Rabbi Charles E. Savenor serves as the Executive Director of Civic Spirit that provides training in civic education to faith based day schools.
When America’s founders were imagining the great seal of this new democracy, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson suggested featuring a depiction of the Exodus from Egypt. The Israelites’ overcoming oppression of a powerful king and reaching freedom captured their imagination, as they saw themselves in this triumphant story.
While this biblical narrative inspired many revolutionaries, some of their contemporaries harbored reservations about the powerful appeal of this particular story. Slaveholders in the British West Indies and American South worried about how enslaved people would hear the Exodus story and the conclusions they would draw from it. Their fears only increased in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution in 1804. In an attempt to safeguard against another rebellion of those seeking freedom, slaveholders not only limited literacy, but also censured the Bible. So much so, in 1807 a version of the Bible was produced without mention of the Israelite Exodus.
This so-called “Slave Bible” may have removed the Exodus from its pages, but the human desire for freedom and liberty can never be erased. In fact, we know from the many African American Spirituals - like “Let My People Go” and “Go Down, Moses” - that the Exodus story framed slaves’ aspirations of reaching a “Promised Land” where freedom is a shared norm.
As the Jewish people celebrate Passover this week, the Exodus story is retold and embraced anew. What makes Passover special is not just the telling of the tale, but the internalization of its values and visions through rituals, questions, and conversation.
Our celebrations of Passover, Easter, and Ramadan are also elevated by the storytellers as much as the story. At our holiday tables, we are all educators. Many of us will be in multigenerational settings where we are receivers of our most cherished narratives that one day we will be expected to pass down to our students, children, and grandchildren. Relaying these experiences through our eyes, we become what Abraham Lincoln calls a “living history, ...a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity.”
It is important for us to consider that just as the Exodus has inspired hope on these shores, so too has the American experiment in democracy seeded dreams around the globe. At a time when democracy is challenged near and far, our role as a “living history” about the American story is more important than ever. Despite the United States’ challenges, divides, and conflicts, ours is a story worth sharing.
Tomorrow’s leaders need to hear not just the triumphant memories of yesteryear, but also visions of what our nation can become when a sense of common purpose prevails. When we embrace the opportunity to share how responsibility, integrity, listening, and compromise contribute to the free society in which we live today, we plant the seeds of hope.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.