“Is Envy then such a monster?”

In the last two years of his life, Herman Melville wrote his greatest work; unseen by the world for thirty-five years it is filled with references to “Holy Writ” and the wisdom of the Hebrew prophets as the only path to understanding human motive, particularly irrational malice; it also is a paradigm for all the contradictions of Western civilization and not only in its abundant references to the Hebrew Scriptures, forefathers, stories and themes but in the quenchless hatred of a “master of arms” for a wholesome, naïve, and good young man. Billy Budd (1890-1) is a piercing analysis of Esau’s homicidal envy of Jacob, a “subterranean fire” given more ferocity by aspects of jealously mixed with “soft yearning” for Claggart wants to be Billy and in his “mania” and “subtler depravity”[i] can become him only by destroying him and dying ‘with him.’ (more…)

Recent incidents in Israel emphasize the role of the client regime in doing the will of the world powers, their will to dishearten and degrade Jews. This indicates whom the client regime serves: those who offer the most emoluments, prestige, protection and power for making the Jews “eat dirt” in their own Land.  The powers enable their subcontractors to project their self-contempt onto other Jews. (more…)

Why did Menachem Begin have to be carried from the decks of the Altalena in June 1948? It reflects the distinction between Jewish hope and dramatic Hellenist gestures, between simple dreams of life abundant and nightmare myths of glorious apocalypse.

The Jewish hope is “our hope to be a free people in our land, the land of Zion; Jerusalem.” (more…)