This week’s Torah commentary, written by Rabbi Jonah Rank, Rosh Yeshivah of Hebrew Seminary, has been sponsored by Alan Gotthelf in honor of Moshe Sayer.
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An antisemitic conspiracy theorist who writes under the pseudonym Roman Piso may be best known by antisemitism-centered watchdogs for having authored “Regarding the Jewish Proof Texts.” In this imaginative collection of misinformation, the author claims often that a secret “Inner-Circle” of rabbis “have used religion to maintain their power and wealth.” The author tells of having seen the so-called “Jewish Proof Texts,” which “would unlock everything… which would show the Jewish religion of the Sadducees, Christianity, and Islam, as deliberate fraud.” Although he expresses concern that “[organized religion] still is a multi-billion dollar business (or scam), in which the leaders rake in mountains of cash and pay no taxes for,” I am delighted to reassure any worried antisemites that my tax returns prove otherwise.
Roman Piso, as far as I can tell, thrives when delving deep into the rabbit holes of ideas that either cannot be fact-checked or just haven’t been. This is why Roman Piso often asserts—in the name of the late American conspiracy theorist Abelard Reuchlin—that the fictional character Arrius Calpurnus Piso invented Christianity in the 1st century C.E. and would become the progenitor of an unusually powerful lineage. Arrius Piso, according to Roman Piso, can now be ‘remembered’ as the ancestor of such great historical figures as King James, about two dozen popes, Hillary Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Eleanor Roosevelt (as well as, curiously, her husband Franklin Delano Roosevelt), and Barack Obama.
Near the end of the first presidential term of Donald J. Trump, Roman Piso published a paper titled “Royal Ancestry of Donald Trump.” In it, the author addresses the reader directly, with a critique of the President:
If you have observed the way in which Trump has acted during his presidency, you will know how he has acted as if he wanted to be more like a king or dictator than a president. This may be, because he is aware of how his own ancestors had once ruled.
The author proceeds to outline exactly how Donald Trump is also a descendant of the fictive Arrius Piso (“a Roman royal who wrote using various pen names,” explains the author, which may be why only he and Reuchlin ever knew about Arrius Piso, who was secretly Jewish).
For Roman Piso and likeminded individuals who surmise that a royal line has spawned, under the auspices of rabbinic supervision, some of the most influential members of the human species—one ought to consider how Jewish religious tradition has, in fact, wrestled with the idea of monarchy. Roman Piso did not specify what he meant by President Trump having “acted as if he wanted to be more like a king,” but a few qualities may come to mind for readers.
At its most fundamental level, a monarch—by definition—does not need any partners when issuing rules or judgments. A king or queen can, and usually does, act solo, which—as the Jerusalem Talmud taught around the 5th century C.E.—poses the theological danger of pretending that anyone has the right to play God:
רבי בא בשם רבי אבהו בשאמרו לו הרי את מקובל עלינו כשלשה על מנת שתדיננו… וטעה ודנן משיקול הדעת מה שעשה עשוי מפני שטעה… ישלם מביתו שהגיס דעתו לדון יחידי דין תורה.
דתנינן אל תהי דן יחידי שאין דן יחיד אלא אחד.
Rabbi Abba [taught] in the name of Rabbi Abbahu: Regarding one to whom [people] said, “Behold, you [alone] are acceptable to us as if [you were a valid jury of] three [judges], so much so that you shall adjudicate for us [solo]”—[how should Jewish law hold this judge accountable? If such a person] erred and adjudicated from weighing that [judge’s] own opinion [alone], what that [judge] did was done through error… That [judge] shall pay [a fine] from their own domestic [personal account] because they were haughty in their mind to adjudicate solo any law of the Torah.
[This is] as we were taught [in Mishnah, Avot 4:8]: Do not adjudicate solo, for no one adjudicates solo except for [the God whose name is] One. (Jerusalem Talmud [Vilna edition], Sanhedrin 1:1 [1b–2a].)
Human rulers need dialogue partners. As smart as the brightest among us may be, none of us is capable of considering the nearly infinite dimensions of the moral and legal quandaries that politicians confront. Having a partner in dialogue gets us closer to what should feel like the best outcome.
Maintaining a monarchy though is not just about decision-making; a person who parades as a king or queen also has to project authority and to demand respect. Since the beginning of Jewish history, our ancestors’ run-ins with people of high political standing only sharpened this point. In commenting on Numbers 6:24, Pesiketa Rabbati, a rabbinic text composed circa 845 C.E., highlights a literary sequencing in the Torah that the rabbis considered atypical of human affairs. This verse in Numbers records the first words of the ‘Priestly Blessing,’ which priests were enjoined to recite in order to channel divine blessings that would flow through these holy people and along to the rest of the Israelites. But, Pesiketa Rabbati asks, had the Israelites done anything at this point to curry favor in God’s eyes? Only later in the Book of Numbers do we read that Moses had heeded God’s most urgent command of the moment, namely building a Tabernacle, where God could reside (Numbers 7:1; compare with Exodus 25:8). In Pesiketa Rabbati, Rabbi Abbahu articulates this dissonance:
אין מידותיו של הקדוש ברוך הוא כמדת בשר ודם מלך בשר ודם נכנס למדינה משבני המדינה מקלסין אותו ומשבחין ומכבדין אותו ואחר כך עושה להם כל צורכיהם… אבל הקב”ה אינו כן אלא עד שלא עשו ישראל המשכן נתן להם הברכות תחילה
The attributes of the Holy Blessed One are not like the attributes of [a king] of flesh and blood. A king of flesh and blood [only] enters a state where the local statespeople celebrate him and praise and respect him. Afterwards he does for them whatever their needs are… But the Holy Blessed One is not like this. Rather, even before [the people] Israel had built the Tabernacle, [God] granted them blessings from the start. (Chapter 5.)
Among head honchos, benevolence may operate quid pro quo (as per the song from the musical Chicago, “When you’re good to Mama / Mama’s good to you”). God, unlike human tyrants, knows that whoever has the upper hand must be willing to be the first to extend a helping hand.
Ancient Jews knew that the Hebrew Bible depicts God as (either akin to or precisely) a monarch (as in Isaiah 33:22 and 44:6; Zechariah 14:9; and Psalms 10:16, 24:10, 29:10, and 89:19) or ruling as broadly as a monarch (as in Exodus 15:18 or Psalms 93:1, 96:10, 97:1, and 99:1). Yet Jews always found a chasm of difference separating the heavenly Sovereign from human rulers. It was therefore eminently possible in 1903 for Rabbi Dr. Ignaz Ziegler (1861–1948) in Karlsbad (now in the Czech Republic) to publish and to analyze 166 different classical rabbinic analogies or parables about how God is a wholly different monarch than any human donning a crown. (See Rabbi Ziegler’s Die Königsgleichnisse des Midrasch.) This rabbinic doctrine resonated completely with the theology that the Spanish-born (and later North African) doctor and philosopher Rabbi Mosheh ben Maimon (c. 1135–1204) posited in his Judeo-Arabic classic, Guide for the Perplexed. For Maimonides (as he is often called now), describing God through ‘negative attributes’—identifying what God is not, rather than what God is—would be the only way that we could use human language to deepen our understanding of God. Calling God our Sovereign or likening our universe to a boat that God might steer would all be insufficient metaphors. “Even this,” he wrote, “is not a real relation, a real simile, but serves only to convey to us the idea that God rules the universe” (I:58, 1903 English translation by Dr. Michael Friedländer). For all that our sages time and again declared God’s supremacy as a ruler and nicknamed God “מֶלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים” (Melekh malkhey hammelakhim, “the Sovereign over sovereigns over sovereigns”) (see Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5 and Avot 3:1 and 4:22)—God is barely a sovereign at all.
Although God’s word allows the Israelites to have chosen an earthly king in this week’s reading from Parashat Shofetim, God immediately lists laws that even the monarch cannot overrule. The king thus may not own too many horses or too many wives, must inscribe a Torah and study it carefully in public, and be humble (Deuteronomy 17:14–20). If there were such a thing as a Jewish king, it would have nothing to do with acquiring an excess of planes or other vehicles; gloating over sexual conquests; selling an unread factory-made bible; or bragging about how much wealth and resources the king has earned through tariffs. If these are kingly traits that have disturbed Roman Piso, the Torah can proudly report that nothing of this sort could gain the approval of an authentic Jewish Inner-Circle (even though there is no such thing).
Often the victim of political or religious persecution, the Jewish moneylender and philosopher Don Yitzchak Abravan’el (1437–1508) traveled across what are now Spain, Portugal, and Italy in search of a place to call home. Having seen up close the blessings and curses of serving nobles and royals, Abravan’el determined that the Jewish people already had built into their religion the three most essential functions he associated with a king, rendering a monarchy necessary for most other societies in his worldview. First, the Jews did not need kings to lead warfare; instead, designated military leaders (like Joshua in the Book of Joshua or Gideon in Judges 6–8) sufficed for the Jews. Second, a human king did not need to write a code of law for the Jews; God had already done that with the Torah. Last, no king was needed to exact punishments for criminals; Jewish sages had already established rabbinic courts to keep society in check. Praising the forms of republics Abravan’el witnessed bubbling up in Florence and Venice—with rotations of new people rising to the ranks of leadership every few months—Abravan’el believed that the Jews would never need a king again. (See Abravan’el’s commentary on Deuteronomy 17:14–20.)
As Rosh Hashanah draws near and Jews prepare to declare anew God’s sovereignty in the world, we remember that, as God’s creatures, we do not truly admire kings. Conspirators might accuse Jews of running the world, but no Jewish values worth sustaining could substantiate such an accusation. We give credence to civil society, and we believe in a God whose place in this universe is unlike anything we know. We do not need kings, but we need leaders who model holiness and empathy, who can embody unspeakable Godliness on earth.
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