In the play Fiddler on the Roof the poor milk man, Tevye, imagines what it would be like to be a rich man. “If I were a rich man” they could ask me questions that “would cross a rabbi’s eyes.” He thinks, “and it won’t make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong, when you’re rich they think you really know.” As the current political season demonstrates that kind of thinking is still prevalent. But the Bible has a different idea. It doesn’t matter the power you have or how much stuff you possess. What matters is compassion, gentleness, generosity, forgiveness, charity. The challenge for us is to learn to see things as God does and not according to the values of this world.
