The Torah readings of both last week (Leviticus 6-8) and this (Leviticus 9-11) describe in detail the eight-day inauguration ceremony for the Tabernacle, performed by Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai. Among the special sacrifices brought during this ceremony is a “sin offering.” Puzzled as to what sin it could atone for, Sifra—a rabbinic commentary on Leviticus probably produced around the 4th century CE—suggests that it is the sin of taking money during the massive fund-raising drive for the Tabernacle that yielded gifts given in response to social coercion rather than voluntarily. Shlomo Zuckier comments:

Sifra assumes that a donation made under pressure may be regarded as ill-gotten gains requiring atonement. [Thus] Sifra argues that, when people act to avoid censure, rather out of an understanding of the value of their actions, something is fundamentally amiss. . . . Coercion, of the softer or harder varieties, is sometimes necessary. But it always has a cost, and there is a point at which forcing someone else to fulfill the commandments becomes an act of theft.

That Sifra offers this teaching specifically regarding the Tabernacle [is] crucial to appreciating its message. . . . People often assume that, the more important the cause, the less important the means; arriving at the proper outcome is paramount, and the process must take a backseat. Sifra argues precisely the opposite. . . . Extracting charitable donations through social pressure might not be ideal, but no sin-offering is required to atone for doing so. The Tabernacle has loftier standards.

For many years, Lebanon has been a de-facto satellite of Tehran, which exerts control via its local proxy militia, Hizballah. The problem with the U.S. policy toward the country, according to Tony Badran, is that it pretends this is not the case, and continues to support the government in Beirut as if it were a bulwark against, rather than a pawn of, the Islamic Republic:

So obsessed is the Biden administration with the dubious art of using taxpayer dollars to underwrite the Lebanese pseudo-state run by the terrorist group Hizballah that it has spent its two years in office coming up with legally questionable schemes to pay the salaries of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), setting new precedents in the abuse of U.S. foreign security-assistance programs. In January, the administration rolled out its program to provide direct salary payments, in cash, to both the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the Internal Security Forces (ISF).

The scale of U.S. financing of Lebanon’s Hizballah-dominated military apparatus cannot be understated: around 100,000 Lebanese are now getting cash stipends courtesy of the American taxpayer to spend in Hizballah-land. . . . This is hardly an accident. For U.S. policymakers, synergy between the LAF/ISF and Hizballah is baked into their policy, which is predicated on fostering and building up a common anti-Israel posture that joins Lebanon’s so-called “state institutions” with the country’s dominant terror group.

The implicit meaning of the U.S. bureaucratic mantra that U.S. assistance aims to “undermine Hizballah’s narrative that its weapons are necessary to defend Lebanon” is precisely that the LAF/ISF and the Lebanese terror group are jointly competing to achieve the same goals—namely, defending Lebanon from Israel.