Dear Rabbi Jacobson,

Thanks for the perceptive take on the words of Bilaam.

I just have to point out something that is very important.

Secular Jews know just as well as you and I that the Torah is true. Trust me.

If they avoided mitzvot for the sake of shrimps and hanky-panky, we would know.

The reason they reject a religious lifestyle is because they're compassionate, shy and charitable and feel/fear that Halakhic observance will make them less kind, less accommodating, and less altruistic.

Understandably. They see that sometimes visibly religious Jews are inconsiderate and disrespectful vis-à-vis outsiders.

On the other hand, in my experience, Tikkun Olam type Jews tend to be extremely kind.

Unlike non-Jews who are stupid mostly due to ignorance, envy or hatred, 80% of Jewish stupidity is due to misplaced goodness.

When pressed, your people routinely opt for kindness over smarts.

And this is precisely the reason why in politics, where smart and kind policy choices are so often in conflict, Jews are idiots, as Ze'ev Jabotinsky pointed out presciently.

Any Polish peasant or Indian rickshaw driver, had he been Israeli, would have realized very early during the 1990s that courting Arafat and his gang was incredibly stupid.

But yids are kind, so they said, "we've oppressed them so long, they deserve dignity, one makes peace with enemies, everyone in the world seeks peace for their children etc.."

Any normal nation would have gotten cold feet at the very latest, when Arafat in South Africa revealed his intention to use autonomy as a springboard to destroy Israel.

But you guys only understood the obvious on October 7th.

Rabbi Jacobson, you should see this blindness, not as a reason to resent the left or the Arabs or the world, but to love and admire the hopelessly fanatical kindness of Am Yisrael.

So if you want to draw secular Jews to religious observance, your appeals must appeal to this irrationality.

If you appeal to their pride or fear of antisemitism, they will easily talk themselves into believing that antisemitism is the fault of horrible Jewish supremacists like you, Moshe Rabbeinu, or the Almighty.

Instead of acknowledging the obvious, they will fight haredim, they will find faults in traditional Judaism, or abandon religion altogether.

A Talmudic mind can be a curse just as much as a blessing.

The blessing is Jewish razor-fine logic, ability to quickly grasp nuances, connect different ideas, and question everything intelligently.

The downside of all this is that a Jew can easily talk himself into believing almost anything and defend arrant nonsense very persuasively.

Take Peter Beinart, who I consider vain but otherwise very sincerely Jewish, and his defense of a binational state in Eretz Israel. He does this with a sincerity and a persuasiveness that no goy could match.

Who but a Jew would contrive a political fantasy that mortally endangers his own people's survival in the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity?

There is no people like the Jewish people.

As far as goyim and antisemitism are concerned, I have to confess that over the course of the last 30 years I have experienced a bizarre metamorphosis..

I clearly remember seeing Jews very viscerally and intuitively as the ultimate other. This knowledge of otherness was probably implanted in me by the Christian charge of deicide.

But long after I had lost my Catholic faith, I sensed that whereas other national and cultural differences were cosmetic, the difference between Jews and non-Jews was deeper.

Even though I might have felt closer to a fellow Italian Jew than to a Shintoist Japanese in Japan or an animist Congolese in Kinshasa, I knew that the difference with the Jew alone posed a theological and psychological challenge to my own faith and identity.

And that is why antisemitism is at the same time absolutely irrational and extremely understandable.

The world has over and over and for very good reasons feared Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism and yet it is only Judaism that arouses true hatred.

And this hatred is roused by our very very deep fear/realization that Judaism and the Chosenness of Israel are true.

Personally, I hold that if Judaism were a missionizing faith, antisemitism would die out over the next couple of decades..

The evidence that Jews and Judaism are a metarational blessing under so many circumstances and in so many societies is simply overwhelming.

So we Gentiles have two choices: Either we acknowledge this and convert, or we pick on, magnify and trumpet every single Jewish fault, and use it to attribute a demonic nature to Jews and Judaism. This demonic nature, which is secularized in the form of the Rothschilds, George Soros, the Zionist lobby, global finance and the Illuminati, is essential to account for a reality that otherwise only the Revelation at Mount Sinai, Ma'amad Har Sinai, would explain.

The first option is hard. Not just because conversion to Judaism is complicated, time-consuming, and uninviting, but also because right now the 7 Noahide mitzvot are a Soviet Lada compared to the Jewish limousine.

The second, even greater reason, is that Judaism is a nation - not just a faith.

And most people are far more attached to their ethnicity and national identity than to theological truth.

As a result, all these factors prod us to criticize, condemn and hate you. By doing so, we protect our own national, religious, and cultural ego and self-esteem just as much as that of our friends, our relatives, and our ancestors.

Hostility to Judaism and Jews is, in my view, inherent in any ideology or belief system that postulates a universal truth.

Sooner or later, people always realize that the truth of Judaism and miracles of the Jewish State pose a deadly threat to alternative political, social, and philosophical truths.

That is why we need to find a way to fulfill Zechariah's prophecy:

"Thus says the Lord of Hosts: In those days, ten men from all the languages of the nations shall take hold of the corner of the garment of a Jew, saying: 'Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'"

This is a powerful vision, but I also find it hurtful. We non-Jews are here portrayed as acting like beggars. And given how status-conscious human beings are, Rabbis and Dayanim really need to find a way to establish a "spiritual Israel" that allows the nations to feel Jewish enough to fully identify with Am Yisrael the Tanakh and at the same time, to see the 7 Noahide mitzvot not as spiritual Lada, but as the stepping stone on a path of psychological, ethical, and spiritual ascent lasting a lifetime.

Rafael Castro is an Italian Noahide, a graduate of Yale and Hebrew University, and the father of three kids: Alma, Gabriel, and Ruben. Rafael can be reached at rafaelcastro78@gmail.com