Part of the weekly Torah reading is the Haftorah, which you’d think would be half a Torah, but it’s not. Basically, some rabbis (usually dead, white, and male) got together and said, “Look, those (((civilians))) are paying too much attention to the Torah and ignoring the later books. Yeah, we know those are the trash books, but we need the filler.” So as part of the Torah reading, they tacked on chapters from the trash books, supposedly chosen to have some parallel with that week’s Torah reading. Haf as good, but still, obligatory.

But interestingly, this week’s Haftorah is almost apropos. The Torah reading is from Genesis, where Abraham hosts some angels who tell him, “Bang that dried up old wife of yours, Sarah, and you’ll knock her up.” Which he did and, despite her skepticism, she did as well. In the meantime, Lot is drinking wine and fucking his daughters after getting his wife turned into salt. It’s all very confusing.

What’s not confusing is the Haftorah, which comes from Second Kings and deals with a theme familiar to anyone who watches silent movies, Dudley Dooright, and PornHub: a widow is behind on her rent. Unfortunately, unlike the familiar versions of the story, she was not particularly MILFy, so the evil landlord did not make the usual offer of services in lieu of rent payment. She had to come up with the money, and that was tough because unemployment was high and her dead husband’s pension fund had been gobbled up by greedy billionaires.

There was only one alternative: the two kids. Human trafficking was a thing more out in the open in those days, and a couple of cute pre-pubescent boys might fetch a nice rental fee for the owner. This was the landlord’s logic, anyway, the landlord being a greedy billionaire.

Nor is offering up the kids unprecedented- remember Lot (the star of this week’s Sedra) offering up his daughters to a mob if they would agree to leave him alone? Haftorahs are like that, parallels in stories. In any case, along comes Elisha, the original Miracle Man. “Hey lady,” said he, “what’s the problem?” She explained that, through no fault of my own, I’ve lost my income and am about to get evicted.”

Elisha responded in his best Dave Ramsey manner, “Before you do anything drastic, let’s review your assets.” The widow sobbed, “I got nothin’. Just these two kids and a jar of oil.”

“AHA!” exclaimed Elisha, “We can work with this. Go grab some empties from your friends and neighbors.” Which she did. “Now, pour the oil into the first empty.” Which she did. “Now pour the oil into the second empty,” which she also did. “Now the next one.” The widow, who was reasonably quick on the uptake, noticed that no matter how many empties she filled, she didn’t run out of oil. And being of Hebraic disposition, she also noted that she could continue filling jars well past the point where she had enough to sell to pay the rent.

Eventually, she socked away a fortune in oil and lived happily ever after. It is fortunate for her that Jew scientists had not yet discovered Conservation of Mass-Energy.

So, here’s the takeaways:

  • There’s a long history of Middle Easterners making a fortune in oil that they just happened to come across.
  • When you can’t pay the rent, expect a bailout.
  • Wealth can be created by an increase in assets, not just an increase in money.
  • Governments can’t create assets out of thin air. It takes a miracle-working prophet to do that. All governments can do is take assets from others to give to you or just print more money.
  • We have no miracle-working prophets.
  • Prepare to whore out your kids. Elisha ain’t coming to help you.
  • The jars all came from friends and neighbors. She didn’t build that.