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March 2, 2001/Adar 7, 5761, Vol. 53, No.22
Go-to manEditorialPerhaps President Clinton was enraptured by the Purim story, with Ahasuerus playing the quintessential go-to man and the lissome Esther the ultimate damsel in distress. Clinton's ego surely is of royal proportion, and it's clear he fancies himself the grand interlocutor, glossing over indiscretions and handing out favors.So it was easy for the former president to succumb to the entreaties of Denise Rich and her partner-in-persuasion, Beth Dozoretz, and pardon Rich's former husband, billionaire outlaw Marc Rich. The supplicants' generous political contributions surely captivated the president, just as Esther's comely charms entranced the Persian king. Only this is not Shushan, and the pardon imbroglio that played out in Washington is a new, ugly twist on an old story of deception. Things are not what they appear to be, the Purim tale teaches. Esther, the beautiful soon-to-be queen, is revealed as a Jewess; Haman, the trusted court insider, is exposed as a schemer; and Mordecai, the consummate outsider, becomes the king's trusted consort. In the modern tragedy, Clinton has been unmasked as a morally bankrupt leader, Denise Rich as a political panderer, and her former husband a crook who thought he could use good works to buy back his good name. That Rich, who is Jewish, used his generosity to Jewish causes as a foil for his questionable business practices, and Jewish leaders as his defenders, is patently offensive. That he sought to use Israel for his own selfish benefit, pressing recipients of his largesse to wield their considerable influence on his behalf, is unconscionable. While an embarrassment for the Jewish community, and yet another black mark on the Clinton presidency, the Rich pardon cautions about the excesses of power and the dangerous potential for its misuse. So read the Megillah at Purim this year, March 7-8, drink a little, laugh a lot, engage in tricks and revelry. But let the boisterous merrymaking alert us yet again to the human propensity to plot ill while purporting to do good and the moral necessity to discern the difference. |
