Volodymyr and Benjamin
For many centuries, Israelite kings ruled in tandem. Rehoboam in Judah, Jeroboam the First in Israel. Ahaz in Judah, Jeroboam the Second in Israel. It nearly broke my brain in rabbinical school trying to keep the dynasties straight. Everything failed: little songs and rhymes and color-coded lists. Looking back, I wasn’t cut out for dynasties. It was pretty much the same for U.S. state capitals. After a while, I just started to fake it. The capital of Oregon is, of course, Oregon City.
Today, it’s much easier. No kings, but presidents/prime ministers. If you’re counting the Jews, it’s Netanyahu and Zelensky, with the recent ascension of Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico. Claudia is off to a promising start. She has been forceful and snarky in her new relationship with Trump, calling out the foolishness of both tariffs and the “Gulf of America.” Cars and avocados will both cost more in North America, thanks to the fact that Claudia Sheinbaum has a spine. I know that I shouldn’t wish for inflation, but if avocado’s cost more, that’s the MAGA price we pay. Let’s call it by its name: The Sauron Surcharge.
The real star of this show is Volodymyr Zelensky, who refused to be gutted by Trump and Vance. On the third anniversary of the Russian invasion, he was offered up as a sacrifice to Vladimir Putin. Channeling the kings of Jewish antiquity, he refused to be humbled, to be reduced to groveling. Gaslit and berated in the Oval Office for his native nobility, his physical courage, and the dignity of the uniform he has worn for three years, he stood his ground as a Free World leader. No, he would not capitulate to the thug in the Kremlin. No, it was not Ukraine, but Russia who started the war. If America did not back the self-sacrifice of his nation, nothing would protect the West from predation.
I thought what I have always thought about Zelensky, that if I had to show my grandchildren a Jew who fulfilled the hopes of our tradition and its fundamental values, Volodymyr Zelensky would be my shining example.
Not so much his Israeli counterpart. Manipulative, calculating, and entirely dishonorable, Benjamin Netanyahu has failed his people, and the world Jewish community in every land. Israelis deserve better than a self-satisfied Machiavellian who has evaded responsibility for his covert support of Hamas and his failure to prepare for the horrors of October 7. He will do anything to avoid an official inquiry and to gut the system that might make him accountable.
And sitting in the chair that Zelensky later occupied,—the very same one in which the Ukrainian president was pummeled—he smiled shyly like the proverbial cat with the canary, when Trump announced Gaz-a-Lago on the Mediterranean. Netanyahu got what he wanted from a would-be fellow dictator and cast Zelensky’s purity into high relief.
To reference the immortal jingle of the puppets of Sesame Street, one of these men is not like the other. One of these men isn’t even kind of the same.