Be Wary of Governments

As a person with deep ties to Venezuela, it’s been a particularly dizzying few weeks. Both of my parents grew up in Caracas, a place I visited regularly throughout my childhood and adolescence, a city that the U.S. recently bombed and attacked. 

My cousin and my aunt are in Caracas, living in the house that my aunt and mom were raised in, and recently mourning the loss of my uncle. Other family friends are still in Caracas, and many have left the country over the last decade, living in exile from the place they call home. We are not a politically monolithic family or community– we hold different positions and perspectives concerning everything from capitalism and socialism to Trump to Israel-Palestine. And also, we love each other. 

In my efforts to disentangle the different narratives about what Trump’s actions in Venezuela mean, talking to family and trusted friends living in this period of great uncertainty about Venezuela’s future, I’ve noticed the desire, among Western media sources and social media, among social justice movements opposing Trump’s actions, and opposition movements to Maduro, to oversimplify, to ask: Who is the bad guy here, and who is the good guy? What a human instinct, to want to know which side we are on. But this week, I fear that it’s not the right question.

I am holding the hope that members of my family feel after so many years under a repressive regime, alongside the foreboding awareness that a president who is systematically unraveling and gutting a democracy at home will not bring democracy to another nation. A Venezuelan family friend posted: “You can contain multitudes. You can be against an authoritarian government in Venezuela, and also, you can be outraged about the idea that the United States would rule Venezuela.” Jewishly we might say, elu v’elu, these and these are both true, more than one thing can be true at once, and the world we long for, a place of freedom, safety, sovereignty and human rights for all people is not a zero sum game. 

I’m holding the contradictions: that Maduro is gone but Venezuelans continue to live under the authoritarian government; that Trump has deported Venezuelans from the US en masse over the past year and will not offer them asylum, but now claims to be their liberator; that Amnesty International has flagged both the human rights abuses of the Maduro government and human rights concerns now that the United States has ousted him; that Maduro will be tried in a court of law, not for the things he did to the Venezuelan people but rather for charges shaped by US interests. 

Though we want to understand a complex situation in simple terms, tzarich iyun, it requires deeper engagement.

In the early verses of Sefer Shemot (the second book of the Torah), we read:

.וַיָּקׇם מֶלֶךְ־חָדָשׁ עַל־מִצְרָיִם אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יָדַע אֶת־יוֹסֵף

A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. (Exodus 1:8)

This is the beginning of the unraveling. The Israelites, having migrated to Egypt at the end of the book of Genesis, have lived there now for generations. They arrived to this foreign land in good standing with its Pharaoh, thanks to Joseph’s political savvy. But time has passed, and a new Pharaoh takes the mantle, one who does not find himself accountable to Joseph or his people. 

We know this Pharaoh well. He is the one who forces the Israelites into enslavement, the one who ruthlessly oppresses them. When they prevail and multiply, he is the one who issues a decree of infanticide, demanding that the Hebrew male babies be thrown into the Nile. 

And more than just that. This Pharaoh, this human king, is an archetype in Jewish tradition. Someone we come back to again and again, our ultimate shorthand for tyranny.

As I read the news and listened to reporting day in and day out about Venezuela, I find myself reflecting on the history of my family, whose origins trace back to Romania and Czechoslovakia, countries that collaborated with Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s, surrendering them to labor camps and concentration camps, then sending the survivors into exile in other countries, including Israel and Venezuela, and eventually the United States, all countries that I believe are now under the authority of Pharaohs. 

If my own family’s history teaches me anything about kings and kingdoms, it is, as our sages say in Pirkei Avot, to be wary, not just of kings, but of governments:

.הֱווּ זְהִירִין בָּרָשׁוּת, שֶׁאֵין מְקָרְבִין לוֹ לָאָדָם אֶלָּא לְצֹרֶךְ עַצְמָן 

Be wary of the government, as they draw close to a person only when they need him for some purpose. 

.נִרְאִין כְּאוֹהֲבִין בִּשְׁעַת הֲנָאָתָן, וְאֵין עוֹמְדִין לוֹ לָאָדָם בִּשְׁעַת דָּחְקוֹ

They seem like good friends in good times, but they do not stand for a person in his time of trouble. (Pirkei Avot 2:3)

Such was the fate of the Israelites, migrants to the land of Mitzrayim (Egypt), where with the change of the regime and the rise of a new king, state power turned on them.  The archetype of a human king, a melech basar vadam, is developed in contrast to Melech Ha’olam, or melech malchei hamelachim, the King of all Kings, the Heavenly Sovereign. 

When I was ordained, we received new tallitot from our seminary, and we had the option to request a verse from Torah or liturgy to be embroidered on the tallis bag. I picked אין לנו מלך אלא אתה – which means, “we have no king but You.” We sing it on the high holidays– Avinu Malkeinu, eyn lanu melech ela ata– but also in softer, less dramatic moments, like Nishmat Kol Chai on Shabbat morning. 

I picked it for my tallis bag to remind myself every time I stood to wrap around me the tzitzit that together form and represent the 613 mitzvot of Jewish tradition, that real safety, justice, and equality cannot come from placing our faith in mortal kings and empires, but instead from drawing close to these commandments, which teach us how to care for one another; how to make time in our busy days to reconnect with the Oneness of All; how to protect and defend the vulnerable, and affirm the sacredness of every life. 

Eyn lanu melech is basically the ancient analog of the slogan “No Kings”– the name of the sweeping protests that took place across the United States, and around the world, in June and October of this past year, decrying authoritarianism. More than five million people participated in these protests, chanting “No Kings!” Which to me means no human kings– not Trump, not Maduro, not Netanyahu, not Putin– not any of them. 

Instead, this liturgy declares that we place our faith in a source above and beyond the power-hungry human despots who exploit our lives and loved ones, our planet and our future. 

As the powers of this world tighten their grip, let us be wary of governments and draw on ol malchut shamayim in our prayer, in our activism, in our showing up for one another. These may seem like radical ideas, but they are ancient and deeply Jewish, embedded in the lived experiences and wisdom of our ancestors. May they be resources for us in the days to come, for survival and resistance. 

Mónica Gomery is a rabbi at Kol Tzedek Synagogue in Philadelphia, and the author of three books of poetry.