beliefs and practices – with license to enforce its decrees by committing violence against the “non-believers.”
And to add to this bitter tragedy, the “liberal elites” advocating for this immoral and unconstitutional travesty are who? By and large, they are assimilated Jews and Christians who have replaced their Biblical views and values with Leftism. We who hold true to our heritage are, once again, the “sworn enemies of progress.”
Rabbi Sacks bemoans this type of betrayal as a plague that has haunted the Jewish people throughout history. It has continually become manifest as the suppression of legitimate opposition:
“For a people of history, we can be bewilderingly obtuse to the lessons of history. Time and again, unable to resolve their own conflicts civilly and graciously, Jews slandered their opponents to the civil authorities, with results that were disastrous to the Jewish community as a whole. Despite the fact that the whole of rabbinic Judaism is a culture of argument; despite the fact that the Talmud explicitly says that the school of Hillel had its views accepted because they were ‘gentle, modest, taught the views of their opponents as well as their own, and taught their opponents’ views before their own’ (Eruvin 13b) – despite this, Jews have continued to excoriate, denounce, even excommunicate those whose views they did not understand, even when the objects of their scorn (Maimonides, Malbim, and the rest) were among the greatest-ever defenders of Orthodoxy against the intellectual challenges of their age.”
And what was the weapon of choice of those who sought to squash the opposition? Evil Speech:
“Of what were the accusers guilty? Only evil speech. And what, after all, is evil speech? Mere words. Yet words have consequences. Diminishing their opponents, the self-proclaimed defenders of the faith diminished themselves and their faith. They managed to convey the impression that Judaism is simple-minded, narrow, incapable of handling complexity, helpless in the face of challenge, a religion of anathemas instead of arguments, excommunication instead of reasoned debate. Maimonides and Malbim took their fate philosophically. Yet one weeps to see a great tradition brought so low.
“What an astonishing insight it was to see leprosy – that disfiguring disease – as a symbol and symptom of evil speech. For we truly are disfigured when we use words to condemn, not communicate; to close rather than open minds; when we use language as a weapon and wield it brutally. The message of Metzora remains. Linguistic violence is no less savage than physical violence, and those who afflict others are themselves afflicted. Words wound. Insults injure. Evil speech destroys communities. Language is God’s greatest gift to humankind and it must be guarded if it is to heal, not harm.”
For me, the last point by Rabbi Sacks is the key: language must be used to heal, not harm. The Jewish people still have not learned this lesson. I suppose it is safe to say that God will keep giving us opportunities to get it right.
In a similar fashion, the freedom-loving people of the world – especially in America – are being given the opportunity to learn the same lesson. On the one hand, I believe we have to fight tooth and nail against those people who seek to destroy us with evil speech. We must have zero tolerance for any and all attempts to silence our points of view.
At the same time, we must watch our own speech, and make it a force for good, not evil.