Dear Friends,
Earlier this week, the American President deposed a head of state by force. Five years ago this week, on January 6, the same American President tried, preemptively, and failed to do the same thing here in the United States.
Without over-interpreting the parallels between the two putsches, one failed and one successful, together, though, the two events illuminate the core ethos of that American President: that power alone matters.
The right to rule belongs to those willing and able to dominate others by force. That might be right.
It is tragic today, and it was tragic 3500 years ago when Pharaoh demonstrated the same political philosophy. Exodus records, “[Pharaoh] said to his people… let us deal shrewdly with them [the Hebrews]… So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them… and ruthlessly imposed upon the Israelites the various labors that they made them perform…ruthlessly” (Genesis 1:9-14)
The art of power is complex. It may be used to serve and improve the lives of the community, or it may be used to increase and consolidate power itself. It may be a tool of good governance, or it may be a ruthless device to aggrandize the wielder of power.
Sadly, we are at an inflection point in America, not unlike one in Egypt millennia ago, when the ruler demonstrated the direction to which both power and leadership intention were targeted.
Moreover, once power itself is turned against the people, it is no longer power but tyranny.
Hannah Arendt, the incomparable political philosopher of the mid-20th century, offered the following in a French news interview following Watergate, on July 6, 1974:
The [American] Founding Fathers never believed that tyranny could arise out of the executive office, because they did not see this office in any different light but as the execution of what the legislation has decreed in various forms. I leave it at that. We know today that the greatest danger of tyranny is, of course, the executive.
Arendt wrote and taught following Hitler, Stalin, and the milder Nixon. I cannot imagine what she would say about our 21st-century power-mongers.
Our hope arises from following Pharaoh’s oppression of our forebears in the second millennium BCE God took notice, we rose, and we created a homeland built on the values of truth and the instructions of Torah, each for the pursuit of justice. May we keep those instructions near to our hearts and in the front of our minds.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
Earlier this week, the American President deposed a head of state by force. Five years ago this week, on January 6, the same American President tried, preemptively, and failed to do the same thing here in the United States.
Without over-interpreting the parallels between the two putsches, one failed and one successful, together, though, the two events illuminate the core ethos of that American President: that power alone matters.
The right to rule belongs to those willing and able to dominate others by force. That might be right.
It is tragic today, and it was tragic 3500 years ago when Pharaoh demonstrated the same political philosophy. Exodus records, “[Pharaoh] said to his people… let us deal shrewdly with them [the Hebrews]… So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them… and ruthlessly imposed upon the Israelites the various labors that they made them perform…ruthlessly” (Genesis 1:9-14)
The art of power is complex. It may be used to serve and improve the lives of the community, or it may be used to increase and consolidate power itself. It may be a tool of good governance, or it may be a ruthless device to aggrandize the wielder of power.
Sadly, we are at an inflection point in America, not unlike one in Egypt millennia ago, when the ruler demonstrated the direction to which both power and leadership intention were targeted.
Moreover, once power itself is turned against the people, it is no longer power but tyranny.
Hannah Arendt, the incomparable political philosopher of the mid-20th century, offered the following in a French news interview following Watergate, on July 6, 1974:
The [American] Founding Fathers never believed that tyranny could arise out of the executive office, because they did not see this office in any different light but as the execution of what the legislation has decreed in various forms. I leave it at that. We know today that the greatest danger of tyranny is, of course, the executive.
Arendt wrote and taught following Hitler, Stalin, and the milder Nixon. I cannot imagine what she would say about our 21st-century power-mongers.
Our hope arises from following Pharaoh’s oppression of our forebears in the second millennium BCE God took notice, we rose, and we created a homeland built on the values of truth and the instructions of Torah, each for the pursuit of justice. May we keep those instructions near to our hearts and in the front of our minds.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
