Crossing the Red Sea by Avi Ohayon
Rabbi Jonathan Kligler: Breaking News: Judaism Opposes Autocracy
Dear Friends,
As Passover approaches, I want to proclaim its central message: tyranny – the abuse of power that demeans, oppresses, and uses other people for one’s own aggrandizement – is wrong.
Judaism is unequivocal about this moral truth. The ancient story that we retell every Passover is our origin tale, the story of how we became a people. It teaches us who we are supposed to be. Having suffered dehumanizing bondage under a Pharaoh who claimed God-like authority over his subjects, we cast our own destiny in opposition to tyranny, and in opposition to the very idea that any person could rightfully claim such authority.
Our holy books insist upon the irreducible and immeasurable value of every single human life. The Torah describes this idea with the sublime metaphor that every human is created in the image of the Divine. The Talmud expands by saying, “Whoever destroys a single life is considered to have destroyed an entire world.”
We understand ourselves to be in a committed moral covenant with the Source of Life, a covenant that demands that we pursue a standard of justice in which everyone is equal under the law, and in which no one is above the law, not even a monarch. The Torah repeatedly exhorts us to rise to this standard, perhaps most famously in Deuteronomy 16:19-20:
You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality; you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and distort the pleas of the just. Justice, justice shall you pursue.
Judaism has no illusions about the complexities of human nature or about our tendency toward greed and selfishness. The Torah knows that the Children of Israel, to whom its laws are addressed, have no inherent superiority over the rest of our species. There is nothing special about the Jews. What is special is the aspirational – and, in the ancient world, paradigm-shifting and revolutionary – task that these former slaves are commanded to undertake: to build a just society, in which the whims of even the most powerful are subject to a higher law.
Initially a confederation of tribes with no supreme leader, the ancient Israelites eventually coalesced into a kingdom. The framers of the Torah therefore saw fit to include, in the same section of Deuteronomy cited above that commands us to pursue justice, a series of instructions that legislates requirements upon whoever takes the throne. This passage is known as “The Laws of Kings.”
The king is to be limited in how much wealth he accumulates, how many wives he takes, and how many horses (think private militia) he can amass. But the Torah is not simply creating a checklist here; the language, as is typical of the Torah, is crafted to express a larger principle:
[The king] shall not keep many horses, nor shall he send his people back to Egypt in order to accumulate more steeds. For the Source of Life has told you: “You must never go back that way again!” (Deuteronomy 17:16)
“Egypt” in this passage represents not the physical place but the landscape of oppression, the locus of tyranny. An Israelite king will certainly be tempted to increase his power, and to subjugate his own people in order to increase his own wealth. This is the aphrodisiac of power, precisely what Judaism opposes. Our God proclaims: “You must never go back that way again!”
But how is the king to be restrained? The ensuing verses explain that he is to keep a copy of this Torah by his throne, and that he is required to study it every day of his life. Again, this is symbolic language: the king must immerse himself in our moral code and reflect on it daily, as a check against the inflation of his ego. The king must practice this discipline so that
…he may learn to revere YHVH, the Source of Life… so that he will not act haughtily towards his fellow human beings. (Deuteronomy 17:19-20)
We are all children of God. No one more, no one less. We are all subject to the same moral law. To become a self-serving tyrant, to treat oneself as above the law is to abrogate everything that Judaism stands for. This Passover I will stand against all tyranny. I will speak out against the United States administration as it brazenly raises itself above the rule of law and the consent of the governed. I will speak out against the government of Israel as it ignores and defies Jewish ethics and the principles of modern democracy in its idolatrous pursuit of state power. I will speak out against the tyrannical and cruel regimes that preach the destruction of Israel.
This Passover I will also stand guard against my own tyrannical impulses. In my interactions with others, I will rein in my self-righteousness, my snap judgments, my own impulse to harden my heart. I will not claim power or superiority over another, nor will I allow them to claim superiority over me. We are all children of God.
Wishing a sweet, inspiring and liberating Passover to all who celebrate, wishing all of us continued courage, resilience and resolve,
Rabbi Jonathan Kligler
