c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) President Bush recently called for mandatory briefings in ethics and the handling of classified information for the senior White House staff.

These sessions dealing with principled behavior by public officials come after the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff. The criminal charges filed against Libby by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald include perjury and obstruction of justice _ serious ethical lapses that carry severe penalties including prison. The White House counsel, Harriet Miers, will conduct the briefings.

Even though no one from the president’s staff has contacted me for assistance in preparing the ethics cram course at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., I offer my unsolicited suggestions anyway.

The first point Miers should emphasize is that the current demand that public officials behave ethically is neither a modern invention nor the partisan creation of the president’s political opponents. She should also stress that ethical conduct in high places of public trust is more than simply following a legal checklist or periodically reviewing government regulations.

Ethical behavior requires acts of commission, not omission.

The Torah, the Hebrew Bible, emphasizes the need for rightful conduct from public officials, and even from God. In a remarkable act of courage, the patriarch Abraham demanded that God, the supreme ruler of the universe, behave in a just manner. In urging God to spare the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah from physical destruction, Abraham asked the Creator this remarkable question face to face: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?” (Genesis 18:25).

When the former Hebrew slaves and their offspring were about to enter the land of Israel (Deuteronomy 16:18), they were commanded to “appoint magistrates and officials … and they shall govern the people with due justice … justice you shall pursue.”

In the next chapter (Deuteronomy 17:18-20), an Israelite ruler is required to have “a copy of the Torah … remain with him and let the ruler read it all his life … to observe faithfully every word … and not deviate from the ethical instruction to the right or to the left …”

Many centuries after the Torah was completed, the ancient rabbis writing in the Talmud stressed the importance of ethical behavior by public authorities. Without honest conduct by community leaders, there can be no just society. The authors of the Talmud were keenly aware of the historical examples of corrupt and dishonest leaders who had operated within the Greek and Roman empires as well as some “ethically challenged” Jewish community leaders.

Unlike the commanding words of the Torah, the Talmudic authors employed parables and allegories to convey their message. In one example, the rabbis taught that God “weeps every day over three things” that take place in human life. First, the person who could study the Torah but chooses not to. Second, the person who does study the Torah, but misinterprets or misunderstands its teaching. But worst of all, God weeps over public leaders who “flaunt their power over the community” by performing unethical acts.

In another rabbinic admonition, the public leaders were urged to “go to all the towns in Israel … teaching proper conduct for a year, or two or three,” so that just laws would become the norm in every community. “But they (the leaders) did not do so.”

Instead, the selfish officials “went to their own vineyards and olive groves, saying, `Ah, this is good for my soul.”’ That is, I do not have to be ethical in my public capacity; I am, instead, free to attend to my personal needs and business dealings which are more important than any civic responsibilities.

The rabbis also knew about the dangers of covering up unethical action. They warned that while the reward for performing a principled act is the opportunity to perform another worthy act, there is always the temptation or need to commit a second transgression to conceal the first illegal transgression. In modern political parlance: It’s often the coverup and not the original crime.

As Casey Stengel, the great baseball manager and amateur philosopher would have said: “Ms. Miers, it’s all there in the record books. You can look it up.”

MO/JL END RNS

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is a distinguished visiting professor at Saint Leo University in Saint Leo, Fla.)

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