Shalom My Gantseh Megillah Family and Friends,

Appropriate to this time of year, I have been thinking about Passover and comparing Moses and Pharaoh’s story with modern politics. Clearly the “powers that be” have not learned very much over the millennia. For whatever reason, government officials and leaders need to be put through all kinds of contortions, threats, manipulations and coercions, before they finally come clean and do the right thing.

Pharaoh promised Moses the Hebrews could leave Egypt, and then he reneged. God cursed the Egyptians with hideous plagues forcing Pharaoh to reconsider. Hideous is hardly hyperbolic since the plagues started with blood and then progressed to frogs, vermin, beasts, cattle disease, boils, hail, locusts and darkness. After each of these miserable plagues Pharaoh would go back on his word to free the Hebrews from slavery. The tenth and final plague, the slaying of the first born, brought Pharaoh to his senses, and he allowed Moses and the Hebrew people to leave Egypt.

Wouldn’t it have been easier for Pharaoh to have just kept his word in the first place? The answer is foolishly obvious, and yet, thousands of years later, our leaders play the same potentially lethal game as was played in Ancient Egypt.

Frequently, our government leaders make promises, only to break them when the original agreement becomes inconvenient. Obfuscation, avoidance, misdirection and denial are preferred to any clear and honest explanation. Only when serious consequences loom is there any attempt to return to the truth. A recent example would be the 9/11 Commission.

A commission to examine the vulnerabilities that led up to the attacks of 9/11 was initially resisted by the administration. They cited a laundry list of convoluted reasons why such an investigation was unwarranted. After months of pressure by the victims families and some of their elected representatives, the administration ultimately gave in.

As with the ten plagues, delivering on the promise has required persistent wrangling from appointing and withdrawing Henry Kissinger’s chairmanship, imposing and then extending a deadline for completion of the report and most recently the refusal and then ultimate agreement to allow Condoleezza Rice to testify in public, under oath. Delivering on the promise is a tortuous process, which has to be eked out one inch at a time.

In order to ensure my comments are non-partisan here is another recent example, this time from the Clinton Administration. Most of us can see, in our mind’s eye, the president wagging his index finger as he stipulated that he did not have “a sexual relationship with that woman, Ms. Lewinski.” It took enormous pressure, leading to impeachment before the president finally told the truth about his liaison.

No matter how much time passes, our egos are still allowed to dictate our actions. We believe we can get away with things our predecessors could not because we are smarter and more adept than they were. It’s always the other guy who is the schmuck and didn’t play his cards right. Inevitably though, the truth catches up with us.

If the time we spent covering our tuckhases was used towards positive ends, many of our personal, domestic and international problems might be solved or at least alleviated. Lying is often done for the sake of expediency but covering up a lie requires exponential infusions of energy and time. In simpler terms, coming clean cuts your losses.

If you think my ideas are a bit overly simplistic, you’re right. But I really am trying to make a very simple point. Throughout history we have allowed power to corrupt us. Those of us who do not achieve highly influential positions in life, which is most of us, wind up feeling as if we have no control over our world. One way we can take a great deal of control is by not permitting our elected leaders to lie to us. We must always demand the truth, whatever it may be. We must let our elected servants know that obfuscation will no longer work. We must stop using the old wink and nod with the assumption that this is how politics works and we just have to accept it. We do not have to accept it. We are obligated to insist on being treated with respect and veracity.

I for one am making my first Peysakh resolution. I am resolving to tell my elected officials that they had better level with me, or a plague may visit their homes. In this case, at the very least, it will be the plague of unemployment.

Arnold and I wish each and every member of our Megillah family and sweet and serene Peysakh. Next year in a peaceful Jerusalem.

Much love to all of you,
Michael

Michael D. Fein
Editor-The Gantseh Megillah
The Weekly Gantseh Megillah