This past week, US President Barack Hussein Obama delivered his State of the Union. The yearly American ritual fulfills rules in Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, requiring the President to periodically give Congress information on the “state of the union” and recommend any measures that he believes are necessary and expedient.
Politics (from Greek, meaning “of, for, or relating to citizens”) is about influencing people and achieving a positions of governance and power – attaining organized control over a community. And it is about the skill of distribution of power and resources. Fortunes fall and rise and nations come and go in the rough and tumble game of politics.
We have been reading these past few weeks about the first political moments of the Jewish nation. Moses gains audience with the ruling power. Moses meets Pharaoh where he holds court (and swims everyday in the Nile) and tries diplomacy. It fails, as G-d told him it would, and the story of the ten plagues unfold. It will take the death of his own family members to move Pharaoh to knock on Jewish doors and allow them their safe exit.
The encounters with Pharaoh were primarily on the banks of the Nile river. Last week he was commanded to ” Go to Pharaoh” – directly into his inner chambers.
The tactic of choice sometime is to go straight into the Belly of the Beast.
The two streams of thought – the address to congress and Moses’s final influence of power for Jewish self determination – that converge on the same week, makes “politics” unavoidable.
But unlike the French statement, Pharaoh did not say “Egypt without Jews is not Egypt.” He was of the political persuasion that Without Egypt there are no Jews!
And historically speaking, the French proclamation is of seismic implication.
JEWS AND HISTORY
If there was such a thing, who should give the State of the World address? And what would it consist of? Would more people care what was said than seem to listen and care to the President’s thoughts?
The State of the Union used to mean the State of the World. The seat of power this past century was with the White House. The USA was the richest,the strongest and the greatest influence. When the president spoke the world listened. However, 8 million viewers tuned into President Obama’s remarks, according to preliminary estimates. 100,000,000 people watched last year’s super bowl. The seat of power seems less glamorous these days.
And there was a glaring empty hole in the President’s speech: Israel.
Which is odd. The world is awash in terror and the Jews are to blame according to our old “friend” President Carter, so why would the President of the United States leave the Jews out? (other than his banal remark about the rise of anti-Semitism).
Has the Land of Israel lost importance? Do we not need to hear his show of support? What does it mean for peace if the US President ignores us?
In days of old ” if there is no France, there is no Jews” was the norm for the world. The Pope had his Jews. Napoleon had his, and proclaimed himself to be their liberator. The list goes on. If there was no ‘goldene medina‘ where would we go to?
And with the protection and grace of the host country, the Jewish political fortune rose and fell. Each community had their spokesman representative to plead the Jewish case by “the side of the Nile.” Often by guile, but almost always by bribes and taxes, the Jews survived.