Many Things True at Once
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 the U.S. has just bombed and attacked.
…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 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.
… As I read the news and listen to reporting 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:
“Be wary of the government, as they draw close to a person only when they need him for some purpose“
“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)
…Instead, this liturgy declares that we place our faith in a source above and beyond 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. May they be resources for us in the days to come, for survival and resistance.
—MÓNICA GOMERY, Lilith Online, January 2026.
Gomery is a rabbi at Kol Tzedek Synagogue in Philadelphia, and the author of three books of poetry. Photo of the author’s mother, grandparents and aunt at the top of El Ávila mountain, which overlooks Caracas, in 1956.
