Steve Sailer has no comment concerning Bernard-Henri Lévy’s declaration of U.S. presidential priorities, Jews, Be Wary of Trump in the New York Times.
There is a law that governs the relations between the Jews and the rest of the world. That law was articulated in one form at the time of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, when the great Jewish thinker Gershom Scholem faulted Hannah Arendt for falling short of “ahavat Israel” — for showing insufficient “love of the Jewish people.”
This love is precisely what is required of an American president in dealings affecting Israel. … Whether Jon Stewart or the Jewish Republican donors disdained the kitschy builder with his flamboyant hair, his money, his bling and his properties, including the now world-famous Trump Tower, is obviously not the question.
The essential thing is that President Trump thinks they did, that he seems to see Jews as the caricature of the New York establishment that, for decades, took him for an agreeable but vulgar showman.
This is a perfect example of the self-defensive contempt that has so often fed anti-Semitism, with the Jews appearing, once again, as representatives of an elite that patronized him and against whom he can, now that he is in power, quietly take his revenge.
It reminds me of a story from the Talmud that illustrates this logic well.
It is the story — part history and part “aggadic” embellishment — of Rabbi Yehudah Nessia, one of the foremost figures of Jewish thought of the third century.
Rabbi Yehudah ran a school that a young Roman swineherd would pass by nearly every day. The students at the school, their heads full of knowledge and a sense of their own superiority, never missed a chance to mock and beat the pig farmer.
Years later, Rabbi Yehudah was summoned to the distant city of Caesarea Philippi, to appear before Roman Emperor Diocletian. It seemed that the emperor was full of consideration for his guest. He sent to him one of his most distinguished ambassadors and ordered that a sumptuous bath be provided to allow his guest to cleanse himself after his dusty voyage.
But Diocletian also sent his ambassador on a Friday, so that Rabbi Yehudah would be forced to travel on the Sabbath, violating the most important of commandments.
The emperor also heated the baths to such a degree that the rabbi would have been boiled to death — a fate from which the rabbi was saved by the last-minute intervention of an angel, who cooled the waters.
When the rabbi appeared before Diocletian, he recognized the former swineherd, who said to him with spite, “Just because your god performs miracles, you think you can scorn the emperor?”
I cite this story because it provides a good metaphor for the West today, where, as in ancient Rome, the triumph of nihilism can enable a pig farmer — anybody — to become emperor.
It is a good example, too, of Jewish wisdom, which responds to the situation as follows: “We had contempt for Diocletian the swineherd, but we are ready to honor Diocletian the emperor provided he, like Saul — who, before becoming king had tended donkeys — heeds the prophecy, rises to his office, and becomes a new man.”
Not unlike one reader’s self-defeating attempt to explain how trying to renegotiate the price after receiving what one has bought somehow does not qualify as attempting to cheat the other party, reading this sort of thing makes me wonder if this gentleman even listens to himself talk. He clearly has no idea how reprehensible he sounds to both American and European ears.
I have considerably more respect for swineherds and farmers than for Bernard-Henri Lévy or the sort of “scholar” who believes it is acceptable to mock and beat people because knowledge. Nor is Lévy alone; Bill Kristol also does not believe in prioritizing American national interests, for as he said in response to the God-Emperor’s inaugural speech: “It is profoundly depressing and vulgar to hear an American president proclaim “America First.”
This demonstrates, as if it were necessary, the truth of Jesus Christ’s observation.
No man can serve two masters: for either he. will hate the one, and love the other; or else. he will hold to the one, and despise the other.