May 7, 2025

 

As the Rambam explained in Moreh Nevuchim, purveyors of ancient idolatry typically preyed on people's fears to ensnare them. But fear alone was not always enough, especially when the cost of appeasing the false god was steep.

Especially when the cost was sacrificing one's own child.

Chazal relate how the purveyors of Molech solved this problem. The following information comes from Eicha Rabba 1:37 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber edition, addendum to Va'eschanan, where the Molech service is described, with several variations between the two sources.

One was not actually required to offer his child as a sacrifice. The Molech temple contained seven chambers, with the idol itself inside the innermost chamber. If one brought a flour offering (Eicha Rabba version) or a bird (Tanchuma version), he would be granted entry into the first chamber. If he brought more expensive animals, he would be granted entry into additional chambers accordingly.

If he brought his child the priests would praise him and say, “There is nothing better than this!” Only then would they escort the father into the seventh chamber, where he was allowed to kiss the idol. The priests then took the child and placed it on the fiery-hot copper palms of the idol.

Then they banged on drums and shouted to Molech that he should find the offering sweet. This was done not because the priests themselves believed in any of this, but in order to drown out the screams of the child, lest the father change his mind at the last instant.

This brief description of the Molech cult provides a wealth of insight into how they ensnared so many people, including the upper crust of society.

Painful sacrifice was glorified and sanctified. A person was judged strictly by how much he was willing to give up for Molech. The only way to achieve greater honor was to endure greater suffering.

Naturally, one would not be forced to offer a more painful sacrifice, but the one who brought a mere pigeon or sheep would feel ashamed, and would surely be made to feel ashamed. “Your neighbors are sacrificing their children to appease Molech and keep us all safe, and you're just offering a goat?!”

Indeed, Eicha Rabba relates that the priests would approach those with several children and guilt them into sacrificing one. “A certain idol told me,” the priest would say to the father, “that of all the children you have, you don't want to offer me one of them.”

At the same time, the most horrific aspects of the suffering were concealed as much as possible. The burning of the child was not a public spectacle, which would attract louder objections. Rather, it occurred deep inside the temple, where only the father and trusted priests would witness the actual sacrifice.

The priests also went to great lengths to turn the most critical, painful, downright torturous moments into a celebration: when the father officially delivered the child to the Molech priests, and the agony of the child being maimed or killed.

These same tactics continue to be used for modern forms of Molech sacrifices. During the Covid era, the general population was urged – and eventually forced – to make “painful sacrifices for the greater good”. Fear of death from a pandemic that threatened all of humanity was a powerful motivator, but that alone was not sufficient. The sacrifices were simply too painful, too horrific in their own right.

Elderly nursing home residents and hospital patients were denied visitors; many of them deteriorated and died alone.

Children were traumatized by being forced to wear masks, having their bodies frequently invaded with PCR tests, living in constant terror, being denied normal social contact and fresh air, and enduring lengthy quarantines over and over again – despite being perfectly healthy.

People who needed surgery or regular medical treatments were denied care.

Regular working people were driven into poverty.

Families and communities were torn apart.

And, of course, this was all followed by the “safe and effective” shots, so we could protect grandma and go back to normal. You wouldn’t want grandma to die and get locked down forever, now, would you? So take some shots.

Fear alone was not sufficient to achieve that level of compliance and sacrifice for so long. Among the many tactics the modern priests of Molech used was to celebrate the sacrifices, sanctify the pain. Those who sacrificed the most received the greatest tribute, whereas the less sacrificial — those who simply wanted to keep their business from collapsing and their children from going insane — were smeared as selfish and an existential threat to society.

That's also why we saw so many choreographed videos of dancing hospital staff, where, as with Molech, the greatest horrors of Covid went on behind closed doors. We didn't hear the desperate screams of patients in isolation being forcibly intubated, injected with Remdesivir, and even left to starve, before being wrapped in plastic and dumped in the ground.

Covid deaths, of course.

Now let's talk about the IDF.

The Erev Rav-controlled corporate entity known as the State of Israel has done a masterful job conditioning Jews around the world to view the IDF as an authentic Jewish army fighting for the Land of Israel and defending its people. It's so tantalizing; we want so badly for it to be true, and have invested so much of ourselves in this delusion, that many of us continue to overlook, downplay, or rationalize away the stark reality.

The stark reality is that, despite all the scripted blustery comments from public officials, the IDF has no intention of defeating our enemies, promoting settlement of the Land of Israel, or placing the safety of the soldiers and the citizens first and foremost. They never did. Even the most ardent supporters of the IDF know this and admit it – yet they continue to support the IDF no less ardently, no matter what.

The IDF has no reasonable explanation for their actions — and inaction — on October 7, yet no heads have rolled, no one responsible has been tried for reckless manslaughter or treason, and public support for the IDF remains as high as ever. Mistakes happen, whatever.

The only victories the IDF has achieved since Nixon was president have been against Jewish settlements, which they have brutally uprooted again and again. No mowing the grass there! When it comes to making parts of Israel Judenrein, the IDF yanks out every blade of Jewish grass by the roots, and never fails. (Note: these operations are often carried out by the Civil Administration – quite a misnomer – but, like the IDF, this is just another branch of the Defense Ministry – another misnomer.)

Everyone knows this, but, like a battered wife, they continue supporting the IDF with their money and their blood. After all, it's a Jewish army, they are keeping us all safe, and where would we be without them?

It's a mitzvah! The biggest mitzvah of all!

The IDF has spent nearly two years supposedly fighting a war in little Gaza to defeat Hamas and rescue hostages that were taken while the IDF was mysteriously absent. Meanwhile, over 16,000 soldiers have been maimed during this time, and the Defense Ministry is conditioning the public to expect over 100,000 total wounded soldiers by 2030 (see here).

What do we have to show for all these painful sacrifices?

Nada. Nothing. Zilch.

But it would have been even worse otherwise. So they confidently claim, same as they confidently claimed during the Covid era. Either we offer lots and lots of Molech sacrifices, or everyone dies. Your choice. There is simply no other alternative.

Is the public enraged at the high priests of the IDF? Of course not. They are the best people to lead us during these difficult times. They are the only people fit to lead us. We need more of the same — lots more of the same — so we can finally achieve different results. The sacrifices are painful, but they must go on, if only to justify all the previous sacrifices. That’s what many of the posters say: In their death they commanded us to have victory!

Who is the public enraged at? Haredi refuseniks. Somehow it would all be better if they were forced to join the IDF. How so? Reservists might get a little more time off, and haredim could get blown up for nothing like everyone else. It’s their moral, national, and religious duty to suffer more.

The conversation is always on who isn't sacrificing, or isn't sacrificing enough, not why anyone is still sacrificing at all.

As with Molech, the IDF high priests turn the most critical, painful, downright torturous moments into a celebration. Initiation ceremonies are the proudest moments of a proper Israeli parent's life, where they offer their child to the IDF and wonder if he will return at all, let alone whole. The fear is celebrated as a rite of passage. The sacrifice is sanctified.

We are shown macabre videos of soldiers without arms and legs singing and dancing. We hear from seriously wounded soldiers who want nothing more than to rejoin their unit and go back for more. We don't hear the screams of the children sacrificed to Molech, lest the father have a change of heart. We don't hear the screams of maimed IDF soldiers, lest others lose their motivation to “serve”. The singing and dancing drowns it out. We celebrate the sacrifices, only the sacrifices.

We don’t hear from soldiers who are sorry they went at all.

We don't hear from the seriously wounded soldiers who are seething with fury at their commanders for sending them into death traps, or suffering dubious intelligence failures, or otherwise destroying their lives for nothing. Surely these people exist, but the media is strangely uninterested in them.

We don't hear from soldiers who are livid that they sacrificed life and limb to capture terrorists under insane rules of engagement, only for them to be set free in lopsided exchanges, or for nothing at all, a “gesture of goodwill”.

We don't hear from soldiers who are fed up with capturing territory and surrendering it back, over and over again like a Jack-in-the-box, each time suffering a bloodletting.

They don't get to light torches at cynical Holocaust ceremonies, which also sanctify death.

They show us dead soldiers as “Am Yisrael Chai” plays joyously, perversely, in the background.

We are resilient. We are determined. We will keep living so we can keep dying, or go crazy and run away.

Soldiers who foil the script by killing large numbers of enemies like superheroes and emerging whole are not celebrated and honored. We have no idea who these soldiers are, even though they, too, surely exist. The state is ashamed of these soldiers. They are more likely to be prosecuted than honored.

If you want to enter the seventh Molech chamber and kiss the idol, you have to offer the ultimate sacrifice.

If you want to receive the greatest honor from the IDF and the state, you have to be killed.

We should not delude ourselves into believing that those who served Molech were primitive and foolish, unlike the modern intellectual Jew, who is enlightened and discerning.

We are still serving Molech and sanctifying death, and we haven't learned a thing.

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