What in heaven's name came over U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts? All the pundits had him casting the decisive vote against Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act. Instead, Justice Roberts, in a landmark decision, perhaps even changing his vote in the last minute, came out with a convoluted way of saving it: upholding the individual mandate as a tax.
The reaction has been biblical in proportions. Proclaimed David Von Drehle writing in Time: "Not since King Solomon offered to split the baby has a judge engineered a slicker solution to a bitterly divisive dispute."
How did the expected argument to "strike and sever" flip to "upheld" and "constitutional"? Was someone whispering in Roberts' ear?
This is an old story actually, one with which Jews are well-versed since at about this time every summer we recount a similar tale of curses turned to blessings when we read the Torah portion, Balak.
In the parsha (portion), Balak the king of Moab, is driven to a paranoiac frenzy; believing that the people of Israel who would soon march through his land were so numerous they would consume everything in their wake.
To defeat and drive them away, the king turned to a man who was for his day a kind of a radio talk show host, pundit, and swift boater all rolled into one: the diviner, and almost prophet, Balaam.
As the story goes, the king sends his dignitaries to try to sell Balaam on the job of cursing Israel, and Balaam sends them away--it seems a higher source has warned him off. But after a second try, he reluctantly accepts.
Eventually heading out to curse Israel, even the ass on which Balaam rides tells him it's a bad deal.
Of course, those opposed to Obamacare now think that a donkey, mascot of the Democrats, must have been whispering in John Robert's ear as well, telling him as the Court neared a decision, to swerve away from a strictly partisan path.
That path was already marked by two Supreme Court landmark decisions, one giving George W. Bush the presidency over Al Gore, the other, the "Citizens United" decision prohibiting the government from restricting corporate campaign contributions.
So sure of a party line decision, the "Balak" of Fox News, Bill O'Reilly even offered to "apologize for being an idiot" if the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare's individual mandate.
In the bible story, with the expectant Balak watching nearby, Balaam stands on an overlooking highpoint, makes his sacrifices, and is poised to deliver the damning blow, when the unexpected happens.
In Washington, when the time finally came for the decision to be announced, the seers of the press had already made the call; figuring Roberts would side with the conservatives in nixing the health care bill especially the individual mandate.
CNN and Fox News could not even wait till the full decision was announced before declaring initially that the Court had struck down the mandate to require individual health insurance. GOP congressmen gleefully twittered the word.
Except they had the word wrong.
In creating an interpretation to make the law work, Roberts, like Balaam, consulted if not a higher source, at least not the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. The result was a decision, definitely more of a blessing than a curse that indicated a more independent court.
Responding to the decision, John Q. Barrett, a law professor at St. John's University was quoted in Time as saying, "Major legislation should not be struck down on a 5 to 4 vote on grounds that Congress lacks the power."
"What have you done to me?" moaned Balak, after Balaam shocks him by switching positions. "Here I brought you to damn my enemies, and instead you have blessed them," said the ancient monarch, sounding very much like he could audition for a show on Fox News.
Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate.In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."
