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Jewish teaching is clear that sexual and erotic activity is permissible only within heterosexual marriage. Any other sexual pleasure is prohibited. Of course, it is difficult for human beings to live up to this principle in real life. The Hebrew Bible and Talmud therefore offer rules and teachings to help individuals live virtuously.

For instance, Jewish law prohibits non-marital erotic touch. It also forbids men from ogling women. The Code of Jewish Law declares that a person must be exceedingly careful regarding matters of sexuality, to the extent that one should avoid walking past a brothel.

It is therefore puzzling that conservative commentator Dennis Prager recently asserted in a discussion with Jordan Peterson that looking with lust is not a sin in Judaism. Then, though he explained that he was not giving a religious answer, he stated that men want variety, and that pornography in lieu of one's wife is awful, while pornography in addition to marital intimacy, as a substitute for adultery, is not awful. Importantly, Prager later clarified that the discussion did not fully express his nuanced view.His main point is that Judaism is a behaviorist, law-based religion in which sins of behavior are far worse than sins of thought.It should be emphasized that Prager is one of the great champions of the biblical worldview for general society and I am deeply indebted to him for his insights and accomplishments.

But the fact is that thought and intent do play important roles in Judaism, especially within the realm of sexuality. The Talmud teaches that one may not have relations with ones wife while thinking about another woman.

In the conversation with Peterson, Prager contrasts Jewish law and ethics with the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus declares, You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matt. 5:2728). Prager is certainly correct that capital punishment only applies to physical adultery in the Hebrew Bible (Lev. 20:10). But this does not mean that there is no equivalent to Jesus's teaching on lust in Judaism, as Prager says. Other teachings in the Sermon on the Mount contradict the Jewish tradition, but Jesuss teaching on lust is not that different from what the Hebrew Bible and Talmud say.

Lust is not a momentary, passing, unwilled and unwanted illicit thought. It is a sustained ideation that is prohibited. The Ten Commandments forbid lusting for a married woman (Exod. 20:14, Deut. 5:18). The Book of Job declares that having ones heart ravished by the wife of my neighbor is debauchery, a criminal offense, for indeed, pious Job made a covenant with [his] eyes not to gaze on a maiden (31:1). The Talmud goes a step further and describes masturbation as metaphorical adultery with the hand (Babylonian Talmud, Niddah 13b).

Lust and pornography are prohibited regardless of whether they are in lieu of or in addition to marital intimacy. The Hebrew Bible and Talmud do not agree with Jesus in equating lust with adultery, but they indicate that the gap between these two sins is quite small. One could say that in Judaism, adultery is a capital offense and watching pornography is a felony.

Pragers erroneous conclusion stems from a too simplistic understanding of thought sin vs. action sin in Judaism. Human beings are not mere robots. We are sentient. Actions can influence thoughts and thoughts can spur us toward actions. The Hebrew Bible therefore demands that we exert discipline over both. We must not commit adultery and we must not lust. We must not murder and we must not hate our brother in our heart (Lev. 19:17). Thoughts and actions are central to the human condition and are subject to Jewish law. The main distinction between them is that only actions are punishable in a human court of justice.

Furthermore, intentionally viewing pornography is not a thought crime, it is an action. Jewish courts in antiquity did adjudicate cases of putting oneself in a position to view lewd activity.

What about Pragers assertion that men want variety? Here Jewish law straightforwardly states that the man should focus on his wifes pleasure, not his own. Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks describes marriage as the single most humanizing institution in history. It is the place where spouses channel their brute sexual desire into love, dedication, and procreation. This can only be done by focusing on the needs of ones spouse. Giving supersedes receiving.

Marriage is therefore a covenant, which emphasizes how the new unit grows together, not what each individual gets out of it. Spouses may have different sexual expectations, and sometimes circumstances interfere with intimacy, but the covenant of marriage requires loyalty and commitment regardless. Pornography destroys that covenantal commitment and feeds existing dissatisfaction with fantasies about what could or should have been. Ultimately, it ruins marriage. Purity of mind, in contrast, increases dedication and builds marriage.

The Talmud recounts an incident where a man lusted for a specific woman to the point where doctors recommended satisfying his desire as a cure, lest he die. But the sages refused to allow any activity between them that could give him erotic pleasure.

Reality does not need to conform to mens desires. Rather, men need to control themselves according to Gods will and refine themselves into dedicated husbands and fathers. That is the Jewish teaching for a successful marriage, society, and civilization.

Rabbi Rafi Eis is the Executive Director at The Herzl Institute.

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What Judaism Teaches About Lust | Rafi Eis - First Things

Men, is it better this way? Better with Dylan Mulvaney in a bathtub of bubbles posing as a spokesperson for an all-American beer?

If you're a guy, a man's man, isn't that commercial the epitome of what cultural castration looks like? And doesnt it make you sick?

My husband Chris thought profoundly about this subject earlier this week, and persuasively suggested that today's men have been castrated. Or are at least at risk for the procedure.

I agree.

This castration started with the dependable, doltish, Disney dad. A bumbling fool who could barely string a sentence together. But it didn't stop there.

It's only gotten worse with Mulvaney, who was aghast that no one was excited to see his mug plastered on their beer.

Its also closer to home. Here, in Alabama. Did you notice the mass castration event which has smacked our statehouse?

During this legislation session, a handful of duly elected leaders men we sent to get stuff done refuse. Repeatedly.

Instead of working for us, these men choose to bow in terrified obeisance to their overlords. These overlords, aka lobbyists, use neutered officials to do their bidding. Officials who, instead of bucking wildly against a dirty political system, graze gently in the field, chewing only on pre-approved cud.

The week's events at the capital perfectly demonstrate the results of this mass castration.

Alabamians want an anti-ESG environmental, social, and governance bill passed.

We know that ESG is failing worldwide, but our officials dont seem to. They went along with companies like Regions Financial and let their pushback remove a sane, anti-ESG bill.

Or consider the issue of the Alabama state health officer. He ran roughshod over our lives during three horrific Covid years and is still using the Alabama Department of Public Health to push the clot shot. Despite efforts, our elected officials are still unable to provide meaningful accountability in this area. At least not yet. Which means never.

And it just gets better! Our elected officials are also unable and unwilling to deal with school choice. They're kicking it from one committee to the next, unable to tell us the truth: they don't want school choice because it doesn't pay to give up power and control of our schools.

And so, in their castrated glory, they mask all of it under a thin veil of morality.

Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson talked about this recently, and his comments were so accurate for what's happening in Montgomery that it took my breath away.

Speaking of Frederick Nietzsche and his critique of traditional morality, Peterson said that "most of what passes for morality isn't morality, it's just cowardice. It's not that I'm a good person or don't hurt you. It's that I'm afraid to hurt you." This enables individuals to "mask [their] essential fear and cowardice in the guise of morality.

Isn't that what's happened? People are too afraid to say what's happening, partly because they've been neutered, trained to cower instead of kickback. Why won't they offer meaningful discussion? Why won't they defend their reasoning? Why won't they step out from behind their facade?

It's because they can't. They've lost their ability.

But we know that real men, true leaders, don't cower. They stick around even when death is in the offing.

Consider what Japanese men did during the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, as told on the podcast series, Against the Odds.

The Thoku earthquake the most powerful ever recorded in Japan and subsequent tsunami damaged the nuclear plant's emergency generators, causing it to lose power. The nuclear accident that followed was the worst since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

When the Fukushima nuclear complex leaders discovered the dire situation, they gave workers the option to leave. Instead, 200 men, operating in groups of 50, volunteered to stay behind at their stations despite the horrific danger.

Where are men like that today? Are there any left in our state capital?

I'm not sure. But I hope that some will soon recover their backbone.

Even if not, there is still good news: We know fighters on the outside. Men like my husband and yours. Men whose work fills the pages of this platform. Men who work hard, day in and day out non-castrated fellows who refuse to cower like too many others in our capital or Hollywood. These men do what's difficult because it's right.

We see you men like the men of old. Men who know the better way. Warriors, all. Battling for the kingdom and, in turn, for our culture.

We can't count on our leaders. But it's a good thing that we can count on you.

Keep it up.

Amie Beth Shaver is a speaker, writer and media commentator. Her column appears every Wednesday in 1819 News. Shaver served on the Alabama GOP State Executive Committee, was a candidate for State House District 43 and spokeswoman for Allied Women.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819News.com.

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Amie Beth Shaver: The castration of today's men - 1819 News

The day that [Musk] officially took over the platform, a lot of right-wing figures had started tweeting anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, specifically the term groomer, says Kayla Gogarty, research director at Media Matters for America, a media watchdog group, referring to the conspiracy theory that LGBTQ people prey on younger people by grooming them. [These accounts] were basically saying that they were testing the waters of Twitters content moderation, she says.

Twitters policies do not allow slurs and tropes that intend to degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category.

There seems to have been a clear indication that people anticipated that Musk would reduce moderation, says Keith Burghardt, a computer scientist at USCs Information Sciences Institute and one of the co-authors of the paper. But its clear that hate speech didnt decline immediately after Elon Musk bought Twitter, suggesting that whatever moderation he did was not enough.

Even before it reduced the size of its moderation teams, Twitter wasnt particularly quick to remove hateful content, according to Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, founder and executive director of CyberWell, a nonprofit that tracks anti-Semitism online in both English and Arabic.

Data collected by CyberWell found that though only 2 percent of anti-Semitism contenton social media platforms in 2022 was violent, 90 percent of that came from Twitter. And Cohen Montemayor notes that even the companys standard moderation systems would likely have struggled under the strain of so much hateful content.If youre experiencing surges [of online hate speech] and you have changed nothing in the infrastructure of content moderation, that means youre leaving more hate speech on the platform, she says.

Civil society organizations that used to have a direct line to Twitters moderation and policy teams have struggled to raise their concerns, says Isedua Oribhabor, business and human rights lead at Access Now. We've seen failure in those respects of the platform to actually moderate properly and to provide the services in the way that it used to for its users, she says.

Daniel Hickey, a visiting scholar at the USCs Information Sciences Institute and coauthor of the paper, says that Twitters lack of transparency makes it hard to assess whether there was simply more hate speech on the platform, or whether the company made substantive changes to its policies after Musks takeover. It is quite difficult to disentangle often because Twitter is not going to be fully transparent about these types of things, he says.

That lack of transparency is likely to get worse. Twitter announced in February that it wouldno longer allow free access to its APthe tool that allows academics and researchers to download and interact with the platforms data. For researchers who want to get a more extended view of how hate speech is changing, as Elon Musk is leading the company for longer and longer, that is certainly much more difficult now, says Hickey.

In the months since Musk took over Twitter, major public news outlets like National Public Radio, Canadian Broadcasting Company, and other public media outlets have left the platform after being labeled as state-sponsored, a designation that was formerly only used for Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state media. Yesterday, Musk reportedlythreatened to reassign NPRs Twitter handle.

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Twitter Really Is Worse Than Ever - WIRED

(Bloomberg) -- Right-wing media entrepreneur Ben Shapiro has taken a $4.7 million stake in a struggling Israeli pharmaceutical company and joined the board.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Shapiro, 39, a co-founder of media company The Daily Wire and host of the Ben Shapiro Show podcast, now owns 4.8% of Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc., according to regulatory filings published late Monday. That makes him the companys biggest shareholder, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Shapiros investment comes after Orameds stock price collapsed by 80% due to its failure in January in a years-long effort to develop a method to deliver insulin to diabetics orally, rather than by injection. The company has since said it would explore potential strategic alternatives including an acquisition, merger, business combination, or other transaction.

Oramed rose 8.4% to $2.66 at 10:33 a.m. in New York. The company, which is traded in both New York and Tel Aviv, has a market value of $106 million, down from a peak of $1.1 billion in 2021.

This is a pure investment move, Shapiro said in an emailed statement. I identified Oramed as an undervalued stock in January 2023 given its low market cap, publicly disclosed cash holdings, and apparent low burn rate. I have great faith that the board will be able to use the companys capital in effective and diverse ways, including but certainly not limited to its current biotech-centered strategy.

Shapiro bought the shares on the open market, he said. The filings didnt say how much he paid for the stock, though his 1.9 million shares were worth $4.7 million as of Mondays close. He also now holds 20,000 restricted stock units that can be converted into additional Oramed stock over three years, the filings said.

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Podcasting, Media

His appointment to the board is unconnected to his podcasting and media ventures and is a private business decision, Oramed said in response to questions from Bloomberg News.

Shapiros ownership stake and extensive operational and business background and acumen makes him a valuable addition, the company said in a news release. He bought the shares on the open market and Oramed said it doesnt know what he paid for them.

The Daily Wire, founded by Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing, hosts podcasts by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and commentators Candace Owens and Matt Walsh, while producing streaming video content.

The company describes itself as right of center politically and one of the USs fastest-growing media businesses. Its part of a universe of right-leaning media companies that have sprung up in recent years, including the Peter Thiel-backed Rumble Inc. and former President Donald Trumps Truth Social.

(Updates with shares in fourth paragraph, statement from Shapiro in fifth.)

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Conservative Pundit Ben Shapiro Invests $4.7 Million in Israeli Drug Company - Yahoo Finance

When it comes to chiming in on controversial issues, the Tate brothers dont mince words. Andrew Tate, the oldest brother, is often regarded as the most outspoken of the Tate brothers. Tristan Tate, on the other hand, is also not afraid to express himself on social media. This has landed the Tate brothers in hot water countless times. Andrew has even been barred from using major social media platforms due to his aggressive remarks toward women.

The Tate brothers, though, continue to do the same, undaunted by the criticism. That said, Tristan Tate recently expressed his support for King Charles after he was asked to apologize for the monarchys racist history ahead of the coronation.

A coalition of leaders from 12 Commonwealth nations has joined forces to call on King Charles III to accept responsibility for the repercussions and long-term ramifications of British genocide and colonization by recognizing and apologizing for them ahead of the coronation.

After learning about it, the controversial celebrity Tristan Tate defended King Charles on his official Twitter account. He posted a tweet from Telegraph and urged King Charles to not apologize.

Loading embed tweet https://twitter.com/TateTheTalisman/status/1654083129185894400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Tristan Tate was of the opinion that cannot judge the people of the past by the standards of today. He wrote, You cannot judge the people of the past by the standards of today. You also cant apologise on the behalf of your ancestors for what they did centuries before you were born. None of these 12 nations would exist if it were not for the British empire. Do. Not. Apologise.

Tate received a mixed reaction to his statements, as some agreed with him. But there were also others who disagreed with what the British-American personality said. Similar to Tate, Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist, author, and media commentator, also backed King Charles on Twitter.

Last year, Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate made international headlines when they were detained in Romania on accusations of human trafficking and money laundering. They were freed from prison after more than two months when the court ruled in their favor following several denials of their appeal.

The Tate brothers are now under home arrest. The inquiry is still underway. As a result, their problems are far from over. In addition, their home arrest has been prolonged for another 30 days by the court.

Andrew and Tristan have always maintained their innocence and denied any wrongdoing. However, more than six victims have filed complaints against them in the case. As a result, it remains to be seenwhere the case will move next.

What are your thoughts on the Tate brothers case? What do you guys think about Tristan backing King Charles?

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Do Not: Andrew Tates Brother Tristan Defends King Charles as He ... - The Sportsrush