be wary of governments

Dear KT! In response to the survey feedback I received in the Spring, I am beginning a practice of inviting other members of the KT clergy team to write Friday emails. You can expect to hear from one of them roughly monthly. We begin 2026 with some words from Rabbi Mónica. I always want to hear from you, and you are welcome to direct your responses to her directly at [email protected]. - Rabbi Ari Lev
As a person with deep ties to Venezuela, it's been a particularly dizzying week. I imagine not everyone knows that both of my parents grew up in Caracas, a place I visited regularly throughout my childhood and adolescence, a city that this week the U.S. 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 this week 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.

This week 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 Parshat Shemot, this week’s Torah portion, we read:

וַיָּקם 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.

This week, as I read the news and listened to reporting day in and day out about Venezuela, I found 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:

Pirkei Avot 2:3
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. 

Such was the fate of the Israelites, migrants to the land of Mitzrayim, 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 Haolam, or melech malchei hamelachim, the King of all Kings, the Heavenly Sovereign. My favorite line of liturgy is אין לנו מלך אלא אתה, 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. It 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 2025, 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 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. ​