"He had a sharecropper who would regularly bring him a basket of fruits as part of their financial agreement each Friday. One week the sharecropper brought the basket on Thursday. "What is this?" the rabbi wondered. "I have a court appearance and I thought that once I was traveling, I would bring you the produce today." Rabbi Yishmael refused to accept the parcel, recused himself from sitting in judgment on the case and appointed two other judges in his place. During the give and take of the proceedings Rabbi Yishmael thought to himself, "If only [the sharecropper] would make this claim! If only he'd make that claim!" He then said, "Damn those who take bribes! If I – who refused to take the produce, and even if I had, it would have been my own money – am so influenced in judgment, how much more biased must be those who actually take bribes!"Throughout the course of his campaign, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders has attacked former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for accepting lucrative speaking engagements as well as significant financial donations from a litany of sources, including major Wall Street financial institutions. Sanders has implied that the donations affected Mrs. Clinton's judgment and her ability to accurately assess and reign in the danger of the most powerful financial institutions in the world. Recently, Clinton lashed out at the attacks, insisting that the money had not affected her judgment in any way. “Anybody who knows me, who thinks they can influence me, name anything they’ve influenced me on. Just name one thing,” Clinton said at a televised CNN forum in New Hampshire. At the Democratic debate last week, Clinton directly challenged the notion that she could be bought and bristled at the suggestion: "Time and time again, by innuendo, by insinuation, there is this attack that he is putting forth, which really comes down to -- you know, anybody who ever took donations or speaking fees from any interest group has to be bought. And I just absolutely reject that, Senator. And I really don't think these kinds of attacks by insinuation are worthy of you. And enough is enough. If you've got something to say, say it directly."
Is she right? Are Sanders' accusations an attack on her integrity? Do campaign donations bias a candidate?
The prohibition of accepting gifts appears twice in the Old Testament. "And you shall take no gift; for a gift blinds those that have sight, and perverts the words of the righteous." (Exodus 23:8). "You shall not pervert judgment…neither shall you take a gift; for a gift blinds the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous." According to the Bible gifts – money given to those in positions of power – does three things: It "blinds those that have sight", it "blinds the wise" and it "perverts the words of the righteous". We don't unduly influence the wicked; there's no need – they already have a warped sense of right and wrong. Rather, gifts affect people with "sight" - those who we would consider righteous and upstanding people, and prevent them from seeing what anyone else can plainly see. Accepting money specifically affects the righteous – decent, honest people with a proper sense of right and wrong – and prevents them from being truly objective.
Is Hillary correct? Are Bernie Sanders' accusations an attack on her character? Far from it. In fact, Sanders refused to attack her integrity, and has insisted that he respects her greatly. Rather, the Wall Street money she has taken has blinded her, and prevented a righteous woman from objectively seeing the true danger and power that Wall Street wields, even after the most recent round of legislation.
Did Mrs. Clinton fight hard to pass laws to reign in the banking system? Of course she did. But it's also impossible to know whether far stronger legislation would have been passed had Wall Street not paid tens of millions of dollars to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
We'll never know what would have been without those gifts, because we – all of us – have been blinded by them.
Two meshulachim knocking on my door this week got me thinking about the way we do - and don't give tzedakah. We carefully examine the language the Torah uses to describe how God expects us to relate to the weakest members of society. We examine some rather frightening Midrashim, and conclude with a beautiful message from Kli Yakkar about the appropriate attitude towards giving tzedaka.
