Our Gemara on Amud Aleph discusses the liabilities and after effects from an ox that gores another ox and injures it. The Gemara says that the owner of the damaging ox is liable for further deterioration in health and value of the ox. This is because the owner of the injured ox can claim, “The horn of your ox is still buried in my ox”. That is to say, the effects of the original attack continue.

Bereishis Rabbah (2:4) states that Greeks would religiously persecute the Jews and force them to declare in writing upon a bulls’ horn, “I have no portion with the God of Israel.” Some say, the horn of an ox was devised as mocking the Jews for the sin of the Golden Calf. Additionally, the Minoan religion, which many Greeks followed, used the symbol of the ox horn for power, so they may have meant it as a simultaneous rejection of the Jewish God and an offering to the Minoan Gods.

Sefer Ohr Avraham (Miketz, 5367, Shabbos Zos Chanuka) says the horn represents the horn of our Gemara. An insidious injury whose toxic effects continue to burrow deep into the victim, as if the horn remains stuck inside. This represents the demoralization and heretic influences that the Greeks inflicted on the Jewish psyche.

In our times as well we struggle to fight off the poisonous aspects of secular culture. The relentless indoctrination of media has been effective in influencing young people to adopt values that are arbitrary at best, and destructive at worst. For example, in my professional encounters with persons who grew up with social media, even those who are religiously meticulous, they unequivocally accept that homosexuals “are just born that way”, even though the scientific evidence for this is utterly inconclusive. Many also see abortion in a sympathetic light, using the tropes and propaganda of “right to choose”, instead seeing it as a halakhic and moral issue, subject to competing interests of mother’s health and the fetus’s right to live. These influences, like the trauma from the ox’s horn, continually burrow deeper into the soul. Seemingly innocuous children’s shows and movies foist values and messages that are hostile to Jewish spiritual sensitivities. If any of us once thought more liberal modes of thought at least stemmed from well intentioned moral equations, the cat’s out of the bag. We have seen over the past few weeks how these same “compassionate activists” for human rights supported terrorists who would happily murder, rape and decapitate anyone who is not of their faith. 

There are close to one million abortions committed in the United States annually. What percentage of these fetuses are viable humans, and not posing material physical or mental danger to their mothers? Let’s say even 20%. More chillingly, one statistic is that 13,000 month month abortions are committed annually (https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/302232-nearly-13000-late-term-abortions-happen-every-year-a/ ) Can all of them be medically necessary? I doubt that by far. Our so-called civilized society is murdering humans who can live outside of their mother’ womb in wholesale quantities! How easily the propaganda of “the right to choose” stopped all conscience and reflection, even just reasonable moral equations. How could a fetus in the ninth month not be considered a viable human under any legal or moral system? 

But these are only glaring examples of toxic, immoral  and frankly irrational ideas that claim to be civilized. There are many other secular modes of thought that hurt us and destroy the Jewish spirit, such as defining the management of sexual impulses as unhealthy, or the belief that happiness and satisfaction are achieved by self-gratification. We are actually happiest when giving to those we love and making sacrifices for what we believe in. We must be constantly vigilant to avoid being brainwashed, and to use the lens of Torah principles to ground our behavior and ideas to achieve true civilization.

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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