From the River to the Sea and the Horrific Doctrine

 

I was in a public library when I found a home-printed-looking pro-Palestinian magazine titled Where is Home. 

It is a collection of mostly poems, artwork, and a few short essays. As a regular listener of Haviv Rettig Gur, the primary thing that stuck out to me was that this was not a serious exploration of a complicated geopolitical issue involving real people on both sides. Instead, it was a cartoon morality play. For the creators of this magazine, Palestine seems to have little to do with a physical place. It is treated as a kind of psychomachy, a war of the soul, that manifests the world's decision whether to embrace love or hate.

I was particularly interested in the introductory essay, which begins:

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE

Do you see the words "murder" or "death sentence" being remotely implied in this phrase above? We don't either, yet some people will gasp, call you antisemitic, and believe it is an outcry to kill Jewish people.

   

For the zine's intended audience, chanting "from the River to the Sea" as part of a like-minded crowd is something that makes them good people standing up against injustice. It has nothing to do with trying to solve problems in the Middle East by reaching out to the opposition through negotiation and compromise to avoid getting millions of people killed.

From the perspective of anyone not absolutely committed to the Palestinian cause, the sort of people you actually negotiate with in the non-cartoon universe, the claim that the River to the Sea chant could never have anything to do with murder is laughable. Are the authors, Madi Parsley and Ivan Salinas, unaware of the concept of euphemistic language? Advocates of mass murder rarely call for it openly. Real mass murderers talk in code. This code signals marching orders to those actually carrying out the crime, such as operating a gas chamber. In addition, the code serves to protect the wider population of enablers, allowing them to collaborate in the crime while pretending they have no idea what is really happening. For example, the ordinary German who supported sending Jews "to the East" for "resettlement" must have known at some level that this meant murder, but the phrasing allowed them to pretend otherwise.

Imagine a pro-Israel person saying, "From the River to the Sea, Eretz Yisroel Shall Be Free." I assume the authors would agree that there would be valid reasons to suspect this was a dog whistle to commit mass murder, even though the statement says just as much about murder as the Palestinian slogan. We can assume that, in this "redeemed" Eretz Yisroel, there would be no place for Palestinians. Who else are we making the land free from? Furthermore, if lots of Palestinians happen to die in a way that is deemed "completely their fault" during the "sacred" task of bringing about the cosmic good of Eretz Yisroel, a cause that transcends the flawed politics and borders of a limited State of Israel, who should complain? A few million dead people are a small price to pay for the redemption of the world, particularly if they were the evil ones who were standing in the way of salvation in the first place.

In truth, as I have argued previously, it must be taken for granted that every doctrine is a kill order. If you claim that your beliefs do not make you complicit in mass murder, you are either lying or you have not seriously thought your beliefs through. To use a math analogy, we understand the nature of a quadratic equation, in part, by finding the roots, those points on the x-axis where y = 0. So too, we only truly understand an ideology when we can find those points where it advocates murder. To be clear, there are going to be quadratic equations where the discriminant involves the square root of a negative number, leaving us no real roots where y = 0. Similarly, in politics, there are Tolstoyian pacifists who will refuse violence even at the cost of allowing the entire world to fall to evil. For example, Tolstoy advocated refusing to convict murderers, allowing them back on the streets to kill again because the legal system itself is a form of violence. While such pacifism allows the believer to personally avoid committing violence, the real-world implications of this position are so monstrous as to defy the imagination.

Imagine if we were to hand Parsley and Salinas a button that they could press to free Palestine from the River to the Sea. It would also "magically" "resettle" all Israelis in the "East." These Israelis would never be heard from again, but their fate would not be the fault of the Palestinians, who we all know are wonderful people only caring about fighting for freedom and justice. Alternatively, they can refuse to press the button. This will crush all Palestinian resistance, leaving the River to the Sea in Israeli hands forever. Perhaps I am wrong, but I have a hard time imagining our authors not pressing the button. For them, Palestine is not about actual Palestinians and their claim to a piece of land along the Mediterranean coast. Instead, Palestine is nothing less than the redemption of the world from cosmic evil. Who would be willing to accept global damnation for the sake of a few million Zionists?

What I have said about Parsley and Salinas applies equally to me. I am not a pacifist. If I had to choose between letting Israel fall victim to an October 7th-style Holocaust and killing every Palestinian, I know what I would choose. Because I know that I would sacrifice their people to save mine, I can empathize with Palestinians who make the same decision, letting my people die to save their own. That being said, if I were given a button that would make Palestine free from the River to the Sea, but in which the lives and property of Israelis would be protected, I would press that button rather than see the bloodshed of Israelis and Palestinians continue. I do not see Israel as the redemption of the world, nor do I see the Palestinians, even Hamas, as cosmic evil. As such, while I may be willing to kill millions of Palestinians to save Jewish lives, I am not about to sacrifice Palestinians, let alone Jews, merely for the cause of Eretz Yisroel. Could supporters of Palestine make the inverse choice, letting Israel win in a way that does not seriously materially harm Palestinians? How could they allow the "evil" of Zionism to persist even at the expense of the Palestinians?

 

A Thank You to Biola University for Discriminating Against Me

 

This coming school year, I am leaving the public school where I taught for the past two years to join the faculty at a Jewish private school in the Los Angeles area. Because I still need to finish clearing my teaching credential, I have been researching local university programs. As part of that search, I reached out to Biola University. I spoke to some administrators, and initially, things looked positive. However, when I started filling out the application, I discovered a mandatory section on "Christian Commitment."

While I knew that Biola was a Christian school, this rigid insistence on personal Christian belief surprised me. I previously attended Azusa Pacific University, another Christian institution, and there was never any expectation that students had to be professing Christians. It is true that professors occasionally brought up Christian content, and a few assignments required looking things up in the New Testament. As readers of this blog know, I have absolutely no problem with that. My professors appreciated me because, even when I disagreed with them, I respected their beliefs and took them seriously; I am still in contact with several of them today.

I inquired with a Biola administrator to see if some kind of exception could be made for my situation. Considering how easy it would be to lie on an online application and that many applicants likely do precisely that, if I were running an admissions department, I would want to recruit unbelievers who respected Christianity enough not to lie about their lack of faith, perhaps finding a back door to let them in. It is not as if I grew up in a church and later rejected it; as a child, I never set foot in a church and, with the exception of Father Schmutz stories and polemics against Christian biblical exegesis, received no instruction in Christian doctrine. While our exchange was entirely positive, the administrator stood his ground: affirming Christian doctrine was not something he could compromise on.

While it is annoying that I will have to apply to a different school, I am honestly grateful to Biola for discriminating against me. I believe in freedom of discrimination as an essential component of free speech. If Biola were an Aryan Christian school and wished to turn away black applicants, I would support their legal right to do so. The fact that I have now been discriminated against as a non-Christian demonstrates that when I say private discrimination should be legal (however despicable it may be in practice), I am genuinely standing on principle.

Furthermore, as a Jew, I am grateful to Biola for forcing me to actively live out my rejection of Christian doctrines like the Trinity. I easily could have checked a box claiming I believed in it. Much like the early Christians who were ordered to offer a pinch of incense on an altar to Caesar, I could have told myself that no one takes an online admission form seriously. I chose not to do that because, even if no one at Biola cared enough to look at my statement, I take my faith seriously. I am a Jew who believes that God is One, with no parts, and that He is entirely divine, with no human aspect. Whether I believe this deeply enough to die for it is something I hope to never find out. At the very least, I am willing to be inconvenienced for it. In this, I stand with the generations of Jews throughout the early modern period who were barred from higher education because European universities, with the rare exception of Padua’s medical school, required students to formally profess a belief in Christian doctrine.

By giving him the chance to turn me down, I would like to think I did that Biola administrator a favor, as a Christian, too. He had every excuse to bend the rules for my sake, but he refused. Perhaps that is simply because he is a soulless, Pharisaic, legalistic bureaucrat. But maybe he is an actual Christian who cares that there should still be at least one place left in this country outside of a church where it actually matters if someone believes in the Trinity. I allowed him to put his principles into practice. Because of me, Biola really does stand for something. 

 

The Moral Implications of Magic: Lord Voldemort (Part III)

(Part II)

When I first read The Order of the Phoenix upon its release in 2003, it was my least favorite book in the series. As I argued at the time in the YU Commentator, the plot felt stagnant. I spent far too much time with nothing happening instead of delivering the all-out wizarding war fans had anticipated for three years.

In retrospect, however, the book is vital for setting up the final arc of the series. It reframes the Ministry of Magic as an institution ranging from hopelessly incompetent to, in the person of Dolores Umbridge, outright evil. The Ministry fails to stand up to Voldemort because, at its core, it is morally compromised by the exact same ideology Voldemort espouses: magic as power. Because the bulk of the Ministry already agrees with Voldemort in principle, they have no ideological reason to fight him. Instead, they can simply negotiate a surrender while ironing out a few pragmatic details.

Fudge’s Political Bind

Cornelius Fudge’s refusal to accept Voldemort’s return goes far beyond simple skepticism of Harry’s word. Fudge needs to believe Voldemort is gone. To acknowledge the truth would utterly undermine the political arrangement that keeps him in office.

The Death Eaters are merely the tip of an iceberg; they represent a massive segment of the wizarding population that harbors a deep hatred for Muggles and Muggle-borns. As long as Voldemort was out of the picture, this anti-Muggle faction could be kept in check because its philosophy was implicitly tolerated by the Ministry. This status quo perfectly suited Fudge, the ultimate compromise candidate: anti-Muggle-born at heart, but never overtly or maliciously so.

Voldemort’s return shatters this fragile peace. It means the radical Death Eater faction will actively try to overthrow the Ministry, forcing pro-Muggle groups like the Order of the Phoenix to resist. This places moderate anti-Muggles like Fudge in a bind. His solution is a quiet compromise: the Death Eaters temporarily halt their coup and, in exchange, they are granted operational freedom and the unspoken promise that the Ministry will slowly be remade in their image. The Death Eaters have no reason to wage an open war when patience guarantees they will eventually win from within.

Like most political compromises, this arrangement is built on a massive lie. Fudge agrees to pretend that Voldemort hasn’t returned and that no Death Eater conspiracy exists. By logical extension, Harry must be labeled a liar, and the only "conspiracy" becomes one hatched by Dumbledore to overthrow the Ministry. This narrative conveniently allows the Ministry to ignore the real threat while actively targeting the Order.

The fact that so many wizards blame Muggle-borns for the ills of wizarding society is the logical conclusion of the wizarding world's self-imposed isolation. Muggle-borns inherently threaten the separation between the two worlds because they have a foot in both. A Muggle-born child receiving a Hogwarts letter does not automatically sever ties with their Muggle parents or discard their Muggle upbringing.

This anti-Muggle philosophy treats magic strictly as a tool of dominance rather than evidence of a higher moral order. If magic is merely power, then Muggles are inherently inferior beings who lack it. Conversely, if magic is tied to a higher moral authority, then wizards and Muggles are equals under the same moral law. Rather than a badge of superiority, magic becomes a heavy moral burden; wizards are simply those who have been given the knowledge of this law, and they will be judged by it.

A Negotiated Surrender

As long as Voldemort remained in the shadows, "moderate" anti-Muggle wizards were perfectly content to let him eliminate the "wrong" kinds of wizards, provided he didn't directly threaten Ministry authority. From this perspective, the Death Eaters imprisoned after Voldemort’s first fall were punished not for their bigoted beliefs, which many in the Ministry shared, but for rebelling against the Ministry. Death Eaters who were not hostile to the Ministry, like Lucius Malfoy, therefore walked free.

The eventual mass breakout from Azkaban can be read as part of the Ministry’s negotiated surrender. By initially allowing "moderate" Death Eaters to operate quietly, the Ministry invited them to call its bluff. The breakout signaled to Voldemort that the Ministry had no intention of fighting; it would capitulate, so long as it could dictate the timing and terms.

Why risk destruction when you have no principles left to defend? The Ministry's willingness to imprison innocent wizards on flimsy evidence while letting known Death Eaters walk was a pure display of authoritarianism. It proved the Ministry was no longer a legal institution governed by the rule of law, but a raw power hierarchy where politicians rewarded friends and punished enemies.

Ultimately, Fudge and Voldemort both worshipped power. Their only disagreement was stylistic: Voldemort believed in magical power wielded by a supreme individual, while Fudge believed in bureaucratic power wielded by a mediocrity like himself, a man with no real talent beyond navigating a system.

The Power of the Bureaucratic Lie

Bureaucratic climbing is the average man's version of magical power. Because the social skills required to navigate a bureaucracy are so subjective, anyone can convince themselves they could succeed if given the right opportunity. This fantasy is reinforced by the success of the talentless. The average wizard can support Fudge precisely because he is so clearly undeserving of the public trust; seeing him in power allows every ordinary wizard to believe that they, too, could become Minister.

The defining characteristic of bureaucratic power, and its ultimate disconnect from morality, is the lie. Because bureaucracy is the power of words over reality, a truly powerful bureaucrat does not bind themselves to facts. In fact, lying becomes the ultimate demonstration of authority. The more flagrant the lie, the more powerful the bureaucrat who successfully enforces it. People accept the lie, knowing it is false, simply because they dare not defy the system. This creates a self-sustaining cycle: the bureaucrat gains power as more people submit to the lie, and people submit to the lie because they see everyone else doing the same.

If Fudge represents the pleasant, bumbling face of the Ministry, Dolores Umbridge reveals its terrifying reality. Umbridge shares Fudge's exact bureaucratic philosophy, where climbing the hierarchy is an end in itself, and she uses lies in the exact same way to wield power. When she forces Harry to carve "I must not tell lies" into his own flesh, the actual truth is irrelevant. She is asserting absolute dominance: she has the power to mutilate him, and not even Dumbledore can stop her.

The only thing separating Fudge from Umbridge is his reluctance to get his hands dirty. Umbridge has no such qualms, going so far as to send Dementors after Harry from the very beginning. Because of her willingness to personally commit atrocities, Umbridge could never achieve supreme power on her own; she relies on Fudge's status to shield her, just as Fudge relies on her ruthlessness to maintain his position while never losing his plausible deniability.

It leaves us with an uncomfortable question: Who is worse? The moral psychopath incapable of understanding that their actions are evil, or the perfectly sane politician who would never personally murder anyone, but happily stays complicit so long as they can pretend they aren't responsible?

(To be continued ...) 

What Is the Point of Teaching?

 

As a teacher, imagine that you could wave a magic wand and do one of five things in your classroom:

1) Turn your failing students into D students.

2) Turn your D students into C students.

3) Turn your C students into B students.

4) Turn your B students into A students.

5) Inspire your A students to become life long learners. 

Just to be clear, for the purposes of this thought experiment, we are going to assume that these letter grades represent real standards and not the sort of grade inflation that dominates modern education. 

At a gut level, my choice is to try to inspire the A students. It is not that I believe that the other choices are unimportant or that I ignore most of the class. That being said, what puts a smile on my face in the morning when I walk into my empty classroom is the possibility that something I present is going to get into a kids head so that they find themselves thinking about it at home. 

When I prepare a lesson, my first question is why is this topic interesting. If I can figure out how to make the material interesting to me, there is a chance that I might make it interesting to someone else. When I teach, I am loud and passionate. In this sense, I am very much the product of the Haredi yeshiva system. You can think of me as a somewhat secularized rebbe.  

This attitude has its downsides. Consider the problem of skills training. Under the surface of every topic lie certain discreet skills. For example, reading requires phonics decoding and vocabulary. A good student can usually learn how to decode words and develop an advanced vocabulary passively by being exposed to books. That being said, most students need to be explicitly taught phonics and vocabulary even though they are not the interesting part of reading. Part of the appeal of Whole Language methods of teaching is that this approach allows teachers to actually sit down with students and read with them. The hard truth is that this approach does not meet the needs of most students who need to be explicitly drilled in the individual skills that make up affective reading.   

When I teach literature, what I want to do is present a book that fascinates me and make the case that they should share my fascination. The book does not have to be complicated. I have been blessed with a childlike mind and remain interested in children's things. For example, this past year, I taught A Wrinkle in Time. I loved having students bounce a ball in class and recite the multiplication table. Then, playing the role of It, the villain in the novel, I announced to the students that there is only one right answer to multiplication problems and we need to make sure that everyone answers in the right way. There is only one right way to bounce a ball and we need to torture kids to make sure that they bounce the ball properly. My way is the only way to live. I know what is best because I am a giant brain who is totally rational. As long as everyone is not like me, society will not be perfect and people will not be truly happy. We better get rid of all the people who are selfishly ruining society and making everyone else miserable by not simply complying. 

The reality was that, even though A Wrinkle in Time is listed as being for fifth graders, most of my students struggled with the vocabulary. I recognized that my students needed explicit instruction in vocabulary and was willing to do so, but my heart was never in it. This was always merely a chore that, like a kid going to school, I had to get through in order to be allowed to get back to the teaching I wanted to do. My antics in the classroom were certainly memorable and helped some students. That being said, I was not always what most of my students needed.

The year has passed and hopefully my students and I both learned something. It is summer now and I have the opportunity to think of how I can do a better job next year.