Empire & Religion

a Hasidic Rabbi replies

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. —Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Thanks to Julius Skoolafish for that quote and to marta lettofsky who asked the all-important question, “Why is this topic important?” Others have voiced similar feelings that there are so many rabbit holes and psyops to expose, why does this one matter? For those who religion gives comfort and community, why challenge that? Or why not regard it as false and ignore it, as Seneca suggests?

In this episode, I’ll start by looking at why it matters and why religion vs. no religion is a false dichotomy. I’ll define the question I’m trying to answer and all of the critical terms in it. And I’ll end with a conversation with a Hasidic Rabbi who’s posted on my YT comments thread regarding Hebrew scriptures.

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Why Does It Matter?

Seneca indicates that religions emerge spontaneously from common people and that empires find them lying around and use them for their purposes. The answer is to reject religion rather than rejecting empire. This is nonsense.

No empire could ever function without an underlying ideology of the superior right of some to rule over others. This right would never be accepted without a similar right of those ruled to have servants and slaves of their own. The only kind of ‘religion’ useful to empire is a cult of superiority that justifies immoral acts done to others but not us.

Morality supersedes religion. An ethical statement can contain no proper nouns. Neither can it distinguish between races or genders—what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The test of an ethical equation is whether the nouns can be reversed or substituted around the equals sign.

If the defining scripture of a religion provides a moral justification for the enslavement, colonization and land theft of others, to be tolerant of that religion is to be against those it demeans. If people used their minds and voices to challenge the ideology of empire, none could stand. But you can’t replace one psyops with another.

We’re in a unique place in history. This last century is the first time in two millennia that the immorality of slavery doesn’t need to be argued in Western Civilization. Whether or not we’re consistent, we believe that we believe slavery to be wrong. Pulling on that one thread unravels the God of empire who can’t be questioned.

Without an ideological justification that supersedes morality, the expansion of empires into global colonization and enslavement, the theft of land and resources, would never have happened. All the bribes and threats that empire brings would be powerless against people who hadn’t been indoctrinated that right is wrong and wrong is right. You don’t need to change the world, you need to change your mind.

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Q. Were the Judeo-Christian scriptures a psyop written by and for empire?

What are the Judeo-Christian scriptures? In this episode my focus is on the Torah and Talmud although the Jesus story is my primary field of research. A scripture is defined as a ‘channeled text’ represented as transcribed directly from God or teachings inspired by God, like the rabbinical Talmud.

What is a psyop? A psyop is one thing pretending to be another for the purpose of psychological manipulation. It’s someone who or something that appears to be populist, arising spontaneously from below to challenge power, but in reality comes from above as a way of quelling those challenges to power.

What is empire? Empire is power over others through ownership of land, monopoly on money, access to violence, and the authority to impose laws. Empire is rule by rulers, not by rules written by those to whom they apply, which is anarchy. The ideology that backs empire is always some form of superiority, us as opposed to them. Bigger is better for empire while smaller supports sovereignty.

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Q. Is the Bible scripture?

To answer the question of whether a claimed scripture is the infallible word of God, you need to look at its consistency or contradictions with history, biography, linguistics, archeology, and geography. And whether it’s internally consistent or if God contradicts GodsSelf. Then its consistency with your own dogma, what you’ve chosen to believe without raising it to question. For me, that’s the sovereignty and equality of all people. And last, its consistency or contradiction with what else you’ve found to be true.

If the Bible fails any of these tests, it logically needs to be rejected as scripture and evaluated as a human-authored text. Who is the author? What’s their affiliation with the ruling class? What’s their intent, their repetitive themes, the meta-analysis, what purpose does any given story serve? Nothing can be accepted as mere history. Every inclusion has intent, whether historical or not.

If it’s representing empire, you need to invert it to figure out the truth. Look at it from the point of view of those it excludes or demeans. I’ve tentatively titled a book on this A People’s History of the Bible because you need to be Howard Zinn, flip the paradigm and see how it looks from outside and underneath the pyramid.

If the Bible is a psyop, it means everything is upside-down: the heroes are really the villains who wielded empire against the masses and the villains are the historical heroes defending sovereignty. Satan is really Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Julian Assange. Jesus is really Elon Musk, Justin Trudeau, Gavin Newsom.

Imagine history replaced with a story of how the latter saved civilization. Throw in Tulsi as Mary Magdalene. It’s written by the cleverest propagandists that Rothschild money can buy. Now add 2000 years and change languages a couple times. Can you read between the lines to figure out the truth? What you can’t do is cite the text as proof of its own veracity. That would be circular reasoning.

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Yehoishophot Oliver is a Hasidic Rabbi who has been watching and responding to my YT videos on Palestine and Israel. He is a Hebrew scholar and I’ll link at the end to his video on Hebrew: the Holy Language. We exchanged some cordial comments on my Torah and Talmud episode, in which he clarified some points and researched the quote I cited from the Talmud that Gentile girls of 3 yrs old can be violated. It turns out to be a very different meaning in context. So I’d like to quote from our conversation, edited for clarity, which started out on Cain and Canaan:

@YOliver

Just one comment, although Cain sounds similar to Canaan as pronounced in English, in Hebrew the k sound is a different letter, kuf in Kayin/Cain and kaf in Canaan. These syllables were once pronounced differently so really, there's no connection there, unless you can point out some other source.

@thirdparadigm

Thanks for that, Yehoishophat. Is much known about the Judaic belief system that enabled them to stand up to the Roman Empire, called the Fourth Philosophy or Sadducees? Or are the Torah and Talmud seen as the only Hebrew heritage, with the alternative completely erased?

@YOliver

The term Fourth Philosophy is the way Josephus refers to the Zealots, who were careful in the rabbinic/Pharisaic laws. Their only disagreement with the Pharisees was the refusal to submit to Roman rule. (You said that the Pharisees sided with the Romans, which is not quite accurate. They said that the exile is a divine decree that should be accepted and not resisted.)

In contrast, the Sadducees rejected the Pharisaic laws and even some of their basic beliefs. The entire source of the beliefs of the Sadducees is the writings of the Pharisees, i.e. the Talmuds and Midrash. The Sadducees seem to have written little, one theory to explain this is given by historian Rabbi Rabinowitz, that their main objection to the Pharisees was political and not ideological/theological. The Sadducees were not so theologically motivated but primarily driven by a desire for power. Of course concepts related to rightful ownership are also political.

@thirdparadigm

Thanks. That does seem like a big disagreement. And certainly the ideological/ theological is political. If other races are cursed to be slaves, that's political. If God gave your ancestors their land, that's political.

The Sadducees rejected Roman rule and wanted Judea to have power over itself, not at the expense of other people to be their slaves. Wanting power over yourself, which requires 'secure tenure on the land' to use a Judaic phrase, is sovereignty. Power over others is empire. The Torah and Talmud are a theology of empire, the Sadducees fought for sovereignty so they must have had a theology consistent with that.

From the Torah itself, the historical occupants of Palestine are the Canaanites and the descendants of Esau who married Canaanites and the daughter of Ishmael. If the inheritance was rightfully his, why did he have to lie to his blind father on his death bed to get it? Surely God could have found a way to give it to him without a ridiculous charade that makes him into a sneak and a thief. A religion based on a God who gives entitlement to other people's land is a trick, imo, not a religion.

@YOliver

Where do you find that the Sadducees rejected Roman rule? That was the Zealots. The Sadducees were in complete cooperation with the Romans, as far as I understand.

Yes indeed the Canaanites had settled there, and in the same Torah, the Creator promises that land, to become the Land of Israel, to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the Jewish people. There are various explanations for why a lie was necessary, I can share some with you if you like. The concept is not that the Creator gives entitlement to others' land but that the entire world belongs to Him because He created it, and He allows people to live in it. In this case, He chose to allow the Canaanites to live in it for a certain time, and then to take it from them (also because of their sins, which made them unworthy to live there) and give this particular land to the children of Israel.

Another viewer asked Yehoishophot whether a new temple on Zion Mount would have the same purpose as in Solomon’s day. He answered “The Third Temple will of course have the same fundamental purpose as the First and Second Temples, to offer sacrifices of worship to the Creator.” When the viewer said Solomon invoked demons, he answered, “from the Hebrew Scripture and the rabbinic literature, its purpose was animal sacrifice.”

In looking up Aboda Sarah 37a, at my request, translated as “A Gentile girl who is three years old can be violated” Yehoishophot replied:

As for the quote about a gentile girl, it simply doesn't say in the Hebrew/Aramaic that she can be violated. It doesn't say those words. It's a complete distortion of the text, apparently willful. The Talmud there refers to the general concept of when we say that a sexual act can be technically considered to have taken place. This is not in any way permitting the act but a matter of definition which has various ramifications such as for penalties. A boy is said to be capable of penetrating from the age of 9 and a girl is said to be capable of being penetrated from the age of 3. I know that sounds gross but laws have to be technically defined.

The Talmud there discusses various rabbinic decrees enacted to distance the people from degeneracy and says that the rabbis then made a decree that non-Jews should be viewed as ritually impure, in order to create an additional barrier and taboo against such intermingling. And they extended this even to children, apparently because such behavior was common enough in the surrounding culture of the day that they saw fit to extend their decree to the underage, in order to further distance the people, adults and children, from such interactions.

I also asked Yehoishophot about Hasidic Judaism:

From your point of view, the Torah is both accurate history and mysticism so that everything in it is transcribed accurately from God. Is that true? And what is in the Talmud, is that also considered authoritative, so that it can't be disagreed with and still be considered an orthodox Jew?

From looking up Hasidic Judaism on Wikipedia, it states that the communities are divided into courts or dynasties, each led by a rebbe determined by bloodlines. The members of the court and those eligible for office seem to only be men, is that true?

In terms of politics and morality, there are clearly two different standards for Jews and non-Jews in the Talmud. If only the male Jewish authorities, who are the same as royalty in inherited titles, are the correct interpreters of God, then it provides a moral justification for anything that's done to goyim. And that would include killing, stealing, deceit and genocide for land theft. Is that not true?

@YOliver

Absolutely, as an Orthodox Jew, I believe the Torah is divine. The Torah more broadly refers also to the entire rabbinic tradition, so yes, the Talmud is part of the Torah, along with countless other texts, and its mystical tradition. Exactly, someone who disagrees with the Talmud cannot be called Orthodox.

Yes, with very few exceptions, only men are leaders ("rebbes") of hasidic dynasties. Likewise, in the Hebrew Scripture, you had very few female leaders. Deborah was the exception. Leadership is a masculine role. This has also been the norm throughout history in the vast majority of cultures and societies. Typically women only ruled when there were dynasties with no fit male successor.

Rabbinic authority isn't necessarily inherited, unlike royal dynasties. Hasidic dynasties are more similar to royalty in that there is a strong emphasis there on lineage but otherwise, rabbinic positions typically depend on the person's scholarship, piety, good character, not his lineage. However, if a rabbi's son is on the same level as his father, he does have priority to succeed his father.

Murder and stealing are strictly forbidden, they're part of the Ten Commandments. Not only is deceit forbidden but as I mentioned earlier, the Torah says to distance oneself from it. With the exception of when one is dealing with scoundrels out to destroy you like the wicked Laban and Esau. Or Abimelech in the case of Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Jacob, who was known to kill men and take their beautiful wives for his harem.

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Thank you to Yehoishophot for these clarifications. However, if we see morality as superseding religion and write this belief system with no proper nouns, then anyone who says God gave them ownership over a land has an automatic right to do whatever it takes to claim what’s rightfully theirs.

In Hebrew scriptures, the religion or belief in a preferential God comes first and morality is subservient to it. Things that would be unfair if done to you are permitted to be done to the outsider. And then the rationale is provided. Women can be excluded from leadership only to then claim “Leadership is a masculine role. This has also been the norm throughout history in the vast majority of cultures and societies.”

According to Josephus, the children of Ham settled Africa, Egypt and parts of Asia. God gave them to the Shemites, sons of Shem, to be their slaves. As shown in The 13 Sugar Colonies, the Jews became the most successful and ruthless slave traders and plantation owners. ‘Ruth’ is a Hebrew word for scruples. But the Torah story of God’s curse on Ham removed those scruples for Jews and Christians.

The land of Canaan has been coveted by the Shemites for over 2000 years, back to when the story of Noah was written. These were the near-enemy, the ‘other’ next door. A convoluted rationale, that Canaan left the lands allotted to Ham and squatted on Shem’s inheritance, had to be concocted. What good were slaves a continent away when you wanted your neighbor’s land?

Again, if the defining scripture of a religion provides a moral justification for the enslavement, colonization and land theft of others, to be tolerant of that religion is to be against those it demeans. In a future episode, I’ll look at other colorful Torah stories that depict how Canaanites and women were regarded, like the harlot by side of the road and the quartered concubine.

But I’ll also look at evidence that a Judean religion of sovereignty and equality existed 2000 years ago. And it could exist again.

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From Yehoishophot Oliver, here is Hebrew: the Holy Language. It ends with an interesting point that when you know the secret of something, you can illuminate it:

And thanks to Frances Leader for this clip of George Carlin on Religion is Bullshit: