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Gender is a choice – and, indeed, a complicated one as there are many genders. If a 12-year-old girl believes that she is a boy or “nonbinary” and wants to undergo life-altering surgery, she is vulnerable to harm – by adults suggesting that she not make irreparable changes, at least until she is old enough to get a tattoo. Climate change is “the No. 1 existential threat to the world,” and a good reason for young people to live in debilitating fear and decide not to have children. Yearning for a colorblind society is racist. The key to making the Army “more lethal” and the Secret Service better at addressing “evolving threats facing our nation’s leaders” is more women on the frontlines. New York became “stronger” by awarding preferences in city contracts to firms owned by men who enjoy having sex with men and women instead of just with women.
These ideas, and many others like them, are ridiculous. Yet, they are so mainstream that they have each become or informed policy in many important institutions and even governments. How did this happen?
Conservatives are often quick to blame universities and the media. Yes – universities are the incubators of ideas generally, and ideas like these usually have an origin story in the academy. Some media outlets promote these ideas, but others still point out how ridiculous they are.
So: It’s too easy to blame the mainstreaming of ridiculous ideas on the academy and the media. We Americans are not victims – not of the academy, not of the media, not of anything. We, as non-victims, can set the terms for our culture, politics and society.
Joseph prospered in Egypt under the pharaoh because he was truthful about his faith. FILE: The Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. (iStock)
How, then, have so many ridiculous ideas like those listed above escaped the fringe and become normative opinion and mainstream public policy? How, to pick a ripe one from my state, is New York on the verge of passing a Constitutional Amendment that seems to guarantee children the right to change their gender?
The answer, like truths generally, can be found in the Torah.
It is Genesis 39, and Joseph – having been sold into slavery by his brothers – is the only Jew in Egypt. Potifar’s wife tries to seduce him. He resists, explaining that he cannot “perpetuate this great evil … against God!” She frames him for attempted rape, and he is thrown into prison along with the head cupbearer and baker.
They each have a disturbing dream, which they tell Joseph is impossible to interpret. Joseph, who established himself as a master dream interpreter as a teenager in Canaan, tells them essentially: “Try me.” But that is not how he puts it. He says: “Do not interpretations belong to God? Relate it to me, if you please.”
He gets the dreams and their interpretations exactly right. Two years later, the pharaoh has two disturbing dreams that he cannot understand. The cupbearer, then a free man serving the pharaoh again, suggests that the pharaoh call upon the “Hebrew youth” languishing in prison. A Hebrew youth – Joseph had been defined, by the gentile cupbearer, by his love of God.
The pharaoh calls upon Joseph, and tells him that he had a dream that “no one can interpret” – but has heard it “said of you that you comprehend a dream to interpret it.”
Joseph, ever the “Hebrew youth,” has a ready response. “That is beyond me; it is God who will respond with Pharaoh’s welfare.”
Yet again, Joseph speaks of God proudly. Joseph offers a simply brilliant interpretation of pharaoh’s dream, and includes the solution to the problem the dream reveals.
Moses was denied entry into the Promises Land because he failed to act on God’s truth publicly. Here, he is shown leading the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt. (iStock)
The pharaoh says to his servants: “Could we find another like him – a man in whom is the spirit of God?” The pharaoh has, seemingly, become convinced of the greatness (and perhaps uniqueness) of God. And he is equally impressed by the young man who spoke of God anywhere and everywhere. The pharaoh gives Joseph authority over the entire land.
This completely spectacular turn of events – Joseph goes from being a forgotten prisoner in the pharaoh’s dungeon to the prime minister of Egypt in about an hour — leads the reader to ask: What happened? Joseph, even though he is the only Jew in Egypt, speaks of truth (God) all the time. He does not care about what the local polytheists might think. He does not calculate whether emphasizing his commitment to God would help or hurt his career. He does not consider that the pharaoh, who had plenty of gods, would be offended by Joseph emphasizing that there is one God who is responsible for everything.
Joseph just speaks the truth of God, clearly and consistently. Such truth-telling, the Torah enables us to realize, ends up being good for everyone: God, Joseph, the pharaoh and people throughout the world – who, through Joseph’s administrative genius, will have food during a devastating global famine.
The reader is left wondering: How important, generally, is Joseph’s practice of speaking about the truth of God? Is his constant evocation of the truth, regardless of who or where he is, about him and Pharaoh or all of us?
Ancient scrolls of papyrus paper with Hebrew text (iStock)
Fast forward to the Book of Numbers. Moses has been leading the Jewish people in the desert for a long time. It has been a journey that has been alternatively gratifying, awesome, challenging, and sometimes downright maddening. By Numbers 20, we are in a maddening phase. The people, though watched and protected by God for many years, are again threatening to revolt because they have not had adequate provisions for a short time.
Moses, who just lost his beloved sister Miriam and did not have time to grieve or mourn, is commanded by God to speak to a rock – which will produce water for the people. Moses, instead, strikes the rock. God responds by prohibiting Moses from realizing his life’s goal – which is to lead the people into the Promised Land.
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The incongruity of the crime and the punishment – he hits instead of speaks to a rock, and gets denied entry into the land after decades of faithful service and remarkable leadership – has intrigued Jewish Biblical commentators for millennia. But perhaps the reason for God’s punishment is right in the text. God tells Moses that he will not lead the people into the land “because you did not…sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel.” Moses is not denied entry in the land because he failed to act the truth. He is denied entry because he failed to do so publicly.
Why, through these stories of Joseph and Moses, is the Torah so insistent that we speak the truth publicly? The answer has been revealed in contemporary social science. In 1993, Princeton professors Deborah Prentice and Dale Miller asked students two questions. First, do you think that your classmates drink too much? Most students said yes. Second, do you think that other students think that your classmates drink too much? Most students said no.
He gets the dreams and their interpretations exactly right. Two years later, the pharaoh has two disturbing dreams that he cannot understand. The cupbearer, then a free man serving the pharaoh again, suggests that the pharaoh call upon the “Hebrew youth” languishing in prison. A Hebrew youth – Joseph had been defined, by the gentile cupbearer, by his love of God.
In this discrepancy, they identified the concept of “pluralistic ignorance.” This is the phenomenon where people believe, incorrectly, that their view is not widely held. The Princeton experiment shows how pluralistic ignorance can persist even on widely discussed subjects, such as drinking on a college campus. The cure for pluralistic ignorance is simple: If people clearly and confidently express their beliefs, it would not exist – as everyone would know where others stand. However, it very much persists.
So: How did we get to a situation where – among other things – the proposition that men do not have a biological advantage in sports is a serious enough idea to be discussed in a Senate hearing? There are fundamental questions that each of us can ask not of others – but ourselves.
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Have we been like Joseph, who spoke the truth in every environment? Have we, like God commanded us in Numbers 20, sanctified the truth by speaking it in public? Or have we cowered from truths – concerned of being socially ostracized, anxious about being called a name, fearful that doing so would cost us some kind societal benefit (a promotion, an invitation, an admissions slot for our child)? The answer to these questions, individually, will differ. But we know the general answer. We have all been in rooms where Joseph wasn’t – rooms where people quietly concede to believing obvious truths, or report that others (often in authority) “really know” the truth but are not speaking it.
Joseph’s ascendance and God’s insistence on being “sanctified in the eyes of the Children of Israel” teach us that such refusals are not innocuous. There is a good reason why. Ideas are the infrastructure upon which all else – private decisions and public policy, cultural norms and society rules – rest and run. The disestablishment of a true idea creates a vacuum – which is so desperate to be filled that it will accept any idea, even a ridiculous one. The Torah, through Joseph in Genesis and Moses in Numbers, tells us just how to keep our infrastructure safe and strong: Just speak truths confidently and publicly.
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