TORAH VS TYRANNY: An unexpected source, Michael Ledeen, on last week's Parsha and the war on terrorism:

It’s hard to think of a more dreadful action against the Almighty than the orgy around the golden calf, while Moses received the tablets of the Law. No wonder, then, that Moses ordered the Levites to draw their swords and kill all the idolators. Yet, as our rabbi reminded us last Sabbath, many Jewish scholars believe the Israelites en route to the Holy Land performed an even greater sin when they believed ten of their twelve spies who said that the inhabitants of the land of Canaan were too strong, and that any effort to conquer them was doomed to failure. The other two, Joshua and Caleb, said that victory was possible.

For permitting themselves to become paralyzed by fear, for accepting a misleading intelligence assessment from the ten instead of listening to the clear-eyed reports of Joshua and Caleb, for refusing to confidently move forward against their enemies, an entire generation of Jews was compelled to wander in the wilderness.

I knew those guys were important, but until last Sabbath I hadn’t understood the extent of their significance.

Read the whole thing.

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