Pinned and Wriggling
"And you could have it all / my empire of dirt / I will let you down / I will make you hurt."
I.
Before Judah was blessed with the burdens of leadership, he was embroiled in a personal scandal of real consequence:
After selling his brother into slavery, losing his two sons, and losing his wife, Judah unknowingly impregnated his widowed daughter-in-law, Tamar. When Tamar’s condition was revealed, Judah (unaware of the circumstances), ordered her to be executed in light of her apparent indiscretion.
Shortly before the sentence was to be carried out, Tamar discreetly informed Judah that he was — in fact — the father of her unborn twins. Judah promptly and publicly took accountability for his actions, exonerated Tamar, spared her life, and her children were born in good time.
Jacob thereafter singled out Judah for leadership — and his lineage culminated in the Davidic dynasty.1
***
There are many different layers to this story, but for now, I want to read it with an eye towards contemporary politics. Because through that lens, the story seems utterly fantastical:
A rising leader gets caught up in a scandal. [OK. That part, at least, seems all too believable].
Rather than broadcasting Judah’s indiscretions to the world, Tamar quietly approaches him — not seeking a payoff or seeking to drag him down. She just gives him, quietly, a chance to do the right thing.
Judah doesn’t have her silenced or try to cover the whole thing up. Instead, he exonerates her and accepts responsibility for his shortcomings.
And then Judah gets … promoted!
Every single one of these narrative beats strains credulity. Imagine Judah as a candidate for higher office — and imagine how CNN or the New York Post would report this story.
I roll my eyes at attempts to retell Biblical stories in contemporary settings, but here the thought exercise is actually quite revealing:
Leader screws up. Leader voluntarily takes responsibility for his errors. Leader gets promoted.
… such a thing would never happen today.
And we’re so much the worse for it.
II.
To lead in the twenty-first century is to submit to a very painful and very public vivisection — and to subject your loved ones and closest associates to one as well.
Leadership has always been a thankless job — being second-guessed, questioned, and challenged necessarily comes with the territory. But we have blown past the point of normal and healthy scrutiny: The klieg lights have turned into lasers, and leaders are being burned alive or torn apart. Their personal lives are discussed in exacting and excruciating detail. Their dirty laundry (literally) is aired out in public. Their youthful remarks are pored over, replayed endlessly, and read in the most uncharitable light possible.
And as a result, there are only three kinds of people who willingly go into public service nowadays:
Masochists. These are the people who simply aren’t wired to feel the pain that the rest of us feel. Their skin is thicker and their nerves are less sensitive. Of course, we need leaders who are better suited to the burdens of leadership — not everyone has the stomach for it. But in this day and age, the only people capable of bearing that burden have a truly inhuman tolerance for pain. And that, by definition, disqualifies them from the role. Such extraordinary numbness to pain renders them incapable of understanding and empathizing with the people whom they are tasked with leading. When confronted with the pain of another, their response (which is not necessarily a callous one) is to think but I don’t feel anything. And that’s not someone you want in a position of power.
Grifters. These are the people who have figured out how to make the ordeals of leadership personally profitable. If modern leaders are expected to pay a pound of flesh for the privilege of leading the public, this category of people knows how to extract a kilo in return. And again, while we perhaps might have a perverse sort of respect for their business acumen, we should be terrified of their cunning. Leadership for them is an investment with a lucrative payoff — and they’ll look to us to foot the bill for their troubles.
Martyrs. These are the good people who have no ulterior motives and who are wired not so differently from the rest of us. They go into the role with eyes wide open, knowing exactly what is coming their way, but they do it anyway, because they are — at the end of the day — true believers. They actually care about putting others first. The problem, though, is that martyrdom is not a scalable strategy: For every leader of good conscience, there are dozens of masochists, grifters, and cowards to dilute and neutralize his or her impact. We have martyrs, but we don’t have nearly enough of them.
We don’t get Judahs. We get people who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the nuclear codes, or who have no chance of ever getting real power.
***
I often hear suggestions about how we might improve the quality of public sector leadership: Pay people more — like they do in Singapore. These well-intentioned ideas aren’t bad ones. But they won’t really do anything because they simply don’t change the incentive structure for a would-be leader. Currently, the value proposition for a well-intentioned public servant is this: Your kids’ lives will be a living hell. You’ll be hounded by self-righteous mobs — they’ll camp outside your home and house of worship and shout slogans at you at all hours. You’ll get credible death threats and actual attempts on your life.
Nobody with a self-preservation instinct would choose to be a leader under such circumstances. An additional $1,000 per month will not hurt, but it simply does not change the underlying calculus.
The only way that we’ll be able to crowd out the masochists and the grifters is if we make it such that leadership doesn’t entail martyrdom — if we make it possible for critical masses of good people to go into public service, live their lives while in office, and then ride off peacefully into the sunset.
… And that starts with a good look in the mirror.
III.
Know us by our fruits: Every story about leaders is fundamentally a story about citizens. If we are being led by masochists and grifters, it’s because that’s what we want and because that’s what we are choosing.
We don’t have Judahs because we are doing everything within our power to keep Judahs away from positions of leadership.
And this stems from two mutually reinforcing errors — sins, really.
A. Bloodlust
People — as a species — have an insatiable appetite for spectacle, particularly when it’s at the expense of our fellow human beings.
We fancy ourselves better than the Romans who used to pack the arenas to cheer as gladiators dueled to the death — or watched with glee as helpless Christians were fed to the lions. I’m not so sure. The number of people who watched and circulated the videos of Charlie Kirk getting murdered suggests our self-congratulations are not warranted.
And either way, all we’ve really done is sublimate our bloodlust into a market for character assassinations and hit pieces. When the media provides us with lurid and hysterical exposés about our leaders’ private lives, they do so because they know we’ll click on them.
As much as I’d like to blame the current and execrable state of affairs on CNN, the Drudge Report, Facebook, Twitter/X, or TikTok, these platforms are only powerful because we tune into them. If there were no demand for a tawdry, exploitative, and pornographic media system, there would not be a tawdry, exploitative, and pornographic media system.
… We’re enriching them while we’re hurting ourselves. Our bloodlust fuels a system that chases away our best, our brightest, and our worthiest leaders.
I’m skeptical that we can address this problem by regulating suppliers. But if we can end the demand for vivisections, the market will die.
That means unsubscribing from the entire media ecosystem.2 Tying ourselves to the mast. Resisting the temptation to click or tune in. But really, we need to cultivate within ourselves the only morally appropriate reaction to bloodsport: Revulsion.3
B. Fear
Our demand for spectacle is matched by our need for certainty and safety. Frightened, we seek out those leaders who promise to assuage our fears. I have the answers. I can fix it. And conversely, we punish vulnerability in our leaders because we loathe it in ourselves.
But we have it precisely backwards.
My dad once drew my attention to the fourth chapter of Leviticus — where God outlines the rules concerning a guilt-offering. That chapter describes four persons or groups that might need to bring such an offering: (i) the anointed High Priest; (ii) the entire community of Israel (i.e., as a collective body); (iii) a prince of the Jewish people; and (iv) any member of the public.
As my dad points out, these laws are typically introduced with a conditional clause: “If [אם] the anointed high priest should sin,” “and if [ואם] the entire assembly of Israel should err,” or “and if [ואם] a single soul should sin by mistake…”4
However, the guilt-offering of the prince — i.e., a leader — is introduced with an anomalous phrase: אשר נשיא יחטא.
Asher nassi ye’kheta. That a prince shall sin.5
It might be that there are blameless priests and private individuals. It might be that the body public avoids incurring guilt as a whole. But leaders? It’s inevitable that they will stumble.
That might be seen as cause for lamentation. But Rashi — the peerless medieval exegete — offers a clever bit of wordplay that inverts how we should think about the essential fallibility of our leaders.
He clues in on the oddity of the word, אשר. Noting its linguistic similarity to the word אשרי [ashrei], meaning “happy” or “fortunate,”6 Rashi remarks:
That [asher] a prince will sin. This language connotes ashrei. I.e., fortunate is the generation whose leader is mindful to seek atonement for his mistakes; and all the more so one that feels regret for his willful misdeeds.7
Leaders will mess up — and even worse. That’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good thing — so long as they have the capacity (and appetite) to learn, make amends, and grow from their mistakes and bad choices.
Contemporary political culture celebrates the leaders who refuse to apologize; who present a facade of infallibility and invulnerability — who believe that to say sorry is a sign of weakness rather than strength. Judaism demands precisely the opposite. Because the best leaders don’t have all the answers: They’re the ones who know how to be less wrong — who are better at being wrong.
The only way that we can find such leaders is if we’re willing to let our leaders make mistakes and give them the room to actually grow. And the only way we’ll do that is if we stop trying to eliminate fear and if try instead to live with uncertainty.
IV.
If we want to be led by Judahs, we need to act accordingly. If we want different leaders, we need to be different citizens.
This is, on the one hand, a generational project. Banishing our bloodlust and reframing our approach to failure — these entail a fundamental rewiring of our hearts and minds. The reconstruction of a civic culture cannot happen overnight.
It takes three hundred and sixty-five days to orbit the sun and nine months to gestate a child. Some processes aren’t amenable to shortcuts. So too here: It will take a generation to create a critical mass of righteous citizens.
But while this generational project is pending, the masochists and the grifters are doing real damage. By the time we’re ready, there might not be anything left. It’s not clear that we have enough time for this process to play out.
And yet the story of Judah and Tamar also demonstrates that we can instantly rewrite the relationship between leaders and citizens, even when facing down imminent threats from the strong and powerful. Not with performative gestures or through well-intentioned stopgap measures, but through courageous citizenship.
***
Return to the narrative, this time focusing on Tamar: Recently widowed, carrying her father-in-law’s twins, having just made it through her first trimester — only to be condemned to die by that selfsame father-in-law.
As they brought Tamar out to be burned, the natural and understandable thing to do would have been to take Judah down. In fear, in anger, in a frantic bid to live — Tamar could have easily shouted the truth from the rooftops.
But that’s not what she did.
Tamar sent Judah a carefully constructed message, intelligible only to him. When Judah unknowingly impregnated her, he had left behind some personal effects.8 Tamar — in what might have been her final moments — sent those items to Judah with the following message: By the man to whom these belong, I am pregnant. Please identify: To whom belong this seal, these strings, and this staff?9
It’s impossible to overstate the radicalism of her actions.
This wasn’t a veiled threat (“it’d be a shame if someone found out who the children’s father is.”). Actually, quite the opposite. Because in sending this message, Tamar unilaterally gave up her leverage. She sent Judah the only items that could have conceivably tied him to the incident.
Turning over her collateral wasn’t just risky — it bordered on suicidal. It is like giving over the photos and the negatives and trusting the other party to do the right thing. Judah could have taken the items, said nothing, and proceeded with the execution. If she had then accused him directly, he could have simply denied everything.10
But that’s not what happened.
Tamar gave him a chance to be worthy.
And he took it.
Which is to say that if we want our leaders to be Judahs, we need to give them the opportunity to be Judahs. When we present as mistrustful, antagonistic, and ungrateful, our leaders will react accordingly. Conversely, if we confront our leaders with patience, bravery, and righteousness — we give our leaders a chance to grow and to reveal themselves.
V.
Is Tamar a case study for the virtues of martyrdom? There are those who would read this story and conclude that citizens should throw ourselves upon the mercy of predators and sadists; that we should let bad leaders run amok for a generation while we work on changing the culture.
… Such advice is as evil as it is naive.11
If appeals to Judah’s morality had failed repeatedly, it would have been wrong and self-defeating to keep doing the same thing. When a leader has proven that they are lacking better angels, don’t expect them to spontaneously develop them.12
Likewise, we are not meant to be passive and quiescent while generational work percolates. It is possible for humanity to do more than one thing at a time. And so, while we try to change ourselves and rebuild our civic culture, we’re left throwing things against the wall — hoping that something will stick, hoping that something we’ll do might buy us a bit more time. Raise the salaries. Recruit martyrs with a bit more stamina. Try to isolate the most damaging masochists and the most venal grifters. Do whatever we can, in tandem and in parallel with the hard work, the real work, the generational project of becoming worthy citizens.
But regardless: I don’t view Tamar as having made a martyr’s stand — one from which she was improbably and miraculously saved. She made a considered decision to confront Judah, carefully and intentionally, in an attempt to try and activate latent goodness and dormant virtue.
And by the same token, I don’t think we’re supposed to view Tamar’s survival as foreordained. The success of her gambit was by no means guaranteed. While she may have hoped she was dealing with a man who — deep down — cared about doing the right thing, she had no way of knowing whether that was the case.13
Tamar’s story had a happy ending but history provides us no shortage of heartbreaking contrasts.
The implications for us are anything but simple and there is no tidy resolution: Only the recognition that being a righteous citizen is a necessary undertaking, albeit one with no guarantee of success.
If this sounds difficult and unsatisfying — desperate, even — that’s because it is: Life is difficult, unsatisfying, and terrifyingly fragile.
But we should draw strength from Tamar. With her life on the line — and that of her unborn babies — she demonstrated unimaginable bravery and showed us what it means to be a worthy citizen.
And Judah responded, in turn, with worthy leadership, admitting forthrightly: She is more righteous than I am.14
If she can do that — if he can do that — so can we.
הושענא דמתה לתמר הושענא
My retelling of the story of Judah and Tamar draws principally upon Genesis 38, with reference also to Genesis 49. The title of this post references T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” And the epigraph is taken from Nine Inch Nails’ 1994 song, “Hurt.”
I mean that literally and I dare you to try it. Although the talking heads and columnists might try to convince you otherwise, 99.99% of the information and content we consume has no bearing on our thoughts, beliefs, or decision-making. And you won’t be worse off if you unplug from it entirely.
Try it. Turn off push notifications. Scan the headlines once (perhaps twice) a day. When faced with a decision or if you’ve got a question that you can’t answer, search actively and intentionally for the information that you need.
You won’t be any less informed than you are already.
Jewish law is clear on this point. The Talmud [Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah 1:7] contains a searing discussion of whether Jews are permitted to attend a Roman colosseum or an amphitheater:
Sometimes, doing so is prohibited “merely” because of the idolatrous ceremonies that take place therein. Sometimes, it’s prohibited because it’s “just” brain rot. And sometimes — as the rabbis note — it is prohibited because to sit in such a place as a spectator is to participate in literal bloodshed.
In a heartbreaking passage, the Talmud states that the only reason a Jew can justify their presence in such an evil place is: (1) by calling for mercy to spare the lives of vanquished gladiators; or (2) so they can bear witness and attest to the murder of their coreligionists — thereby enabling the victims’ widows to remarry.
The Talmud sometimes deals in hypotheticals and thought experiments that are difficult to reconcile with lived experience. That’s not what is happening here. The rabbis inhabited a world where human beings were publicly, grotesquely, and wantonly murdered for the sake of entertainment.
Sometimes, we are meant to approach the real world with nuance and complexity; these things are in many ways the lifeblood of Jewish law. But not here: There is no room for ambiguity when it comes to bloodsport.
Leviticus 4:2-3, 13, 27 [all translations are my own].
Leviticus 4:22.
This is the opening word of the Book of Psalms. Although that word is sometimes translated as blessed, I would respectfully argue that while אשרי certainly carries connotations of blessing, happy or fortunate are more faithful translations of the Hebrew.
Rashi on Leviticus 4:22.
Genesis 38:17-18.
Genesis 38:25.
I return to the parable of the old woman and the bird. The old woman found herself thrust into this situation. Tamar put herself voluntarily in the old woman’s position, putting her life — literally — in Judah’s hands.
And it is, in fact, what Mahatma Gandhi told the Jews to do in the face of Nazi persecution and Palestinian violence. Two weeks after Kristallnacht, Gandhi wrote a lengthy article admonishing the Jews in Mandatory Palestine to “offer satyagraha in front of the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a finger against them,” and telling them that they should likewise do the same with respect to the Nazis. See Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Passive Resistance and Anti-Semitism,” Harijan (Nov. 26, 1938), https://www.mkgandhi.org/swmgandhi/chap03.php.
See Martin Buber, “Letter to Gandhi” (Feb. 24, 1939) https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/letter-from-martin-buber-to-gandhi (“An effective stand in the form of non-violence may be taken against unfeeling human beings in the hope of gradually bringing them to their senses; but a diabolic universal steamroller cannot thus be withstood.”); Zack Rothbart, “Gandhi’s 1939 Rosh Hashana Greeting to the Jewish People,” (observing how, responding to Gandhi, Indian Jewish communal leader A.E. Shohet “argued that Jews had practiced non-violence for two millennia, yet their persecution persisted.”) https://blog.nli.org.il/en/gandhi/; .
Arguably, Tamar had every reason to doubt Judah’s goodness. The Biblical text — to that point — surely lends support to a dim view of his character; up until his volte face with Tamar, Judah had distinguished himself through cruelty towards his brother Joseph, his deceit towards his father, and his parenting of two wicked sons.
Genesis 38:26.
A very multi-layered read of an opportunity for rare greatness.
Would that Gandhi's letter have been able to shame pure Evil. Alas, no.