Essays

Long-form essays on Judaism, Zionism, halakha, and the present hour.

Doña Gracia, Mother of Israel

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Went down the rabbit hole today researching alllllll the links in the chain from the expulsion from Spain in 1492 to the establishment of the state of #Israel in 1948.

I won’t go into all the details in this post – this needs to be a book – but here’s the upshot:

This is not a case of someone starting a project that failed and was picked up three centuries later and brought to fruition… This is someone starting something that continued and grew and eventually attained one of its concrete goals.

Doña Gracia Nasi, born into a culture wrestling with the political implications of being a disenfranchised minority and the national alternatives to perpetual exile and instability, literally started modern #Zionism (defined as the organized movement to reestablish Jewish autonomous society in Israel), developed the Galilean communities into a thriving independent society, and built the political, economic, and social networks that coalesced into what became later known as the Old Yishuv.

The communities that she built spread to Jerusalem and Hebron, absorbed waves of Sepharadi and Maghrebi immigrants, and eventually (re)established the northern coastal cities as Jewish centers. It was the Sepharadi and Maghrebi leaders of these communities who helped the incoming Europeans establish what became known as the New Yishuv.

Theodor Herzl definitely contributed to modern Zionism. He established many effective organizations that exist to this day and translated the Zionist project into the European political language of nation-statism in vogue in his day. But Herzl inherited an intellectual apparatus that originates with Sepharadi rabbis wrestling with the expulsion from Spain and he built on a foundation laid and lived by Sepharadi and Maghrebi immigrants and their descendants. Herzl’s efforts were just one phase in the long story of modern Zionism, and he ultimately did not succeed in creating a state.

It took two world wars, the fall of the Ottoman and British empires, and a genocide, before conditions emerged and international support could be garnered for the creation of a fully autonomous Jewish state in Israel.

Which leads us to an intriguing What If:

If Herzl had never been born, but all the international events of the first half of the twentieth century transpired, would we still have a state?

Maybe. The Old Yishuv was a robust, autonomous society, and in the 20th century it could have conceivably transitioned into a state.

But if Doña Gracia had never been born, could Herzl have done what he did? Could a state have later emerged?

I think the answer is, most likely not.

The truth is, modern Zionism starts with Doña Gracia Nasi:

The mother of the state of Israel.

Proof of the Creator

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Can you prove the Creator exists? Here’s a modern update to Rambam’s argument for the existence of God…

Let’s say, for the sake of discussion, we make the following eleven claims:

1′. The physical, observable universe has a finite history.

2′. The physical universe is governed by laws (that we can express in math!) that are themselves contingent, meaning they could have been otherwise, and physics cannot explain why we have these laws rather than others.

3′. No infinite chain backwards of contingent explanations is an actual explanation of anything. You can reject this, but doing so means accepting brute inexplicability as the basic nature of reality, which is quite the metaphysical commitment.

4′. Every physical state is dependent on the physical states that came before it, plus the laws governing transitions between them.

5′. The laws themselves, and the initial conditions, are not explained by the physical states they govern.

6′. Physical reality considered in totality – laws, constants, initial conditions, spacetime structure – is either self-explanatory or requires an explanation from outside itself.

7′. Whatever can be broken down into separate components or properties requires some explanation of why those properties are combined in that way rather than otherwise.

8′. Whatever is contingent – whatever could have been otherwise – does not contain within itself the reason for its existence or its specific character.

9′. If something exists necessarily (i.e., its nonexistence is impossible), it is uncaused, uncompounded, and not dependent on anything external.

10′. The physical universe is contingent. Its laws, constants, and initial conditions could have been otherwise. This is what the fine-tuning data and the landscape problem in string theory both point toward.

11′. An infinite chain backwards of contingent beings/states, each explained by the one before it, does not explain why there is a contingent series at all rather than nothing. You can have an infinitely long chain of dominos each knocked over by the previous one – but that doesn’t explain why there are dominos, or why any of them are falling.

If you’re on board with each of those claims, then here’s how taken together, they prove the Creator exists in eight steps:

Step 1: The physical universe exists and has specific features – specific laws, specific constants, a specific spacetime structure, specific initial conditions. Call this total configuration CREATION.

Step 2: CREATION is contingent. Its features are not necessary in and of themselves. The laws of physics do not explain why these laws of physics hold rather than others. The constants do not explain their own values. The initial conditions do not explain themselves. There is no known physical principle from which CREATION can be derived as the unique possible configuration. (This is supported by: the fine-tuning of constants, the landscape problem in string theory yielding ~10⁵⁰⁰ possible vacua, the fact that the Standard Model’s parameters are empirically measured rather than theoretically derived.)

Step 3: Every contingent thing requires an explanation for why it exists and why it exists as it does rather than otherwise (Premise 3′). This explanation is either internal (the thing explains itself) or external (something else explains it).

Step 4: CREATION cannot explain itself. Self-explanation would mean that CREATION exists necessarily – that its nonexistence is impossible. But we established in Step 2 that CREATION is contingent. A contingent thing cannot be its own sufficient reason.

Step 5: CREATION cannot be explained by something else that is itself contingent in the same way, because that merely pushes the question back. An infinite chain backwards of contingent explanations doesn’t solve the problem (Premise 11′) – it just gives you an infinitely long version of the same unsatisfied demand for explanation.

Step 6: Therefore, the explanation of CREATION must end in something that exists necessarily – something whose nonexistence is impossible, whose existence requires no further explanation, and which is not contingent on anything external.

Step 7: This necessary being cannot itself be physical in the way CREATION is physical. If it were, it would share CREATION’s contingent character – it would have specific features that could have been otherwise, components whose conjunction requires explanation (Premise 7′).

Step 8: Therefore there exists a non-physical, non-composite, necessary being that is the ground of the contingent physical universe.

This is what Rambam means by the Creator.

Now, like any logical argument, this one isn’t airtight. You can always argue with anything:

– First, the principle of sufficient reason (Premise 3′) is not itself logically required: you can simply deny that contingent things require explanation. Some philosophers bite this bullet and say the universe is just a brute fact. That’s coherent but it means accepting that the most fundamental questions – Why is there something rather than nothing? Why this something? – have no answers, not because we haven’t found one yet, but because there are none to find.

– Second, the claim that an infinite chain backwards of contingent explanations is not a genuine explanation (Premise 11′) has its challengers: some philosophers argue that if each link in the chain is explained by the prior link, the whole chain is explained. Rambam thought this is fundamentally wrong: you’ve explained each domino’s falling but not the existence or activity of the series.

So needless to say, not everyone will be convinced. 😉

But for those of us who do believe there is an explanation for why there is something rather than nothing – and that you have to explain things in the big picture, not just what’s in front of your nose – I think this is a solid argument.

What do you think, friends?

Pesah and Trans Rights

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As I wind down from preparing for #Passover, I want to share a politically incorrect musing on a recent development in the American culture war.

Based on my understanding of gender (which I believe is a social performance, unlike biological sex, which I believe is a non-binary chromosomal fact), I don’t personally subscribe to either the theory that someone’s gender is determined by their sex or the theory that someone’s gender performance can be cleanly separated from their accumulated embodied experiences with their biological sex.

Neither theory convinces me.

But first of all, I respect the rights of someone who identifies as trans to perform their gender however they choose, to be safe and secure in their bodily integrity and autonomy, and to be treated with the same dignity befitting any other human being created in the image of God. To me, those are the same rights everyone in a free society should enjoy. It pains me that the rights of people who identify as trans are not respected, and the fearful and specious justifications given for violating their rights are an affront to my God-given reason and compassion.

And second of all, I respect the hell out of anyone defying all the social pressure and seeking to construct their identity on a deeper level than their body, trying to bring their physicality into alignment with their spirit, and/or challenging arbitrary norms that have outlived their purpose and constrain the human impulse to envision new ways of being free. I think these people are at the vanguard of a free, civil society and deserve recognition for the paths they carve, and the freedoms they claim, for the rest of us. A society that targets them for violence has not only lost its moral compass but has chosen slow suicide in the face of ever-oncoming modernity.

Pesah is about freedom.

Autonomy.

Letting go of the masters we place over ourselves and choosing the gift and the responsibility of creating and ordering our lives according to the values we choose, without pressure and violence forcing us to do otherwise.

When we make that choice, we have the opportunity to build a better society for all of us.

A freer society. A more responsible society.

The kind of society you want to raise the next generation in…

…just something to think about at the Haggada reading this year. Let freedom ring.

Mental Slavery

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“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds”

The Creator intervened in biohistory and through the imposition of a higher order, brought the regional empire to its knees and delivered a caste of foreign slaves to liberty.

Every norm was challenged, every supposition overturned, every “rule” broken. The idols crumbled, the privileged died, the sea split, and the true nature of reality was directly revealed to the nation en masse.

Deliverance at its most “miraculous.”

And yet… The generation of adults that were taken out of Egypt, never really left Egypt.

Not inside.

Even though they were physically free they were still mentally enslaved.

Not just in terms of assimilation to the cultural memes and values underpinning the hierarchical power structure of the society into which they were born.

But in terms of how they saw themselves: As slaves, as inherently inferior, as individuals lacking agency and autonomy, as destined to control or be controlled.

The Creator wrought wonders to free these people, but they couldn’t take the final step and free themselves.

When the time came to begin seriously planning to establish a just and holy society in the land the Creator chose for this purpose – they instead retreated into their fears and spun stories of how their hands were tied and the situation was hopeless and how great it was when they were slaves…

They circled the desert for forty years rather than take responsibility for themselves and their future.

On #Passover we are invited to step into their sandals and see ourselves as former slaves, newly liberated from bondage.

We are invited to tell the story of that liberation and to place ourselves in that story.

To begin the story with our worst memories, experiences, and selves. With everything that tripped us up and held us back and kept us down. With our errors and mistakes.

And to end this chapter of the story with our greatest gifts, achievements, and dreams. With the testimony of miracles and wonders, of empires falling and reality being revealed. With gratitude and song for the faithful deliverance, time and again, generation after generation, from the confines of Egypt.

Every year – the same story, told differently.

Every year – we tell how far we’ve come.

Every year – we tell ourselves that we choose freedom. Liberty. Responsibility.

Every year. And yet it still feels that despite the Creator’s intervention in biohistory once again, despite the creation of a free society in our ancestral land – we’re somehow still circling the desert.

As we prepare the home for the haggada, I want to take a minute to pray that this year, we merit to not only truly see ourselves in the story we tell of our freedom, but to continue living that story after the night of its annual telling has passed.

The Narrow Bridge

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I don’t want to be an alarmist or pretend that I can predict the future. I hope that my concerns will be proven to be unfounded. But I want my family, friends, and neighbors to be prepared for what may be coming.

If you’re going to read this – and fair warning, you might not want to – please read until the end.

As far as I can tell, there is a hard math to this war: Missile launchers vs interceptor missiles.

The number of each is depleted in the following process, repeated over and over every day:

1) The IRGC (or Hezbollah or the Houthis) launches a missile.
2) The Iron Dome system gets triggered and sends an interceptor.
3) The US-Israeli coalition air forces hopefully locate the launcher and hopefully destroy it.

The first problem is obvious:

There is a finite, dwindling number of interceptor missiles. They will run out.

In three weeks or six weeks or twelve weeks or X weeks, depending on what you read, they will run out.

The second problem requires just a little bit of research to uncover:

The interceptor missiles can not be resupplied as quickly as the IRGC can manufacture new launchers.

That’s assuming that every launcher reported destroyed was indeed destroyed (history shows this to be unlikely) and that the IRGC isn’t holding many launchers in reserve.

Reserve for what, you ask?

I think they might be holding reserves in anticipation of either of two probable scenarios:

A) The US forces remain or even escalate the war, while Gulf states join the attacks on Iran and/or Iran attacks European states, leaving Israelis to deal in the near future with the current missile rate and the effects of a multifront aerial war, with no Iron Dome protection

Or

B) The US forces withdraw from the war (after all, less than a month in and it’s already contending for the most unpopular war in American history), leaving the Israeli air force to continue hunting the now continually increasing numbers of ICBM launchers alone, and Israelis to deal with a much higher missile rate, with no Iron Dome protection

The situation, as they say, looks rather grim.

Does this mean the state of Israel will be destroyed?

No.

This show is far from over.

This ain’t our first rodeo. We’re still here. We’ll still be here a year from now, a century from now, a millenium from now.

The more history I study, especially of the past 78 years, the more I see again and again the fortuitous alignment of events in highly improbable ways.

This is especially true when you read accounts from the past wars. (Which to be transparent and to add context to my point, I do not think were all legitimate or fought cleanly.)

The math just doesn’t add up. The improbable keeps happening again and again, delivering our people from the worst crises in the most unlikely ways.

I’m not going to jump ahead and use the M word – but I think a serious student of Israeli history would conclude that even when things seem hopeless, it is reasonable to hope for the unexpected.

Two lessons come to mind.

The Psalmist: “I raise my eyes to the mountains; from where will come my help? My help is from the Eternal, maker of heavens and earth.”

Rebbe Nahman: “The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge – and the main thing is not to fear at all.”

This is the narrow bridge – and deliverance will come.

But.

We have to stick together. All of us.

We have to have grace for each other. Ourselves too.

We have to submit to the will of God. Accept what is happening and whatever comes, and do teshuba every day.

We have to have gratitude for every improbable fortuitous alignment of events, for the simple and undeniable fact that God’s love has never abandoned us, despite all the chaos, war, and suffering.

We have to buy water, canned food, medical supplies, and anything else we might need to shelter with if and when things go sideways.

We have to do what we need to take care of our families.

Again – I don’t want to be an alarmist.

I can’t predict the future.

And I hope I’m very wrong in my read of the situation.

But if I have you thinking even just a little bit about how serious the situation might get, and what you need to do to prepare for that day when it comes, then I’m willing to take the risk of issuing such a strong warning – but also to insist that hoping for improbable deliverance is entirely reasonable.

May we merit to be strong and courageous – and to live in quieter times.

Tucker Targets Chabad

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Chabad is a diverse, complex, and trans-dimensional organization.

I have personally had great experiences with Chabad rabbis and families. I greatly respect their community building and social work, and I find their Torah to be very thought-provoking, even when I disagree with specific claims they may make or conclusions they may reach.

(For example, the Lubavitcher Rebbe was of the opinion that one could not fulfill an obligation to bless by concentrating and “saying” the words in one’s mind, while R Qafeh was of the opinion that not only could one do so but that this was an ideal way to handle a situation of doubt regarding obligation to bless.)

While my experience has been mostly positive with only a few counter examples, many people I know have had terrible overall experiences with Chabad. They have encountered prejudice, ignorance, and dogmatism in their interactions with Chabad rabbis and Chabadnikim in general. They find the Tanya’s statements seeming to suggest that God has parts or that Jews are essentially superior to gentiles, to be anathema. And they find the cult of personality turned messianic ideology turned idolatry, to be quite alarming. I understand the concerns of these people, and I think they need to be included in the intra-Jewish discussion of Chabad.

But Make No Mistake.

Tucker Carlson did not go after Chabad because of conflicts between foreign Chabad houses and native Sepharadi communities in South America and Western Europe, or because of philosophical criticism of the Tanya as it has been inter-generationally understood, or because he has issues with cults of personality or messianism.

To repeat: Tucker Carlson did not go after Chabad because they are a messianic movement. To be sure, as a Christian fundamentalist, Tucker believes that any messianism other than his own is idolatrous, but that’s not why he singled out Chabad.

In that exact connection, it’s worth noting that – when looking for a scapegoat for America’s involvement in this war (I literally heard a missile exploding in the background as I wrote that) – Tucker had a much riper target within Israeli society itself, the messianic ethno-nationalist ideology that, over the decades, has increasingly attracted so many right wing politicians and populists (who happen to also sit in the current government). If Tucker was truly concerned about a messianic movement in Israel dragging an unwilling USA into a foreign conflict – that’s where he’d take aim: Israeli messianists in political power coordinating a regional war with the White House.

~> Instead, Tucker Carlson targeted Chabad because they are among the most visible Jewish people across America. <~

Read that again. Slowly.

His audience is American right-wing Christians.

He is turning them against the Jewish people they can easily recognize (who put themselves out in the public eye as a matter of course) and telling them that those Jewish people – yes, the nice rabbi and rebbitzen from the Chabad house around the corner – are dangerous ideologues working with Israel to manipulate America and control the world.

This kind of propaganda is not new. We’ve seen it before. Many American Jewish people recognize it for what it is – but have not yet accepted where the train is headed (and accelerating fast). Many other American Jewish people unfortunately do not recognize the flashing signs of what’s coming and gleefully continue cheering the leopard on as it eats everyone else’s faces first.

Chabad is not perfect.

But they are precisely the targets Tucker et al choose because all American Jews are in their sights.

May Hashem guide and shield all of the holy flock in these dark times, may our cries and pleas for peace! protection! prosperity! be answered speedily, may the plans of Haman always be overturned and brought down upon his wicked head.

Setting the Record Straight

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Fun fact: I am allergic to bullies and I detest religious bullies. I also have limited patience for those who evade accountability, especially in the name of winning the American culture war, and so an abusive, religious bully who evades accountability in the name of pwning the libs is basically gonna get the stick and not the carrot from me, to put it mildly.

May we all return to the proper path and abandon the false idol of ego!

But a particular divine reminder that the views I profess have enough merit to trigger religious bullies suggests to me that I should redouble my effort and be more transparent regarding them, as the proper response to spiritual impediments along my way.

So here goes. I hope the following is crystal clear:

1) I am fundamentally forward thinking. I draw my ideas from my dream of the Israelite future as it arises organically from the Israelite past: and from there I meet this moment in the Israelite present. That historical consciousness is fundamental to my understanding of myself, my people, and my creator.

2) I am not: Sepharadi, Ashkenazi, Teimani, or the product of any other exilic collective noted in the annals of Jewish history: I am a free born, free thinking Jew, charged with dual responsibility as a member of an eternal divine pact by birth and a renewed national project by choice. I am not Orthodox or Conservative or Reform or Reconstructionist or Renewal, or a member of any other ideological party or camp within our nation.

3) I am loyal to the national court of our ancestors and I follow their laws beyond the reach of any community’s custom. My customs are my own, personal adornments to my small practice of implementing the Creator’s instructions, in the context of my life, my family, my social network, my country, my region, my planet………….

4) I learn from all the sages of Israel, as I learn from the sages of all the nations, but I particularly follow the Rambam’s way. Especially in disagreeing with the Rambam – because that was the way of Rambam himself, as I was first taught it in youth and later came to know it in (relative) maturity: to follow one’s mind to the end of knowing the God of truth.

5) I have a deeply held belief in the rights to security, justice, freedom, and peace shared by all human beings. All of them. That is what I was taught as a child and that is what I learned, from some of the past century’s greatest exponents of Judaism, that the Torah promotes, and I have never been persuaded to relinquish that belief. “Maybe one day.”

And last but most important:

6) I am nobody. Nothing. No one to take seriously, to learn from, or to emulate. I am not a source of wisdom or guidance. I am not an expert in anything and I’m wrong about at least one thing every day. I share what I share with you, or with the world, not to teach you but to awaken thoughts within you, so that you may join me on this journey.

Sometimes I’ll say or write something that may seem to conflict with the above – but that is because I choose a way of expressing things obliquely, as juxtapositions and phrases meant to awaken your own thoughts in response to mine, not to disclose to you the fullness of my own thought.

There are volumes more to write on this but I think this was a good opportunity to set the record straight on some matters.

After all, I have a reputation as a dilettante to uphold. 😂

Stay Frosty, Friends

American Fascism Taxonomy

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I guess I still got #TDS. After much back and forth with ChatGPT, eliminating Eurocentric biases, ensuring it was operating from an updated knowledge base, and requesting elaboration on points raised, I found this to be a helpful taxonomy and summary of the uniquely American variant of fascism. There’s no hope for me, friends. It seems my TDS is a lifelong case.

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PART 1 — A Full Taxonomy of MAGA’s Fascist Features and Its Distinctively American Variants

1. Palingenetic Myth (National Rebirth)

Fascist Feature: A narrative of national decay + promised restoration to mythic greatness.

MAGA Expression (general):

– “Make America Great Again” as a rebirth promise.

– Claims that the nation has been “taken,” “corrupted,” or “infected” by traitors.

American Variant:

– The imagined peak is the racialized mid-20th-century order (1950s), with white Christian patriarchal dominance.

– The idea of a “sacred Constitution” needing to be restored to its “true” form—fascism expressed through constitutional fetishism rather than constitutional destruction.

2. Ethno-Religious Peoplehood (“The Real Americans”)

Fascist Feature: The nation is defined as a purified in-group opposed to internal enemies.

MAGA Expression (general):

– Migrants = “invaders.”

– Liberals = “vermin,” “poison,” “traitors.”

– Muslims = security threats.

– Minorities = portrayed as illegitimate beneficiaries of “rigged” democracy.

American Variant:

– White Christian nationalism as the core: to be American is to be white, Christian, culturally conservative.

– Historical racial scripts (Jim Crow, “real America” mythology) embedded in the movement’s identity.

– Evangelical eschatology mapped onto national politics.

3. Leader Cult (Caesarism)

Fascist Feature: One charismatic leader embodies the will of the nation.

MAGA Expression (general):

– Trump positioned as the singular savior.

– Personal loyalty valued over institutions or laws.

American Variant:

– Leader worship expressed through celebrity culture, reality TV aesthetics, and “prosperity gospel” theologies.

– A uniquely American “CEO-leader” archetype blending authoritarianism with business mythology.

4. Anti-Pluralism and Destruction of Democratic Constraints

Fascist Feature: Courts, media, opposition parties seen as illegitimate obstacles.

MAGA Expression (general):

– Attacks on courts, civil service, “deep state,” and independent agencies.

– Efforts to criminalize political opposition.

American Variant:

– Use of federalism to punish blue states.

– Jurisdiction stripping and weaponized administrative purges rather than formal abolition of courts.

– Elections still held but structurally rigged (gerrymandering, voter suppression, election board controls).

5. Normalization of Political Violence

Fascist Feature: Violence (or threat of violence) is treated as legitimate political action.

MAGA Expression (general):

– Praise for attackers.

– Encouragement of mob intimidation.

– Threats against opponents and protesters.

American Variant:

– Violence outsourced to decentralized militias, sheriffs, extremist individuals, and stochastic actors—mirroring American traditions of vigilantism (slave patrols, KKK, lynch mobs), not European party militias.

– Second Amendment mythology as ideological justification.

6. Epistemic Warfare (Reality Control)

Fascist Feature: Propaganda replaces shared truth.

MAGA Expression (general):

– “Big Lie” about elections.

– Delegitimizing science, journalism, academia.

American Variant:

– Use of digital media ecosystems (Fox, OANN, Telegram, etc.).

– Pastoral authority fused with political authority (pastors as political influencers).

– Conspiracy culture (QAnon, apocalyptic evangelism) functioning as a decentralized propaganda engine.

7. Institutional Capture and Long-Term State Transformation

Fascist Feature: Capture of cultural, legal, and administrative institutions in service of the movement.

MAGA Expression (general):

– Turning agencies into tools of personal loyalty.

– Politicized judges.

– Purges of disloyal bureaucrats.

American Variant:

– Use of presidential appointment powers + Senate confirmations to build an ideologically aligned judiciary.

– Christian-nationalist reconstruction of education, museums, and curriculum—using public funding battles instead of a “Ministry of Culture.”

– Expansion of emergency powers using preexisting U.S. statutes (PATRIOT Act logic, Insurrection Act, etc.).

8. Economic Order: Authoritarian Neoliberalism, Not Classical Corporatism

Fascist Feature: Fusion of state and business elites for national projects (in Europe = corporatism).

MAGA Expression (general):

– Favor-trading with aligned corporations.

– Attacks on disloyal firms.

– Protectionism and tariffs.

American Variant:

– No formal corporatist syndicates (Italian style).

Instead: regulatory capture + billionaire alliances + selective state coercion.

– Economic nationalism within a neoliberal framework (unique to U.S. political economy).

9. Sacralization of the State and Nation

Fascist Feature: Politics becomes a quasi-religious project.

MAGA Expression (general):

– Movement symbols, rituals, and mythic narratives.

– Leader as messianic figure.

American Variant:

Fusion with evangelical Christianity.

– The leader portrayed as God’s instrument.

– American exceptionalism repurposed as a nationalist theology.

—

PART 2 — Genealogy of American Fascism (Colonial Period → Jim Crow → MAGA)

This traces the organic roots—showing MAGA not as an anomaly but the latest mutation of a deep American lineage.

1. Settler Colonialism and Early Racial Hierarchy (1600s–1800s)

Foundational features:

– Hierarchy between “civilized” settlers and racialized out-groups.

– State-sanctioned paramilitary violence (Indian Wars, militias, slave patrols).

– A mythology of divine mission (“City on a Hill”).

Fascist DNA:
Ethno-religious nationhood + violence as civic duty + mythic destiny.

2. Slavery and the Slave Patrol State (1700s–1865)

– Legal racial caste system.

– Surveillance, policing, and terror built into everyday governance.

– Plantations as proto-totalitarian micro-states.

Fascist DNA:
A racialized police state embedded directly into the structure of “democracy.”

3. Post-Reconstruction “Redemption” (1877–1910s)

After Reconstruction:

– Violent overthrow of multiracial democracy in the South.

– Massive voter suppression.

– Lynching as political/social control.

– “Solid South” = one-party authoritarian system.

Fascist DNA:
Herrenvolk democracy: democracy for the in-group, authoritarianism for the rest.

4. Jim Crow (1890s–1960s)

– Segregation = legal apartheid.

– State-backed racial terror (KKK, sheriffs, police).

– Education, courts, infrastructure explicitly racialized.

Fascist DNA:
Institutionalized ethno-national hierarchy + political violence + state/religious justification.

5. Cold War Anti-Communism (1940s–1960s)

– National Security State expands dramatically.

– Loyalty oaths, surveillance, suppression of dissent.

– McCarthyism models ideological purges in liberal-democratic form.

Fascist DNA:
Ideological purification and state-driven persecution of perceived enemies.

6. Southern Strategy & Christian Nationalism (1968–2000s)

– Fusion of white identity politics with conservative religion.

– Demonization of civil rights, feminism, and multiculturalism.

– Pastors as political mobilizers.

– Replacement-level fears (“white decline,” “losing our country”).

Fascist DNA:
Race + religion + nationalism + apocalyptic moral panic.

7. Post-9/11 Security Structures (2001–2010s)

– Expansion of executive authority.

– Normalization of emergency powers.

– Militarization of police.

– Islam as civilizational enemy.

Fascist DNA:
Permanent emergency logic; domestic militarized control; suspension norms.

8. MAGA (2015–present)

MAGA is not an alien ideology:
It is the crystallization of all these lineages into a single mass-movement form, amplified by digital media and personality cult.

It unites:

– Settler-colonial hierarchy

– Jim Crow racial politics

– Cold War anti-dissident repression

– Evangelical political theology

– Neoliberal oligarchy

– Post-9/11 emergency powers

– A charismatic leader’s personal image

into a coherent American fascism, distinct from but structurally analogous to 20th-century European version

Atheistic Explanation of Jewish Survival

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Allahu Akbar. But also:

“A strong atheistic explanation has to work without invoking chosenness, providence, metaphysics, or teleology, while still accounting for the extraordinary empirical fact-pattern: a tiny, dispersed, repeatedly targeted ethnocultural group not only survives but regenerates political autonomy, cultural creativity, and demographic continuity over multiple millennia.

The best explanation in secular scholarship combines four interacting forces:

1. Covenantal Ethno-Textual Identity (Self-Reinforcing Structure)

From a secular standpoint, the “covenant” is not metaphysical but a uniquely durable cultural technology.

Key features:

– A portable constitution: Torah + halakha function like a constitution that does not depend on land or state structure.
– A text-centered identity: Identity is encoded in textual mastery, not political territory.
– A distributed, ritualized pedagogy: Every household is a micro-school; literacy is a norm.

Why this matters:
Most ancient peoples tied identity to local cults, temples, territorial kingship. Once displaced, they disappeared. Judaism reengineered identity into portable, duplicable, home-scaled institutions.

This is a sociological survival innovation, not a miracle.

2. Decentralized Communal Networks (Horizontal Resilience)

Jewish communities operated as non-state micro-polities: qehilloth, batté din, charitable systems, standardized rituals, and normative law.

Characteristics:

– Leaderless-by-design robustness: No single authority’s destruction could collapse the system.
– Rapid institutional reconstruction in diaspora: A minyan + a scroll = immediate restoration of structure.
– Highly networked long-distance trade and correspondence: This strengthened international solidarity and resource pooling.

Think of it as a resilient “fractal” system: every fragment regenerates the whole.

No divine design needed—just a uniquely adaptive communal architecture producing long-term continuity.

3. Strong Boundary Maintenance Paired with Permeability

From an atheist perspective, Jewish survival requires maintaining identity yet also allowing controlled integration.

Judaism manages this through:

– Clear endogamy norms → slows assimilation.
– Clear ritual boundaries → makes identity legible and persistent.
– Naturalization allowed but regulated → refreshes the population without dissolving coherence.
– High retention under persecution → increases internal solidarity.

Most groups collapse because either:

– identity becomes too loose (assimilates), or
– identity becomes too rigid (cannot replenish members).

Judaism found a rare equilibrium: cohesive but permeable.

4. Cultural Hyper-Adaptability Under Extreme Pressure

Historically measurable traits:

– Literacy rates far above surrounding populations.
– Economic niche flexibility (trade, finance, crafts, scholarship, administration).
– Mastery of local languages + maintenance of Hebrew/Judeo-languages.
– Continuous reinterpretation of law and tradition.
– Intellectual productivity disproportionate to population size.

None of these require divine intervention. They reflect long-term cultural selection pressures: groups that adapted survived; those that didn’t vanished.

Judaism is one of the rare cultures that evolved adaptive plasticity as a core identity trait.

The Emergence of the Jewish State

A secular analysis sees the Jewish state as emerging from:

– Zionist political ideology (a modern nationalism).
– European nationalism and decolonization patterns.
– Hebrew revival as a cultural modernist project.
– Global geopolitical shifts post-WWII.
– Exceptional diasporic resource networks supporting state-building.

The state of Israel, from this view, is not a miracle but the convergence of:

– a people that maintained identity & literacy for millennia
– modern nationalism and colonial retreat
– mass-mobilizing trauma
– global political opportunity windows
– extraordinary diaspora capital (intellectual, financial, relational)

The simplest atheistic explanation at the highest level:

Judaism as a cultural system was repeatedly tested by extreme pressures; the only communities that survived were those with traits that made survival possible. Those traits—literacy, law, communal solidarity, adaptability—compounded over time.

In other words, Judaism is a culturally selected system optimized for long-term endurance.

This does not reduce Jews to biology—it describes memetic, institutional, and cultural selection, not genetic superiority or mystical destiny.

A strong atheistic explanation combines:

1. Portable textual identity and law
2. Decentralized, regenerative communal structures
3. Cohesive-but-permeable boundaries
4. High cultural adaptability to hostile environments
5. Modern political opportunity windows
6. Cultural selection over millennia

None of these require supernatural claims. Yet together, they explain why Judaism—unlike most ancient civilizations—remains alive, coherent, creative, and politically reconstituted.”

Barukh Hashem, who has planted eternal life in our midst and gave us the Torah as a gift of love. Those who embraced and lived the Torah and its culture as a way of life, survived – if not them (genocide, after all), then their descendants. Those who didn’t, remain only as chapters and footnotes in history books.

עם ישראל חי

Rambam Was a Hasid

by

Rambam, Maimonides, Abu Imran, or the Ra”m ba”r Maza”l, as he was variously known, was not just a legal scholar and judge, not just a doctor and a philosopher, but a contemplative mystic on the path of prophecy, not just practicing conceptual-emotional quietude through meditative prayer but actively living a life of self-abnegation, service, and the disciplined cultivation of virtue.

In short, it would be safe to say that Rambam was a Hasid.

It is hard to define what exactly Hasidism is.

The simple, popular definition is “piety.”

But piety tends to carry a rather narrow, religious meaning, that fails to capture or convey either the breadth or depth of Hasidism or things identifiable as Hasidic.

What can we say about Hasidism?

It is related to human development, to the balancing of psycho-somatic forces and the realization of human psycho-spiritual potential. It is related to the revelatory construction of the divine image in the human being and its attunement to the divine pathos in the world. It is related to the integration of heaven and earth, the perfection of the individual human and the entirety of creation as micro- and macrocosms of each other, the orbital harmony of souls dancing and singing praises of the Creator who loves all. It is related to love and to the transformation of a scared, savage animal into a compassionate being in love with humanity, the creation, and the Creator.

Within and beyond the stabilizing framework of the text and law, Hasidism exists as an active reading of the signs of divine love in the daily and mortal stories of our lives. The material of Hasidism can take any form but is often comprised of songs and stories and shocking intellectual-emotional prods to reconsider, reinvigorate, and reconstruct the world we live in. Its flavor, melody, and intoxicating scent come from the unique conditions in which Hasidism arises anew in every generation and in every community, adapting to the specific psycho-spiritual (but also socio-political!) needs of every time, place, and people. Hasidism reaches every person on their level and slowly lures them into different ways of feeling, thinking, speaking, and acting.

Every Hasid follows the same path to truly knowing their Creator – yet each Hasid travels the path differently, according to their own condition and the condition of their community.

Rambam, having absorbed the cultural and spiritual heritage of Andalus, was well-equipped not just to develop his own private practice as a Hasid but to guide the Jewish community of Egypt in his day (and much of the Jewish world) in the ways of Hasidism.

It is well-known but perhaps often overlooked that Rambam named the first three books of his magnum opus, the books of Knowledge, Love, and Times. The significance of setting these themes as the starting point for Maimonidean halakhic study and practice is profound: the entire system of law is cast as a path towards the Hasidic goals of True Knowledge and Love of God, structured by and filtered through the shifting conditions of the time cycles we inhabit in this earthly existence. It is of further note that in recording as settled law in the Book of Love the prayer practices of the ancient rabbis – including the full washing of face, hands of feet in preparation for prayer, meditating before prayer, kneeling and prostrating during prayer, among other things – Rambam was directing all those who sought his guidance to pray in a way that was decidedly Hasidic.

In his Guide (Signpost) for the Perplexed (Facing Diverging Paths), Rambam functions as a guide for the Hasid facing the limitations not just of his worldview but his mode of thinking, and seeking True Knowledge of his Creator. Addressing himself to the rational reader standing on the cusp of the transrational, Rambam drew on the terminology, ideas, writings, and contemplative practices of not just rabbinic Hasidim but Hasidim of the nations (known generally as Sufis), such as Ibn al-Arabi and Ibn Sina (who also transmitted many of the Neoaristotelian ideas and concepts Rambam saw as aligned with the rabbinic tradition), in slowly deconstructing the reader’s way of thinking about God, religion, language, truth, and power, and leading the attentive reader, by means of signs and hints and prods, to a new of thinking and practicing religion authentically, virtuously, and meditatively, setting them on the path to prophecy.

Once again, in this most well-known of Rambam’s works, his approach and guidance can be seen as decidedly Hasidic.

Unfortunately, as academics have methodological trouble studying and writing about phenomena that lack precise labels and definitions, little has been written about Rambam, Hasidism, and Sufism. Much more has been written about Rambam’s son, R Abraham Maimuni, and his (supposedly innovative) ideas and practices that are more easily identifiable as (and explicitly labeled) “Hasidic/Sufi.”

Starting with Rambam’s own son, generations of Maimonidean Hasidim studied, practiced, and taught the legal path of Rambam alongside what they likewise represented as his Hasidic path – expressing and elaborating on that path in an idiom shared with Sufis – without experiencing any form of conflict within their practice. It is highly unlikely that this intergenerational Hasidism originates in a rupture with Rambam’s teachings and practice – but rather, especially in light of the above, was a continuation of his work.

My hope is that this exceedingly short description of Hasidism and some Hasidic aspects of Rambam’s work will provide both greater understanding of the psycho-spiritual mode and aims of Maimonideanism as well as the roots, context, and ideas behind the Maimuni family’s Hasidism.

May our service and our love only be enhanced by our ever-deepening awareness of our service and our love.