Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God

A sermon by Rabbi Morris Panitz

Dear Friends,

Rabbi Morris Panitz is Assistant Rabbi at Ikar, a dynamic congregation in Los Angeles. I was so moved by Rabbi Panitz’s sermon from last Shabbat that I asked for his permission to share it with you here. You can watch the video, or read his text below.

Shabbat Shalom and love,

Rabbi Jonathan Kligler

Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God - Rabbi Morris Panitz, January 25, 2025

On July 4th, 1776, the same day that the 13 colonies declared independence from Great Britain, the Continental Congress named a committee to design a seal, a national emblem for this brand new country. Sitting on the committee were Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. Each submitted a proposal; each was rejected. It took 6 years and 2 more committees to finally land on the design for the Great Seal that congress would ultimately approve. (It’s good to know that even back then, it took years of committee meetings to finally get something done.) We’ve all seen the seal. It’s imprinted on passports and official government documents, monuments and the back-side of the one-dollar bill. The bald eagle, wings spread open, with arrows in one hand, an olive branch in the other. A constellation of 13 stars, and the motto “E pluribus unum,” out of many, one.

I have nothing against this design, but this week, I found myself looking at the work of the first committee, considering the meaning of the designs that weren’t chosen. A kind of exercise in entertaining the road not taken, an alternative symbolic map for what this country is and ought to be about. In particular, it was Benjamin Franklin’s design and its meaning that I want to ask us to explore.

In Franklin’s notes, he wrote the following: “The seal depicts Moses standing on the shore, extending his hand over the sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh, who is sitting in an open Chariot, a crown on his head and a sword in his hand. The motto of the seal reads: ‘Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.’”

Franklin, of course, has a particular British tyrant in mind, but his choice of the biblical scene, the culmination of the exodus story, connects the past to his present, and undoubtedly projects into the future as a mission statement, a call to purpose, for this nascent country. America shall be the ongoing project of resisting tyranny. That, Franklin believes, is the throughline of our biblical mythic past, our national founding story, and our promise to the future.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. The work of resistance is an expression of our religiosity. It is the upholding and actualizing of our firmest convictions and commitments. It is God’s plea to the human heart. A tyrant vilifies those he doesn’t know, for the absence of familiarity is the most fertile ground for the growth of cruelty. A tyrant seeks to divide, to plant in our minds stories of suspicion and fear, to reorganize the world into those who deserve and those who don’t, those who belong and those who never will.

Tyranny depends on the spread of a pernicious story so the first act of resistance must be to tell a different story. To remind ourselves and others that our story helps us understand who we are and who we’re called to be. Our story will be our guide, our map for the difficult journey ahead, our compass in a time of disorientation. And so, if I may, let me tell you once again, our story.

The subjugation of the Israelites in Egypt did not begin with bricks and mortar, ruthless decrees or violent taskmasters. It began with the erasure of memory.

וַיָּ֥קׇם מֶֽלֶךְ־חָדָ֖שׁ עַל־מִצְרָ֑יִם אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹֽא־יָדַ֖ע אֶת־יוֹסֵֽף׃

A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.

The commentators struggle with this verse. Was it really a new king, or is it the same pharaoh who worked closely with Joseph, but now seems to have blot out the past? More broadly, how is it possible for any ruler of Egypt to not know of Joseph? The 2nd in command in Egypt who saved the country from 7 years of famine. The man who enriched Pharaoh and built up the power of the country through his visionary economic and agricultural policy. The implications, I believe, are clear. Not knowing Joseph was not an accident of time; it was a conscious choice of erasure.

Pharoah is saying, “Joseph did not help build this country. Joseph was never needed here. Joseph does not belong to the story of Egypt, and Egypt does not belong to him. He has no place in the palace; he has no place in our history and therefore no place in our future.”

It is in the immediate aftermath of Pharaoh not knowing Joseph that his descendants are oppressed. One verse later, Pharaoh hatches a plan to demonize, other, and “deal shrewdly” with this people. Three verses later, Pharaoh conscripts the Israelites into forced labor, setting taskmasters over them. Four verses later, not just Pharaoh, but the Egyptians, come to fear the Israelites. Six verses later, they made life bitter for the Israelites. How astonishingly short is the leap from not knowing to not caring about the suffering inflicted. To not know, the Torah is claiming, justifies cruelty.

This is as clear with Pharaoh as it was with Cain, the first figure in our story to commit violence against another human being. We all remember the second half of Cain’s infamous response toֿ God’s question, “where is Abel, your brother?”

Ha’shomer achi anochi? Am I my brother’s keeper? But, in between God’s question and Cain’s rhetorical response are the words “lo yadati” – I do not know. I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper? In her brilliant essay on the topic, Devora Steinmetz writes, “The two parts of Cain’s reply constitute a single claim. ‘I do not know’ means I don’t have to know– I’m not responsible for my brother. Not knowing, or claiming not to know, or choosing not to know, is a denial of moral responsibility.”

Listen carefully when a tyrant begins the project of rendering human beings invisible. When he denies their claims of belonging to this place. When he says “this country is for us, not for you.” When he dismisses not only their contributions in the building and sustaining of this country, but their very moral worth. When he tells you that your identity does not exist. For conscious erasure is the pretext for violent action.

But, Pharaoh's toxic story is not the only voice in our narrative; God has a story to tell as well.

The Israelites cried… their shriek for help from the bondage rose up to God. God heard their moaning, and God remembered the covenant. God looked upon the Israelites, and God knew. Va’yeidah Elohim.

What did God know?

יָדַ֖עְתִּי אֶת־מַכְאֹבָֽיו

I know their pain.

Pharaoh’s not knowing is countered by God’s knowing. To not know, for Pharaoh, is to condemn people beyond the realm of concern, justifying any and all subsequent cruelty. God’s knowing is to see people in their deepest pain, to identify with their suffering, and to pursue their liberation.

“I know their pain.” And one verse later, God says to Moses, “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh, and you shall free my people, the Israelites, from Egypt.”

This turning point in our narrative is signaled by the same verb that began the descent. Yada - what is known or not known. God insists on knowing; Pharaoh on not knowing. Listen to Pharaoh’s response when Moses and Aaron bravely say to him: “Thus says the God of Israel: Let my people go!”

לֹ֤א יָדַ֙עְתִּי֙ אֶת־יְהֹוָ֔ה וְגַ֥ם אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל לֹ֥א אֲשַׁלֵּֽחַ׃

I don’t know God, and I won’t let the Israelites go.

Pharaoh once again does not know. I read in these words, in this echo of not knowing Joseph, the same denial of both existence and responsibility. He denies the possibility of a God who cares about the oppressed, and he refuses to extend his care to these vulnerable people.

This God is not my God, Pharaoh says, and this God has no place in the Egypt I am building, the Egypt I am ruling.

But, the God of our story yearns to be known. The God who cares about the oppressed. Who is moved by their pain. That’s the story we’ve inherited; that’s the story we are called to tell. Now more than ever.

But God doesn’t act alone. To be the storytellers for this God also means, necessarily means, building the society that reflects God’s concern. Memory of our time in Egypt, the persistent command to remember our subjugation, dehumanization, and profound vulnerability must translate into creating a society that cares for the uncared for.

Listen to just one of these calls to conscience, from Exodus 23:9:

Do not oppress the stranger - וְגֵ֖ר לֹ֣א תִלְחָ֑ץ

For you know the soul of the stranger - וְאַתֶּ֗ם יְדַעְתֶּם֙ אֶת־נֶ֣פֶשׁ הַגֵּ֔ר

We are called to fashion a world that knows as God knows. To see the stranger as one of us, no different in the texture of their dreams and aspirations, no less deserving of every dignity and claim to belonging that we hold dear. To know the stranger is to identify with their suffering, their fear, their powerlessness. To know the stranger is to heed the command at the core of our story to fight for their freedom and liberation. To be and become their protection in the face of violence and danger. For rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

This is the moment to remember who we are, to ground ourselves in the story that stands in determined opposition to the story of tyranny. To tell of a God who cares about the vulnerable. To become again a people whose faith compels us to protect the frightened. We were reminded this week, bless you Bishop Budde, that we are not the only ones who believe in this God, who plea for this God to be believed in. We are not the only ones who know that the story of liberation depends on our persistent fidelity to justice and decency. The voice of the tyrant must be drowned out by the voices of the people who know that our story is the one that will and must ultimately prevail.