A Letter to a Moscow Terminal Dear Mr.

Snowden, Let me begin by saying that there are some concerns that we share. The pride of place which individual privacy assumes in your values system is something that, to a great extent, resonates with me. In last weeks Torah portion, the Aramean prophet Balaam volitionally blesses the Jewish people for maintaining high standards of modesty and respect for privacy, despite the inherent challenges which desert living obviously posed to these values. Our Sages assigned a portion from the prophets for the weekly reading which concludes with celebration of the cardinal place which respect for personal privacy plays in Judaism, and you should walk modestly with your God. As a matter of fact, the controlling issue in the opening chapter of Tractate Bava Batra deals precisely with this issue, hezek reiyah, literally, a tort which is caused by constructing ones home in such a manner such as to enable observation of ones neighbor. Reasonable and patriotic people will disagree as to both the tactical benefit as well as the general prudence, when one weighs the security benefit against the Fourth Amendment cost, of the National Security Agency program that you disclosed. Furthermore, even if one enthusiastically supports the program, one can still object to the secrecy in which it has been shrouded from the general public. In any case, I admire, on some level, your apparent zeal for the sanctity of the personal sphere. Many, including the Secretary of State, have noted the bitter irony raised by your flight to territory controlled by the so called Peoples Republic of China, and subsequently, to the Russian Federation. One who believes that those governments are doing more to preserve the sanctity of the individual sphere is either profoundly biased or deeply delusional. Yet, it is not even the evident hypocrisy of your actions that bother me most, but what I perceive as a lack of integrity. In this weeks Torah portion, the Jewish people are counted for the second time in the desert. The book of Numbers opens with a census of the Jewish people taken during the first year of the sojourn in the desert, and now, in the fortieth year, the next generation is counted. Our Sages explain that God entrusted Moshe as shepherd of His beloved people. When He turned the people over to Moses watch, he did so with a firm count, to the last man, and Moses, who has only recently been informed that he is being replaced as the leader, wishes to hand the proverbial keys back to the Almighty with a firm count, through which he could account for every man. There is deep integrity here. If you think that you were a disgruntled employee, think about Moses. He was essentially being fired after a tireless and often thankless four-decade stretch, and yet he feels a deep sense of obligation to his position. He is not in the least happy with the Almightys chosen policy, but that does not stop him from executing his position with a profound sense of integrity. Not only does he account for every person, but he issues a special prayer to the Almighty to appoint a capable replacement, so that his beloved flock shall not be as sheep without a shepherd. When one assumes a position, and takes an oath for that position, as you did, there is a sacred responsibility to your community that is engendered- no less sacred or cherished a value than the sanctity of the individual sphere which you privilege. I concede that every value has its limits; I know full well that the generals of the

Wehrmacht also took a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler, and I still utterly reject any version of the Nuremberg Defense. After all, the Talmudic sages long ago determined that one cannot claim to be a messenger when it comes to perpetrating any sinful act, ein shaliach ldvar aveirah. In any event, we should all reject this reductio ad absurdum; one need not be a moral philosopher to know that the United States of America is not the Third Reich, nor is it, for that matter, the Peoples Republic of China. If, in the final analysis, your conscience would not allow you to discharge your oath, then the only honorable course is resignation. Moral living is possible only when one has the sense of perspective to understand the balance that one must strike between different values. The sanctity of the individual sphere matters a great deal, but so do honor and integrity. My revered teacher, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, is very fond of quoting the British idealist F.H. Bradleys celebrated essay, My Station and its Duties. It matters not whether one is a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton, a physician, a financial advisor, a teacher, or a carpenter. What matters is not where one finds his station, but how dutifully and rigorously one tends to it. In your violation of your oath and subsequent flight, you abandoned your post, and not only in the physical sense.