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.
Who are the heroes of today?
Yes, they are expert physicians and scientists speaking out against medical tyranny.
Yes, they are lawyers fighting illegal and unconstitutional mandates in the courts.
Yes, they are wealthy entrepreneurs forming alternative media platforms to expose the truth.
And yes, they are political candidates taking on the Deep State and all forms of government corruption.
But, today’s war against the dictator-wannabes is being fought on many fronts much closer to home, by many everyday people:
Patients, who have to protect personal health information – and bodily autonomy – from health system surveillance and coercion.
Citizens, who have to protect their privacy — and their private property — against encroaching Digital ID and CBDC.
Parents, who have to push back against disruptive campaigns in schools, including critical race theory and transgender grooming.
Town residents, who have to preserve municipal resources — schools, hospitals, even whole neighborhoods — from invading illegal immigrants.
Everyday people have to become everyday heroes. We have no choice. The forces of tyranny have advanced — not just to our doorstep — but into our minds, bodies, bank accounts, and medical records. We must either rise to the occasion, or we must accept our lot as transactional units in the Technocratic State.
But, most of us have no experience “fighting the system.” We are just regular people, with regular skills, and with all the weaknesses and inadequacies of regular human beings. While there is a lot at stake for every one us, we each doubt our ability:
How can I ever find the strength to overcome such odds?
Who am I to challenge the overwhelming forces that have gathered against me?
When it comes right down to it, am I up to the task?
How can we ever find the strength to overcome such odds?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks provides the key in his commentary on Parashat Shemini called “When Weakness Becomes Strength.”
https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/shemini/when-weakness-becomes-strength/
He starts out by asking our very question:
“Have you ever felt inadequate to a task you have been assigned or a job you have been given? Do you sometimes feel that other people have too high an estimate of your abilities? Has there been a moment when you felt like a faker, a fraud, and that at some time you would be found out and discovered to be the weak, fallible, imperfect human being you know in your heart you are?”
He points out that we are in good company: Biblical heroes felt the same way!
“If so, according to Rashi on this week’s parsha, you are in very good company indeed. Here is the setting: The Mishkan, the Sanctuary, was finally complete. For seven days Moses had consecrated Aaron and his sons to serve as priests. Now the time had come for them to begin their service. Moses gives them various instructions. Then he says the following words to Aaron:
“’Come near to the altar and offer your sin offering and your burnt offering and make atonement for yourself and the people; sacrifice the offering that is for the people and make atonement for them, as the Lord has commanded.’ Lev. 9:7
“The Sages were puzzled by the instruction, ‘Come near.’ This seems to imply that Aaron had until then kept a distance from the altar. Why so?”
Aaron — the man chosen to be the High Priest — felt inadequate, because he had a skeleton in his closet:
“Rashi gives the following explanation:
“Aaron was ashamed and fearful of approaching the altar. Moses said to him: ‘Why are you ashamed? It was for this that you were chosen…’
“… Aaron was not simply someone lacking in self-confidence. There was something specific that he must have had in mind on that day that he was inducted into the role of High Priest. For Aaron had been left in charge of the people while Moses was up the mountain receiving the Torah. That was when the sin of the Golden Calf took place.
“Reading that narrative, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it was Aaron’s weakness that allowed it to happen. It was he who suggested that the people give him their gold ornaments, he who fashioned them into a calf, and he who built an altar before it (Ex. 32:1-6). When Moses saw the Golden Calf and challenged Aaron –’What did these people do to you, that you brought upon them this great sin?’– he replied, evasively, ‘They gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!’
“This was a man profoundly (and rightly) uncomfortable with his role in one of the most disastrous episodes in the Torah, and now he was being called to atone not only for himself but for the entire people. Was this not hypocrisy? Was he not himself a sinner? How could he stand before God and the people and assume the role of the holiest of men? No wonder he felt like an imposter and was ashamed and fearful of approaching the altar.”
Moses helped him understand that this failure of leadership had actually prepared him for higher leadership!
“Moses, however, did not simply say something that would boost his self-confidence. He said something much more radical and life-changing: ‘It was for this that you were chosen.’ The task of a High Priest is to atone for people’s sins. It was his role, on Yom Kippur, to confess his wrongs and failings, then those of his household, then those of the people as a whole (Lev. 16:11-17). It was his responsibility to plead for forgiveness.
“’That,’ implied Moses, ‘is why you were chosen. You know what sin is like. You know what it is to feel guilt. You more than anyone else understand the need for repentance and atonement. You have felt the cry of your soul to be cleansed, purified and wiped free of the stain of transgression. What you think of as your greatest weakness will become, in this role you are about to assume, your greatest strength.'”
Moses could do this because he himself had to overcome such feelings of inadequacy:
“How did Moses know this? Because he had experienced something similar himself. When God told him to confront Pharaoh and lead the Israelites to freedom, he repeatedly insisted that he could not do so. Reread his response to God’s call to lead the Israelites out of Egypt (Ex. chapters 3-4), and they sound like someone radically convinced of his inadequacies. ‘Who am I?’ ‘They won’t believe in me.’ Above all, he kept repeating that he could not speak before a crowd, something absolutely necessary in a leader. He was not an orator. He did not have the voice of command:
Then Moses said to the Lord, ‘Please, my Lord, I am not a man of words, not yesterday, not the day before and not since You have spoken to Your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue..’ (Ex. 4:10) Moses said to the Lord, ‘Look, the Israelites do not listen to me. How then will Pharaoh listen to me? Besides, I have uncircumcised lips.’ (Ex. 6:12).
“Moses had a speech defect. To him that was a supreme disqualification from being a mouthpiece for the Divine word. What he did not yet understand is that this was one of the reasons God chose him. When Moses spoke the words of God, people knew he was not speaking his own words in his own voice. Someone else was speaking through him. This seems to have been the case for Isaiah and Jeremiah, both of whom were doubtful of their ability to speak and who became among the most eloquent of prophets.[2]
“The people who can sway crowds with their oratory are generally speaking not prophets. Often they are, or become, dictators and tyrants. They use their power of speech to acquire more dangerous forms of power. God does not choose people who speak with their own voice, telling the crowds what they want to hear. He chooses people who are fully aware of their inadequacies, who stammer literally or metaphorically, who speak not because they want to but because they have to, and who tell people what they do not want to hear, but what they must hear if they are to save themselves from catastrophe. What Moses thought was his greatest weakness was, in fact, one of his greatest strengths.”
The point is making the decision to turn a weakness into a strength:
“The point here is not a simple ‘I’m OK, You’re OK’ acceptance of weakness. That is not what Judaism is about. The point is the struggle. Moses and Aaron in their different ways had to wrestle with themselves. Moses was not a natural leader. Aaron was not a natural priest. Moses had to accept that one of his most important qualifications was what nowadays we would call his low self image, but what, operating from a completely different mindset, the Torah calls his humility. Aaron had to understand that his own experience of sin and failure made him the ideal representative of a people conscious of their own sin and failure. Feelings of inadequacy – the imposter syndrome – can be bad news or good news depending on what you do with them. Do they lead you to depression and despair? Or do they lead you to work at your weaknesses and turn them into strengths?”
And we can help one another do it:
“The key, according to Rashi in this week’s parsha, is the role Moses played at this critical juncture in Aaron’s life. He had faith in Aaron even when Aaron lacked faith in himself. That is the role God Himself played, more than once, in Moses’ life. And that is the role God plays in all our lives if we are truly open to Him. I have often said that the mystery at the heart of Judaism is not our faith in God. It is God’s faith in us.
“This then is the life-changing idea: what we think of as our greatest weakness can become, if we wrestle with it, our greatest strength. Think of those who have suffered tragedy and then devote their lives to alleviating the suffering of others. Think of those who, conscious of their failings, use that consciousness to help others overcome their own sense of failure.”
Very importantly, facing our imperfections brings us closer to God:
“What makes Tanach so special is its total candour about humanity. Its heroes –Moses, Aaron, Isaiah, Jeremiah – all knew times when they felt like failures, ‘imposters.’ They had their moments of dark despair. But they kept going. They refused to be defeated. They knew that a sense of inadequacy can bring us closer to God, as King David said: ‘My sacrifice [i.e. what I bring as an offering to You] O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise'(Ps. 51:19).
“Better by far to know you are imperfect than to believe you are perfect. God loves us and believes in us despite, and sometimes because of, our imperfections. Our weaknesses make us human; wrestling with them makes us strong.”
I would add this:
For reasons known only to Him, God has selected each one of us — just a regular human being, created in His image as a Freedom-Lover — to stand up for that freedom.
He certainly knows of our shame, our failures, our feelings of inadequacy — our skeletons in the closet. And, He knows that the vast majority of us are not expert physicians and scientists, civil rights lawyers, wealthy tech entrepreneurs, or political candidates.
Despite all this, as Rabbi Sacks emphasizes, He has faith in us. We just need to help each other have faith in ourselves.
It was for this that we were chosen.