MIKETZ: SolarWinds, China, and Crossing The Rubicon

I want to start by repeating the opening paragraph of my post on IsraelUnwired from earlier today:

“From chaos to chaos, the US is experiencing perhaps the most trying moment in its history. All of the fears about the 2020 election have come to pass and now with the revelation that the SolarWinds platform has been hacked with an active infiltration for more than six months has essentially, all assumptions about security and the efficacy of the elections themselves should be thrown out.”

What is happening is something far deeper than a mere cyber attack on the US. The SolarWinds hack and the subsequent confusion over just how bad it still, especially when it comes to trusting the election results cannot be overstated.

With trust in the US government and its various institutions at an all time low and with factionalism and tribalism growing by the day, the US is on verge of a true systemic collapse.

The Chinese Communist Party, along with other state actors like Russia, North Korea, and their allies have been waiting for the final execution of their plan to take down the US. After all, communist leaders have always believed the US could be taken “without firing a shot.”

There are serious military leaders in the US, both retired and active urging President Trump to take action. Those retired leaders are openly asking him to “cross the Rubicon” the way Caesar did and “restore the Republic.”

This is not about the Rubicon. This is about an inflection point in world history; what we call a Ketz or end in Hebrew. An end is obviously not a final moment in time, but an end of one period and a beginning of another. A Ketz is the transitional moment when that happens.

That is what this Torah portion is about. Joseph spent two years in the dungeon in Egypt and in the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, the end of that period, the Ketz occured and he was taken out into the light.

Enemies of freedom surround us all. Chassidut teaches us that these physical enemies are just manifestations of the spiritual enemies we are fighting within. We are at a Ketz, much the same as Joseph and the Maccabees – both of who went from darkness to light.

Over the next few weeks and months our enemies will attempt to sow fear and division across the world. They will attempt to keep us in darkness and yet if we understand that the Rubicon people are urging President Trump to cross is not just his, but in truth it exists within each of us, then we have nothing to fear at all.

Most of humanity lives in a universe of distraction, which is the darkness we are fighting against. They want to forget about the pressures of the world and inject the noise and darkness further in. They want to remain in the “dungeon of Egypt.”

This is the Ketz we are in. The darkness may feel unnavigable, but at the end we will be lifted out into the light.