Calendar
February 2005
A REAL JEWISH DREAM
By Rabbi Aaron Kriegel
President's Weekend is not just an American group of holidays; it also gives full expression a Jewish idea. We are not supposed to give any special power to any person, and that includes presidents. While he or she is in office, the law provides the president with certain authorities that disappear when he or she leaves office. Not for a moment does a former president retain the power that people gave to him or her when the president was inaugurated.
President Clinton lost all his power the moment that President Bush was sworn in as president. It took Clinton a time to understand the cruel fate that every president who lives long enough must undergo when he leaves office, but the American people knew right away that Clinton was just another ordinary person.
And no one remarks that because his father was President of the United States, George W. Bush became president after him. That was just a stroke of good fortune, but everyone understands that the power to make a president is in the people and will always remain there.
President's Weekend used to be two holidays: Washington’s birthday and Lincoln’s birthday. When the two were joined as one for one long weekend, people accepted the time off but not in the name of any specific president. You see, no matter what the legacy is that a president leaves, when he leaves office only that legacy remains.
That is the way that it was supposed to be with Israel too. We were not supposed to have a king—God was our King. The great prophet Samuel understood that. He tried to convince the people not to have a king appointed. He tried to convince them that they were not like the other peoples of the earth. He tried to convince them that there was danger in giving life long powers to any one man. Of course the people did not listen to him. They demanded a king. They would not stop their protest until a king was appointed for them.
The result was rather sad. David used his power to steal a wife and have her husband killed. Solomon used his powers to impoverish a country. Finally the country split into two and there were two kings. The kings of the north and of the south took power into their own hands and pushed their own agendas ultimately bringing ruin to the people.
The stories of the kings after Solomon are only stories of intrigue and immorality, stories of a select group of people who believed that kingship gave them rights that normal people did not have.
By the time that the Maccabees won their revolution, they had absorbed the psychology of the Greeks. They believed that they were responsible for the fate of the people, and so they proclaimed a holiday in their own honor. In generations they became more corrupt and less Jewish and turned the Jewish state into the corrupt state against which they rebelled but generations earlier.
The simple reason for so much of the immorality and intrigue was the result of giving people life power and allowing them to believe that they were better than those who ultimately were the source of their power.
By the time of the Mishnah the rabbis had rebelled and had created a system where all power belonged to God as evidenced in the votes of man. They understood that no person had the complete truth, and that all men working together had the obligation to try and discover truth together.
It was that idea that ultimately fused into the idea of America almost one thousand five hundred years later. A new world was created when all men were equal and no man could ever ascend to the power of king.
The rabbis understood and Americans today understand that truth can be derived from the free market place of ideas; that the most equitable solutions to problems happen when people talk and listen to each other and vote and accept the outcome of votes.
For Jews since the Mishnah and for Americans since the birth of our country, God is not found in the divine right of kings, but in the voice of an educated people who work together to create a society that strives for the ideas of freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.America truly is and has always been a Jewish dream.
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Rabbi Aaron Kriegel |
Cantor Marsha Schreier |
President Marc Wurgaft |
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© 2004 Congregation Beth Ahm of West Essex |
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