Is it Saturday again? Judah Goldin’s translation:
Beware of the ruling powers! For they do not befriend a person except for their own needs: They seem like friends when it is to their advantage, but they do not stand by a man when he is hard-pressed
This is traditionally attributed to Rabban Gamliel son of Judah the Prince. It’s odd that it doesn’t really fit the format; it doesn’t begin he used to say; there seems to be some sense that it is properly part of verse two, rather than being a verse on its own, but that’s how it’s numbered, so there.
The Rambam insisted that this verse applied to the Roman government of the time, and was applicable only by extension to those ruling powers who were like Rome. But then the Rambam was attending physician on the Sultan in Cairo. He had experience that one ruling power was not like another, having a variety of experiences with ruling powers both personally (he is said to have treated Richard Lionheart) and through his writings (burnt by the Inquisition in France).
But the Rambam doesn’t so much seem to be interpreting this verse as disagreeing with it. Or, at least, the verse as it stands is general, and if we take it as a description of the ruling powers of the writer’s time, then we aren’t left with much of anything useful, are we? I mean, surely, if some ruling powers befriend people for something more than selfish reasons and stand by men when hard-pressed, but others do not, then what use is the Scriptural verse? How do we tell the difference between the kinds of ruling powers? Surely individual judgment is insufficient, as the moment when individual judgment about the ruling power is most untrustworthy is when that ruling power is befriending you.
My take on it is this: although it is true that governments, powerful people, kings, deans, caliphs and CEOs are different, one to another, the advice of the sage is to act as if the power in question were Rome. You can’t as an individual make power trustworthy or not, and you can’t be sure that you have correctly judged the trustworthiness of that power, but what you can do is act as if you are being used for the advantage of the powerful, and be prepared for that power to abandon you when you are hard-pressed. You may be wrong, but you will be prepared.
Note, though, that this applies only to the Ruling Powers of your time, and to them as ruling powers. You can’t take the untrustworthiness of the powerful as a reason to be stingy with the weak. Nor can you fail to participate in your community our of that suspicion. You have to act with the suspicion, not fail to act because of it.
In the US at this time, we’ve changed from some people who are obviously untrustworthy to some people who are not so obviously untrustworthy. And I don’t say that Our Only President (how odd to say that with pride) isn’t trustworthy, or that Vice-President Biden isn’t, or Speaker Pelosi or Majority Leader Reid. Or the mayor of my town, for that matter, who seems to be a good guy. It’s that I think it’s important to avoid thinking that any of them will necessarily have our backs, if they don’t need to for their own advantage. The key, politically (in the kind of democracy we have) is to keep being advantageous, largely by having a lot of people agree with you and flaunting that mass of people, but also by throwing your weight around within the various structures that influence things.
Which, interestingly, often means getting Your Guy into a position within the Ruling Powers (say, as Secretary of Energy or attending physician to the Sultan), and then remembering that as one of them, you have to remember that Your Guy may also fail to stand by you when hard-pressed. It ain’t beanbag, but then neither is the rest of it.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.