The Torah Should Be the Moral Foundation for All

Biblical values are essential for living a decent life. It breaks my heart how many so-called "Christians" reject them and fall into the demonization of our Jewish family.

Jan 07, 2023

white and brown wooden table — Photo by Taylor Flowe on Unsplash

This post is the twenty-third in an ongoing series on antisemitism and culture. See the previous installments here:

These writings are part of my ongoing effort to overcome my PTSD by forcing myself to try to write and publish something every day commenting on and analyzing current cultural affairs and their impacts on politics, faith, and, well, everything. “Politics is downstream from culture,” the late Andrew Breitbart popularized among conservative bloggers while he was alive. I’d go a step further: Everything is downstream from culture. The cultures you embrace determine who you are and who you become. You become what you worship.

Earlier this week, in my post on What Zionism Means to Me Today, I cited and praised

Yisrael M. Eliashiv

and his Substack

Magen Yehudi

for an exemplary discussion of Zionism and its multiple dimensions and debates. Now he’s back, with another essay very much worthy of celebration and your attention:

Magen Yehudi

Not Everyone Needs to be a Jew, but Everyone Needs Torah

Imagine you were to walk up to a random man in Southern Texas, or the Vatican, or Brazil, or even Papa New Guinea and ask him the following: Do you believe that G-d chose Abraham amongst all the men on earth and, through his family, separated the children of Israel from the nations of the world? He brought them down to Egypt, and from there, Moses took t…

3 years ago · 1 like · 1 comment · Yisrael M. Eliashiv

Read the whole thing.

Yisrael again takes a complex, controversial issue and presents an accessible and morally sound case for understanding it properly. He argues that, while it is not necessary that all humans embrace the beliefs and religious practices embedded in Judaism, it is vital that everyone recognize the moral principles of the five Books of Moses, and live them to the best of their abilities:

The Torah is clear, our mission is to bring the world to belief in the G-d who gave us the Torah on Mount Sinai and to obey the Seven Laws of Noah; however, this is to be accomplished in two ways:
Convincing non-Jews through philosophical/theological arguments.
Being an Or laGoyim, a light unto the nations through our actions.
Not An Obscure Teaching
G-d did not give the Torah for Jews to keep for themselves and observe in the ghetto, behind closed doors. Much like the light of the menorah has to be seen in public, so too does the message of bringing G-d's holiness into the world to non-Jews has to be seen and shine in public.

Yisrael then cites a number of my most respected influences also - the Biblical prophets and Maimonides - to back him up. And I couldn’t agree more enthusiastically.

As I’ve explained in previous posts, I’m very much an inter-faith guy. I like to draw from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mystical traditions, and I even embrace Eastern practices which have value too. There’s wisdom and value across cultures and religions all around the globe. I have special fondness for the spirituality of my Catholic friends. So, fittingly, this Substack and publishing company are founded on that ethos. In creating it, Sally and I want to bring together people across religious traditions, cultural divides, ethnic groups, and national boundaries to collaborate together on creative projects.

What your theological ideas are do not matter very much to me. However, what moral and ethical values you embrace and live by matters to me deeply.

And the ugly truth is that significant numbers of Christians today actively reject the morality of the Torah and even embrace antisemites as their leaders of choice. Others of less malice - and less courage - who call themselves Christians, simply do little or nothing to oppose the antisemites in their midst. They’re more worried about “CRT” in schools and *gasp* drag queens reading books to children in libraries. (Shhhh… don’t tell the frightened, easily emotionally-manipulated, white suburban moms who inspired Ursula in The Little Mermaid.)

Who am I talking about? The fucking racist Christian Nationalists who have infiltrated the American Right. These particularly Gen-Z activists and media personalities believe that Christians should rule, and that our laws should be remade to enforce fundamentalist Christian theology. This dictates that sexual minorities of the LGBTQ+ variety should be demonized and feared, opposing them is among the top priorities. And they want to stop letting brown people into the US, of course. They even want legal immigration curtailed, since, shaped by paleo-conservative godfather and antisemite Patrick J. Buchanan, they believe that “European culture” is a necessary component both in America and in conservative values alike. If too many brown people come here, America will collapse and white people will start to be hunted in the street, or something.

I’m a bit angry at these evil people because I spent some of Tuesday researching them for a freelance article I drafted. It was impressed on me how much Kanye West and his young acolytes like Nicholas Fuentes, Ali Alexander, and the leaders of his “Students for Ye” supporters of his presidential run (Daniel Schmidt is the group’s National Chairman, Luke Hogan is National Vice Chairman, and Sean McCrossen is Social Media Lead) were totally corrupt, fake pseudo-Christians. Hogan summarizes the Christian Nationalist idea and how he believes that following the antisemite Kanye West is the way to achieve it:

“Conservatives, liberals, Christians, and atheists alike have been let down by our leaders for decades in America. The reason Daniel and I have thrown all our efforts behind Ye is that he offers something distinct from the status quo,” Students for Ye National Vice-Chairman Luke Hogan told NATIONAL FILE.
“What he offers is a firm foundation on which to build a future America — it just so happens to be something intrinsically Christian,” Hogan went on.
“Americans worship Christ every Sunday. To have a proper republic, our leaders need to honor that fact and reflect it in our laws. Daniel, myself, and the hundreds of other Students for Ye members believe that Ye is the person to bring these ideas to fruition,” Students for Ye National Vice-Chairman Luke Hogan told NATIONAL FILE.

Fuck these evil bastards. Their ideology is based on toxic lies, and they are poisoning American culture and the political Right. They deserve to be ostracized, “canceled,” and opposed with the same ferocity - no, greater - than has been experienced by cruel son-of-a-bitch West himself.

However - these so-called Christians are just the most extreme variant of a broader fundamentalist Christian tradition which I deeply despise and oppose: “replacement theology.” My dear friend, skilled writing colleague, and tremendously creative thinker

Susan LM Goldberg

- who just recently started a lovely Substack, called

Hope House Chronicles

- clued me in about this school of Christian thought a number of years ago. Here's a solid summary of the ideology, and some obvious critiques of it:

Replacement theology (also known as supersessionism) essentially teaches that the church has replaced Israel in God’s plan. Adherents of replacement theology believe the Jews are no longer God’s chosen people, and God does not have specific future plans for the nation of Israel. Among the different views of the relationship between the church and Israel are the church has replaced Israel (replacement theology), the church is an expansion of Israel (covenant theology), or the church is completely different and distinct from Israel (dispensationalism/premillennialism).

Replacement theology teaches that the church is the replacement for Israel and that the many promises made to Israel in the Bible are fulfilled in the Christian church, not in Israel. The prophecies in Scripture concerning the blessing and restoration of Israel to the Promised Land are spiritualized or allegorized into promises of God’s blessing for the church. Major problems exist with this view, such as the continuing existence of the Jewish people throughout the centuries and especially with the revival of the modern state of Israel. If Israel has been condemned by God and there is no future for the Jewish nation, how do we explain the supernatural survival of the Jewish people over the past 2,000 years despite the many attempts to destroy them? How do we explain why and how Israel reappeared as a nation in the 20th century after not existing for 1,900 years?

I’d characterize another aspect of this line of thinking as “Pauline Christianity.” These are Christians who choose to be primarily focused on The New Testament and especially the writings of the Apostle Paul. Now, I certainly regard the epistles of Paul as divinely inspired and deserving of inclusion in the Bible. But I don’t believe that Paul and the New Testament essentially make the Old Testament, and especially the Torah, in any way obsolete. Paul’s writings do not in any way overrule the Five Books of Moses, the extraordinary proclamations of the prophets, and the wisdom books like Job and Ecclesiastes (both two of my favorite books of the Bible.) I believe we need to see the New Testament primarily in the context of the Old, and not at all the other way around. It seems like some Christians are most interested in the Old Testament when they can use it to find verses which they think reference the coming of Christ. (Of course, they also love to pull out the verses which they think condemn modern-day LGBTQ+ individuals, in order to hurl them at this group like stones.)

It is my belief that the purpose of Jesus and the New Testament was to extend the Torah and traditions of the Jewish people to us Pagans. Christians are not a replacement of the Jews. We are an extension of them. The more we can learn from the incredible history of Torah interpretation, Jewish intellectual analysis, and the Kabbalah’s mystical tradition, the better. Jesus himself made clear this was his mission:

davidmswindle

A post shared by David Swindle (@davidmswindle)

Matthew 5:17-20

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever practices and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

A key part of what I’ve learned in my years as a Zionist activist is the distinct uniqueness and extraordinary value of Jewish thought and moral values. I believe that we as Christians should seek to learn as much from our Jewish family, to incorporate as many of their traditions and values into our own faiths, as we can. While I do not believe we must follow every Old Testament command or keep kosher or celebrate all Jewish holidays and so forth, it does seem to me that, the more of those traditions we can gradually embrace, the better off we’ll be.

Modern Orthodox Jews seem to have a lot of the Biblical understanding and lifestyle choices that we as Christians should aspire to embrace - the practice of the sabbath is one of especially meaningful value. Trust me, though, I too love bacon and shrimp so much that it’s very hard to even think of giving them up!

cooked food on black pan — Photo by Michelle @Shelly Captures It on Unsplash

And I don’t believe we have to in order to have a relationship with the God of Israel, and to eventually merge with him completely (again) after we die.

So anticipate, in the future of this series, that I’ll have plenty to say about antisemitic fake Christians like Ye, Fuentes, and many others - Ali Alexander, aka Ali Akbar, especially, engenders tons of my rage. And it will be absolutely fucking brutal…