March 7, 2020 “Merry with wine, King Ahashuerus ordered Queen Vashti to display herself to his banquet guests”   Book of Esther 10-11

Powerful men are enabled to project their power illegally, but with immunity. Even the tragic fate handed Vashti for her refusal to be exploited is merely a Biblical subtext to Esther’s courageous entrapment of Haman. Non-disclosure agreements, access to media, professional control, etc., all permitted Weinstein, Cosby, Trump, Clinton, Strauss, Lauer and untold less famous others to freely foist their depravity upon women as best exemplified by Trump’s famous Access Hollywood recorded boast that his celebrity allows him to grab women’s genitals with total absence of accountability. It’s not just sexual imposition, however. Trump’s sly manipulation has corrupted the very definition of “truth” and, with the collaboration of Fox News, he has been able to seize the narrative whether misrepresenting immigrants, climate change, critical regulation, or providing immunity to his rich friends and acolytes. Unchecked power has no limits.

February 28, 2020 “…take for me a portion from every man”    Terumah 25:2

Two years after Trump and his Republican corporate toadies promised their enormous corporate tax cuts would generate dramatic growth and expanded manufacturing, the chief effects (according to non-partisan data) has been a punishing (for our children!) trillion-dollar deficit. Since the tax cut, job growth is actually lower than the last years of the Obama administration. Business capital expenditures are dramatically down, manufacturing indexes are seriously reduced, foreign earnings repatriation is curtailed, and overall tax revenues are significantly decreased, refuting (again) the laughably discredited “Laffer effect.” What is UP, besides income inequality, are corporate dividends and stock buy-backs proving once again the lie of “trickle-down”. The tax cuts merely rewarded wealth. Not exactly the Biblical model.

February 21, 2020 “For a poor person who cries out to Me … I am compassionate”    Mishpatim 22:26

Parsha Mishpatim is a divine canon for relations among people that is best characterized in aggregate as a guide to living compassionately. It is a code of humane conduct as applied in employment, in treatment of the most vulnerable – women, immigrants and the poor, in judicial ethics, in business, and in criminal justice. In our society, the cynicism spreading in these pursuits is a stain Jews especially must resist. Though It may be tempting to slander organized labor who defend the rights and dignity of workers, to disparage the poor as lazy or “entitled”, to deplore the uneducated as apathetic, and to portray immigrants as criminals and opportunists, here we learn to solve the complex issues in our society by extending a sympathetic hand to the most indigent and exposed and pulling them up. We’re commanded so.