The Eternal Refrain of Tyrants
On the way to work this morning, I tuned into the latest episode of the IKAR Podcast - "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." As Rabbi Morris Panitz took his congregation beat by beat through the well-known introductory chapters of the book of Exodus - a new Pharaoh rises to power and enslaves the Israelites, G-d remembers the Israelites and sends Moses back to Egypt, Moses asks Pharaoh to let his people go - I realized two things.
First - Rabbi Panitz points out the strangeness of Exodus 1:8, which says that the new Pharaoh "did not know Joseph." How could Pharaoh not know about the man who had advised the previous Pharaoh, who had saved Egypt from famine, who had helped ensure the economic prosperity of this kingdom for an entire generation? Rabbi Panitz suggests that this is a purposeful not-knowing, an intentional forgetting. Pharaoh chose to forget that Joseph and the Israelites were good, normal, helpful members of society, because it became useful for him to use them as a source of fear. He turned the Egyptians against their Jewish neighbors and exploited the Jews as a source of forced labor.
This intentional forgetting might seem strange to us today - but less so for our ancestors. Wasn't that the repeated experience of Jews in the Old World? They would become citizens of a new nation. They would take on essential economic jobs like bankers and merchants (because it was commonly illegal for Jews to own land, and considered immoral for Christians to charge interest). They would help the nation prosper as good, normal, helpful members of society... and then, out of nowhere, the leaders of that nation would "forget" the Jews, rile up the people against them, seize their possessions, and kick them out or kill them.
Our ancestors, writing the story of Moses and Pharaoh into the Torah for the first time, told it through the lens of their current experiences. Mythology is often incredibly useful as an illustration of the present-day world, full of lessons for the future. This ancient story tells us to be cautious - no matter how "useful" we make ourselves, no matter how much we assimilate or try to prove that we're just like everyone else - when a nation's leader needs a scapegoat, they will not remember that we were good, normal, and helpful. They will "forget" us.
Our ancestors knew, and we must remember - we need to see the malice behind such "forgetting," and we cannot allow ourselves to go along with our leaders as they "forget" someone else. We must think for ourselves, remember for ourselves, and speak up for ourselves.
Second - when Pharaoh first came into power, he "did not know Joseph." When Moses first asked Pharaoh to let his people go so that they may worship their god, Pharaoh said, "I do not know this god."
Whenever someone confronts Donald Trump about the awful acts of his administration, what does he say? "I don't know anything about that."
It's troubling, and yet somehow reassuring, that tyrants have always been the same. They have always seized as much power as they could. They have always shaken off responsibility for their crimes with feeble excuses. And, though it may take a long and difficult road to achieve it, they have always fallen in the face of resistance. Fascism and tyranny are old, tired playbooks. We will outlast them.
