Be a Moses, not a Dathan

Wishes for this Passover

The other evening, I watched the classic 1956 version of The Ten Commandments at home, as is often my personal tradition, following a seder. I observed the insidious Dathan the Hebrew governor, in league with the Egyptian oppressors, plot and scheme to undermine Moses (Charlton Heston), at every turn. Dathan, played with vulture-like relish by Edward G. Robinson (“Where’s your messiah, now, Moses?”), is more than just an over-the-top character audiences love to hate. He is emblematic of the perpetual divide among world Jewry, between those of us who adhere to the word of G-d, and those who would blindly put their faith in false idols. In the current political climate, I see Dathan’s presence just about everywhere, especially among the so-called “As-a-Jews”. These are the self-righteous anti-zionist types who love to signal their sniveling virtue by denouncing the state of Israel’s crime of simply existing, and placing their own lustful desires to belong in a hostile gentile-controlled world above the safety of the rest of us who remain loyal and orthodox.

A most appropriate modern-day incarnation of Dathan is the octogenarian Senator Bernie Sanders. Just as in the movie Dathan presents the Hebrew people with the glittering Golden Calf, as an idol to be worshipped over the Lord, Bernie Sanders presents the false idol of Marxism. He conveniently dresses it up under the misleading title “Democratic Socialism”. Imagine that. Instead of placing our faith in the almighty, we can greedily turn to our own vainglorious egos, our most materialistic desires. The genius of this false idol’s pull is its cleaver disguise as a kind of altruism. People can easily be duped into believing they are being neighborly by adopting this ideology of deceit.

But if Sanders represents the serpentine Dathan, then who among popular influencers possesses the characteristics of a modern-day Moses? Personally, I would have to go with the intellectual Ben Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew and devoted family man, who is valiantly staving off the plagues of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes that seek to overtake the conservative movement. While the progressive movement is hopelessly lost to antisemitism and anti-zionism, at least the conservatives have a chance at salvation. (But that is material for a whole other piece to be written at a later date).

Chag Pesach Sameach.

Daniel Gordis

We Stand Divided: The Rift Between American Jews and Israel

ECCO, 2019

Jews are traditionally regarded as a divided people. We never have been much of a community, at least not one that has been fully equipped to stand together in defense of our own lives and liberty. While the State of Israel has the advantage of having an independent government ensuring its people’s protection, diaspora Jews, particularly those living in the United States, are not always feeling themselves to have their interests aligned with those expressed by Israel, government and citizenry alike. Many, manage a separate identity, and usually this identity is based in the language, culture, and politics of western liberalism. Other diaspora Jews in the U.S. maintain a strong pro-Israel identity. In the nearly two years since the atrocities of October 7, 2023, this schism between opposing camps has only grown wider. Very often, Israelis tend to view the liberal side as being representative of American Jews as a whole. Liberal American Jews, in turn, tend to view the hard-right politics of the Likud Party, currently in power, as representing all of Israel. Daniel Gordis, a journalist who has specialized in Jewish and Israeli politics and culture, accurately predicted this widening divide in this 2019 book. Gordis covers the history of the complex Israeli/Jewish American relationship, from when the modern Zionist movement first was conceived in the late nineteenth century, to its present state.