Why being a Liberal Zionist is so important at this inflection moment in American Jewish history

06 Friday Feb 2026

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Introductory note: The following is an edited presentation I made on February 5 to Congregation Beth Torah, a Reform synagogue in Ventura, California.

The trauma of October 7th remains palpable in Israel and for so many of us in the Jewish Diaspora despite the official end of the war in Gaza, though fighting continues there and there’s growing violence in the West Bank. Israeli society is struggling to absorb the horrors of that deadliest and most traumatic day for Jews since the founding of the State of Israel and the Holocaust. Border communities still bear the scars of destruction and displacement. The trauma of war affects virtually every Israeli. To have seen the starving and tortured faces of some hostages as they were released recalled the old black and white photographs taken when the camps were liberated in 1945.

Israelis now find themselves at a crossroad in their history, and so too do we American Jews. For the first time in American Jewish history since the founding of Israel, many liberal American Jews are shaken not only by what happened on October 7 and being blamed by anti-Israeli antisemites for the attack starting on October 8, but by Israel’s overwhelming military response against Hamas that killed tens of thousands of Hamas terrorists and tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians.

American Jews must understand that this longest war in Israel’s history was a legitimate response to Hamas’ butchery of Israelis in the south and what the Israeli government and the IDF most feared might happen immediately after October 7, that they were fighting for the existence of the state itself. They knew Hamas intended to expand its attack and cruelty, that there were realistic threats as well by Hezbollah and Iran to join the war, and that a sympathetic uprising could ignite in the West Bank forcing Israel to fight simultaneously on three fronts. It was unclear whether Israel could meet those threats.

The IDF was disorganized and its command believed it had to distribute its authority to a far lower level of officers than it had ever done before, a decision that reduced the IDF’s customary safeguards to protect Palestinian civilians who were being used by Hamas as human shields. They believed that Israel had to fight with overwhelming fire power to disrupt Hamas’s chain of command and reach its leaders hiding everywhere in more than 400 miles of tunnels everywhere under homes, apartment buildings, schools, community centers, hospitals, and mosques. If Israel didn’t succeed in disrupting Hamas immediately and demonstrating to Hezbollah and Iran how capable the IDF still was, Israel’s leadership feared that tens of thousands of Israelis could be killed.

Both Israelis and American Jews are only now beginning to ask about the impact this war has had on Israelis and Palestinian civilians and what long-term psychological damage has been done to both peoples. We’re trying here in Diaspora communities as well to figure out where we stand as American Jews and how much we want to say publicly about our fears and moral concerns in relationship to the war, the illiberal social and ethical trends that have grown in Israel, and the growth of antisemitism on the far right and far left.

Taking a 10,000-foot view, the significance of this period in Jewish history is unparalleled in the modern era except for the three years from 1945 to 1948 when the Jewish people went from our lowest nadir after the Shoah to the establishment of the Jewish State. That wide swing of the pendulum is testimony to the Jewish people’s durability and ability to survive, adapt and thrive after catastrophic events.

It will take time for Israelis, most especially, to heal from the losses and trauma of the war. Whatever happens, however, there must include a pathway to a demilitarized Palestinian state of some kind in Gaza and the West Bank in the context of a larger Middle East peace agreement that includes Israel and Saudi Arabia and all of Israel’s moderate Arab neighbors. The vast majority of Israelis, however, are no longer speaking about the viability of a Palestinian state. They fear, legitimately, that any such state could well be taken over by Islamic extremists bent on Israel’s destruction.

The war, in part, solidified for now the hold that right-wing Israeli political parties and the extremist settler movement have on Israeli politics. Should those extremist and messianic forces have their way in the next Israeli election in October, more terrorism and war with the Palestinians and Islamic extremists will be inevitable and Israel’s democracy will be threatened.

Israelis are facing many significant challenges including what to do about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the lack of a consensus about the role of the Palestinian Authority in the future governance of Gaza and the West Bank, Israel’s severely damaged international standing, what we in the American Jewish community think and feel about Israel and Zionism, and the dramatic rise in antisemitism around the world.

Among the greatest and immediate internal challenges facing Israel is that it has yet to set up an objective state commission of inquiry into what happened leading up to October 7 and Israel’s conduct in the war. Israel needs a power-house independent authority to undertake this inquiry to restore the people’s confidence that every lesson has been learned, that leadership failings are exposed, conclusions are drawn, and whether military excesses and war crimes were committed.

In considering Israel’s culpability, we Jews in the Diaspora who love Israel have to be able to distinguish between two kinds of criticism leveled against Israel’s conduct of the war. There’s criticism from Israel’s friends that the IDF went too far, bombed Gaza too heavily, and that Israeli commanders and soldiers, in the heat of battle, crossed red lines against international moral and legal standards of war. Israelis and right wing American Jews need to address this legitimate criticism from Israel’s friends and not characterize it either as anti-Israeli or antisemitic.

The second kind of criticism comes from those who believe that the Jewish State has no moral legitimacy to exist, that it is a colonial and foreign entity in the heart of the Islamic Middle East, and no right to defend itself. That criticism is not only anti-Zionist and anti-Israel, but is antisemitic because it denies to the Jewish people what is the right of every people in the world, to define ourselves and our narrative, and to have a nation state in our historic Homeland.

Despite the loss of a thousand young Israeli soldiers in the war, the murder and suffering of surviving hostages and their families, and the massive carnage and loss of life and property in Gaza, there are a few positive things for Israel and the Jewish people that have come from this war.

Immediately after October 7, Israel’s civil society came together from across all political and religious lines to support one another. In Diaspora communities $1.4 billion was raised for Israel representing the single largest set of contributions on behalf of Israel in our history, and 300,000 Jews and friends of Israel convened in Washington, D.C. in solidarity with Israel, the largest Jewish demonstration since the 1987 Soviet Jewry rally on the Mall.

Many American Jews felt a reconnection to Zionism, Israel, and their Jewish identity. More than 70% of Jewish Diaspora adults feel emotionally attached to Israel, and 60% said Israel make them proud to be Jewish. 70% said that it is sometimes hard to support actions taken by Israel or its government. 74% of American Jews between 18-49 support self-determination for both Israelis and the Palestinians, and 88% believe that “Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish, democratic state.” But, 14% of Jews ages 18 to 34 identify as anti-Zionist, an increase from 8% five years ago.

In the early weeks and months of the war, many American Jews sought out the organized Jewish community for identification and support, began reading books about Israel, attending classes and on-line seminars on Zionism, Israel, Middle East history and politics. Non-Jews chose to convert to Judaism in numbers greater than we’ve experienced in a generation.

However, too many American synagogues have become unsafe spaces where rabbis and congregants are unable to discuss civilly the wide range of views concerning Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, the war, the Israeli government, illiberal trends in Israeli and American Jewish communities, and the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab conflicts.

It ought to be clear to everyone that we North American Jews and Israelis are in a significant transformative era. Whereas in years past, Israelis were happy simply to take Diaspora Jewish dollars and welcome American Jewish political support in Congress and the administration for Israel’s security needs. In a recent Israeli poll, 80 percent of Israeli Jews now feel strongly that the Israel-Diaspora relationship is important to them personally.

Though we Jews are one people, there exists today a wide chasm between most Israelis and most liberal American Jews. That reality requires us American Jews to understand that since October 7, Israelis as a whole have thought of themselves, perhaps for the first time in their lives, as victims who responded to Hamas from a place of fear, anxiety, rage, hostility, and a desire for revenge. From that embattled position many Israelis have justified themselves morally in responding militarily in Gaza to whatever the Israeli government and the IDF did. In the initial months of the war, I felt as Israelis felt. Feeling victimized perhaps explains why the vast majority of the Israeli media did not focus throughout the war on the destruction of Gaza and the huge loss of life there, and why Palestinian society has historically tolerated and embraced terrorism as a legitimate response against Israel and the Jewish people.

Consequently, Israel has lost the affections of a small minority of the American Jewish community, especially among our young people. At the beginning of the war, a colleague called me distraught because his college-age son had joined the Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Israel and anti-Zionist Jewish organization. His son claimed to want no part of Israel in his life and even said that Israel should never have been created. My colleague was deeply upset and asked me what I thought he ought to say to his young adult son. A number of my congregants called me as well with the same question about their college age and twenty-something sons and daughters.

I responded this way:

“First – these are your kids. Your relationship with them is what’s most important now. Don’t say or do anything to alienate them from you. Love them a lot, which means listening to them without having to instruct or correct them. Recognize that we’re all struggling in this new era of American Jewish history. Remember that they’re at the beginning of their adult journeys as Jews and they likely will evolve and change their thinking just as we’ve done over the course of our lives. You’ve instilled in them liberal Jewish values focused upon justice, compassion, and peace. This is not the end of their engagement with Jewish life or in their relationship with Israel. They already know how you feel and what you believe about Israel. If they’re open to reading about why Israel matters to the American Jewish community, to our identity and security in the Diaspora, and what liberal Reform Zionism has to offer them, there are books that deal directly with these challenges.”

The greater question confronting us now is how to better educate ourselves and our young people about Israel and Zionism. The best thing is to go there and meet Israelis face to face from the right, left, and center, with Palestinian-Israeli citizens and Palestinian Arabs living under occupation in the West Bank, with Israeli and Palestinian journalists, members of the Knesset, and our Israeli Reform movement rabbis and leadership, including the leadership of the Israel Religious Action Center, the social justice arm of Israel’s Reform movement, who advocate daily before the Knesset and courts and in the media on behalf of pluralism, equality, inclusion, and democracy in Israeli society.

There are many questions all Diaspora Jews, young and senior alike, need now to be asking:

  • What does it means for us to belong to the Jewish people and have a Jewish state?
  • How ought we to respond to those who feel we Jews are colonialists and interlopers in our historic Homeland?
  • How do we rebuild trust in our Jewish institutions, clergy and teachers who many young people regard with suspicion and distrust because we haven’t been honest enough about Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when they grew up?
  • How do we understand anti-Zionism, anti-Israel sentiment and antisemitism today?

Our message as American liberal Zionists and lovers of the people and State of Israel has to be clear and unrelenting – DON’T GIVE UP ON ISRAEL. We have a moral and Jewish duty to fight for Israel despite her imperfections just as we have a moral duty to fight for American democracy despite its obvious imperfections.

As Reform Jews, we have the duty also to join with our growing Israeli Reform movement in its fight for religious pluralism, democracy, inclusion, and equality in the Jewish state, and to pursue with those Israelis who believe in the necessity of creating a new pathway to peace with the Palestinians, the Arab and moderate Muslim world.

My Zionism grew from a particular time in history. I was born a year after the State was established and was raised on “the crisis narrative” of Jewish history. The Holocaust hovered over my childhood and formative years and has been a defining experience affecting the post-war Jewish psyche. The Shoah taught Jews everywhere that powerlessness risks death and the State of Israel is our surest protection against deadly forces that would destroy us.

By the time I was 17, Israel had fought three wars. When I was 23 and living in Jerusalem, Israel was nearly overtaken by Egyptian and Syrian forces in the Yom Kippur War. I understood then that Israel could not lose a single war on the battlefield, that her security and survival must be the number one priority for Israelis and world Jewry, and that to ignore the real threats to the Jewish people can never be an option.

Though I grew up with the “crisis narrative” of contemporary and historic Jewish experience, that narrative is no longer sustainable despite what happened on October 7.

I agree with Dr. Tal Becker, an associate at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, who writes that the crisis narrative “is both narrow and shallow.” It’s narrow because the singular focus on survival keeps us from talking about “the breadth of what this sovereign project [on the land] might offer for the collective Jewish experience.” And it’s shallow because “it pursues Jewish survival for its own sake but tells no deeper story as to why that survival is important and worth fighting for.”

Dr. Becker argues that to achieve a vision of Jewish unity behind an Israel that we can support, we need to focus on values and ask what it will take to address Israel’s challenges and build a moral and just society in which the policies, politics, and culture reflect our liberal Jewish values, tradition, and experience as a people.

For those operating strictly out of the crisis mindset, Jewish unity is defined narrowly by who stands with us against common threats. But the values narrative defines Jewish unity in terms of a moral engagement that we share – not because we agree or because the one overriding issue confronting us is survival, but because we’re committed to engage in a process of writing together the next chapter of Jewish history.

It’s difficult to find the balance between our particular Jewish interests—the concerns and identity we have as a nation and “tribe”—and our concerns for democracy and the wellbeing of all. Yet the tension between the particular and the universal, the tribal and the humanitarian, runs throughout Jewish tradition and history. A values-based discussion about what Israel should be can bring about a new Zionist paradigm.

“Aspirational Zionism” evokes these questions that can take us to the heart of a democratic nationalism:

How do our liberal Jewish values augment Israel’s democratic, diverse, and pluralistic society?

How do we bring the moral aspirations of Judaism into contemporary challenges like Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians and Arab-Israeli citizens?

How do we fight our anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic enemies without our sacrificing our Jewish moral sensibilities and democratic values?

How do we genuinely pursue peace as a moral obligation despite the threat of terror and war?

How do we preserve a Jewish majority in Israel while supporting social justice, a shared society with Arab-Israeli citizens, and the human rights of all?

Nationalism has become shorthand for self-interested exclusion, oppression, and supremacy, but democratic nations are what we make them. In this spirit we can insist on and fight for an Israel that lives up to its founding principles of democracy, justice, and peace; an Israel that reflects the best of Jewish culture and tradition.

We liberal American Jews can be fully Zionist even as we ask the hard questions like those above. That’s the Israel and the Zionism I support and grew up with, and our support for our Reform Zionist movement in the United States and in Israel in our Israeli Reform movement’s synagogues, youth programs, pre-army educational programs, kibbutzim, and social justice work are what give me hope for Israel and the Jewish people.

JOINT STATEMENT ON ICE ACTIONS FROM THE UNION FOR REFORM JUDAISM, CENTRAL CONFERENCE OF AMERICAN RABBIS, AND AMERICAN CONFERENCE OF CANTORS

01 Sunday Feb 2026

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January 30, 2026

For decades, the Reform Movement has been a clear and unequivocal voice calling for immigration policy that is just, secure, and compassionate. That policy should be transparent and rooted in the United States’ status as a nation founded and strengthened by immigrants throughout the generations. We come to these views not just as Americans, but as Jews cognizant of our own history—as a people living as strangers in strange lands, too often facing exile and banishment from lands turned hostile to us, forced to flee as migrants seeking shelter safety and opportunity. We are also ever cognizant of the frequent biblical commandments to provide for, protect, welcome, never oppress, and love the stranger.

Core American values, rights, and principles are threatened by ICE’s violations of immigrants’ civil rights and of those protesting to protect their neighbors and their communities, as well as ICE’s militaristic actions in cities nationwide that are sweeping up people without probable cause. Too many ICE officials are undertrained or dismissive of basic rights. Countless individuals have been injured while exercising their First Amendment rights. Families have been separated, and children used as bait to ensnare their parents. Horrifically, two civilians, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed by ICE agents—and at least six more have died in ICE custody in 2026 so far.

Pursuing enforcement-only measures designed to curb illegal immigration risks human dignity and human rights, as we have witnessed repeatedly in the past months. Top Administration officials have resisted accountability as well as thorough and transparent investigations of ICE agents’ actions, even when fatal force has been used. The Secretary of Homeland Security, top White House advisors, and the President himself have made unfounded accusations and appeared to pursue their ideological goals over discovery of the facts. Under the guise of pursuing its immigration policy, the Administration is fomenting and perpetrating violence and targeting states whose voters, legislatures, and governors have rejected the President’s agenda. Rather than keeping America and Americans safe, ICE’s actions have become a threat to life and liberty.

To restore good faith trust in ICE to protect, rather than endanger, individuals, major reforms in ICE’s mandate are required, including a clear commitment to ensure the rights of immigrants, their families, and those who organize to peacefully protect them and a transparent and consistent system of accountability when violations of those new norms occur. Until such reforms are made, we do not support new funding for ICE. We will take a similar stance in relation to any future federal entity pursuing immigration enforcement through similar means and practices to those used by ICE today.

Let us be clear: secure borders paired with orderly immigration processes reflect a healthy democracy. So, too, does abiding by the international agreements regarding refugees and asylum seekers to which the U.S. is a party. Immigrants who qualify should have a path to citizenship that reflects fair and compassionate eligibility standards. These are policies for which we have advocated over many decades. Indeed, as early as 1913, the URJ’s precursor, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, adopted a resolution in response to proposed, restrictive immigration legislation that referred to it as “foreign to the spirit of American traditions.” The URJ and CCAR have spoken strongly about refugees and asylum seekers, protecting individuals at risk of deportation, the contributions of immigrant farm workers, and the importance of comprehensive immigration reform, in which the URJ’s 2007 resolution noted that, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement units [must] act within the framework of U.S. law, which requires court-ordered search warrants, due process, and humane treatment of detainees and their families.”

Our calls for immigration reform have remained consistent in recent decades, but public debate has shifted. In 2007, President George W. Bush called on the United States Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform that would have been “secure, productive, orderly, and fair.” We advocated for the same and pressed Congress to act on bipartisan legislation championed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Sadly, that legislative effort ended in defeat. Yet decades of failure by elected leaders from both parties to address the nation’s immigration challenges do not excuse the tragedy unfolding in Minneapolis, Maine, Los Angeles, Illinois, New Orleans, and elsewhere ICE has been deployed by this Administration.

We harken back to the words of the CCAR’s 2006 Resolution on Immigration: “…the United States is a nation of laws, which must be enforced and respected in order to maintain a civil society. At the same time, we expect that—especially in a Constitutional republic founded on principles of human dignity—the laws in question must be both just and equitable.” Today, we would add that enforcement of those laws must also be just and equitable.

We pray for and will work to hasten the time when the United States embraces immigration reform that secures our borders, smoothly processes refugees and asylum seekers, meets the needs of employers, provides a path to citizenship, and respects the humanity of all people.

Union for Reform Judaism 
Shelley Niceley Groff (she/her), North American Board Chair 
Rabbi Rick Jacobs (he/him), President 

Central Conference of American Rabbis 
Rabbi David A. Lyon (he/him), President
Rabbi Hara Person (she/her), Chief Executive Officer 

American Conference of Cantors 
Cantor Josh Breitzer (he/him), President 
Rachel Roth (she/her), Chief Operating Officer 

JEWISH CROSS-DENOMINATIONAL STATEMENT AGAINST VIOLENT IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT

22 Thursday Jan 2026

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January 21, 2026

ואהבתם את-הגר כי-גרים הייתם בארץ מצרים

Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:19)

Adding our voices to millions of others across the United States, leaders of the Reform, Conservative/Masorti, and Reconstructionist Movements of Judaism condemn, in the strongest terms, the violence with which the Department of Homeland Security is enforcing American immigration law—above all, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as well as in cities and towns across the nation.

Many Americans are deeply disturbed as they see their neighbors targeted for detention and deportation in their homes, at work, at their schools, and at their houses of worship. They are deeply concerned about numerous accounts of the use of intimidating and violent detention tactics, dangerous and unhealthy holding facilities, lack of appropriate warrants or due process, and wrongful apprehension of US citizens or individuals with proper visas based on appearance or language. 

In response, some are taking nonviolent steps to warn and protect their neighbors from this immigration enforcement overreach. The right to protest and speak freely are fundamental American rights, protected by the United States Constitution. Too often, though, nonviolent protest and civil disobedience is being met with violence.

The United States is a nation of laws, and as Americans we expect that our laws will be enforced with clarity and consistency. We are pained by reports and videos indicating that in carrying out their assignment, members of law enforcement are engaging in behavior that escalates confrontation, risking the safety of those suspected of having violated the law, of bystanders and protesters, and their own safety. Candidates for law enforcement must be properly vetted, fully and carefully trained, and held accountable when they do not meet appropriate standards. Such accountability includes investigating complaints fairly, transparently, and impartially, particularly but not only, in cases of officer-involved shootings. To that end, we call on the Department of Justice to investigate the shooting death by an ICE officer of Renee Good, z”l.

Our sages taught that the Book of Deuteronomy’s directive צדק צדק תרדף (Tzedek, tzedek tirdof), “Justice, justice shall you pursue” (16:20), implies that the law must be enforced through a fair process, and that one should pursue justice whether it would be to one’s advantage or to one’s loss.[i]

Immigrants are members of our congregations, our families, and people with whom we interact in our broader communities. American Jews cherish our own families’ immigration stories. We recall that, like many being expelled from America today, we or our ancestors came to this country to escape oppression and find opportunity. That is why so many Jewish congregations, rabbis, cantors, and lay leaders have engaged in a variety of legal actions to protect immigrants in our midst. We grieve an American promise that seems to be no more.

We who lead the North American Reform, Conservative/Masorti, and Reconstructionist Jewish Movements stand with the members and leaders of Jewish communities in Minneapolis—and before that, in the Chicago area and other cities in the United States—who have confronted Immigration and Customs Enforcement nonviolently, legally, but resolutely. We fear that additional communities will need to be prepared to do the same in the months ahead.

We call on President Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to pursue immigration enforcement and their response to protest through just and non-violent means, upholding our nation’s highest values and commitment to due process and the rule of law. 

Rabbi David Lyon, President, Central Conference of American Rabbis
Rabbi Hara Person, Chief Executive, Central Conference of American Rabbis

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President, Union for Reform Judaism
Shelley Niceley Groff, Chair of the North American Board of the Union for Reform Judaism

Cantor Josh Breitzer, President, American Conference of Cantors
Rachel Roth, Chief Operating Officer, American Conference of Cantors

Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, Chief Executive Officer, Rabbinical Assembly and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
Eliot Meadow, President, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
Rabbi Jay Kornsgold, President, Rabbinical Assembly

Cantor Matt Axelrod, Executive Director, Cantors Assembly

Edwin M. Baum, Board Chair, Reconstructing Judaism
Rabbi Deborah Waxman, President and CEO, Reconstructing Judaism

Rabbi Renee Bauer, President, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association
Rabbi Megan Doherty, Chief Executive, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association

[i] Ramban on Deuteronomy 16:20.

Why Congress Must Remove DJT From Office

20 Tuesday Jan 2026

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Introductory Note: The historian Heather Cox Richardson spells out why Donald Trump is unfit to be President of the United States (January 20, 2026) and that Congressional Republicans must act before Trump does any more damage to our American democracy and economic stability, NATO, the global institutions that western nations have spent the past 80 years building, and the international world order based upon mutual respect between nations.

“Late last night, Nick Schifrin of PBS NewsHour posted on social media that the staff of the U.S. National Security Council had sent to European ambassadors in Washington a message that President Donald J. Trump had already sent to Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre of Norway. The message read:

“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”

Faisal Islam of the BBC voiced the incredulity rippling across social media in the wake of Schifrin’s post, writing: “Even by the standards of the past week, like others, I struggle to comprehend how the below letter on Greenland/Nobel might be real, although it appears to come from the account of a respected PBS journalist… this is what I meant by beyond precedent, parody and reality….” Later, Islam confirmed on live TV that the letter was real and posted on X: “Incredible… the story is actually not a parody.”

International affairs journalist Anne Applebaum noted in The Atlantic the childish grammar in the message, and pointed out—again—that the Norwegian Nobel Committee is not the same thing as the Norwegian government, and neither of them is Denmark, a different country. She also noted that Trump did not, in fact, end eight wars, that Greenland has been Danish for centuries, that many “written documents” establish Danish sovereignty there, that Trump has done nothing for NATO, and that European NATO members increased defense spending out of concern over Russia’s increasing threat.

This note, she writes, “should be the last straw.” It proves that “Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize.” Applebaum implored Republicans in Congress “to stop Trump from acting out his fantasy in Greenland and doing permanent damage to American interests.” “They owe it to the American people,” she writes, “and to the world.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s doctor Jonathan Reiner agreed: “This letter, and the fact that the president directed that it be distributed to other European countries, should trigger a bipartisan congressional inquiry into presidential fitness.”

Today three top American Catholic cardinals, Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C., and Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, issued a joint statement warning the Trump administration that its military action in Venezuela, threats against Greenland, and cuts to foreign aid risk bringing vast suffering to the world. Nicole Winfield and Giovanna Dell’Orto of the Associated Press reported that the cardinals spoke up after a meeting at the Vatican in which several fellow cardinals expressed alarm about the administration’s actions. Cupich said that when the U.S. can be portrayed as saying “‘might makes right’—that’s a troublesome development. There’s the rule of law that should be followed.”

“We are watching one of the wildest things a nation-state has ever done,” journalist Garrett Graff wrote: “A superpower is [dying by] suicide because the [Republican] Congress is too cowardly to stand up to the Mad King. This is one of the wildest moments in all of geopolitics ever.”

In just a year since his second inauguration, Trump has torn apart the work that took almost a century of struggle and painstaking negotiations from the world’s best diplomats to build. Since World War II, generations of world leaders, often led by the United States, created an international order designed to prevent future world wars. They worked out rules to defend peoples and nations from the aggressions of neighboring countries, and tried to guarantee that global trade, bolstered by freedom of the seas, would create a rising standard of living that would weaken the ability of demagogues to create loyal followings.

In August 1941, four months before the U.S. entered World War II, U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill and their advisors laid out principles for an international system that could prevent future world wars. In a document called the Atlantic Charter, they agreed that countries should not invade each other and therefore the world should work toward disarmament, and that international cooperation and trade thanks to freedom of the seas would help to knit the world together with rising prosperity and human rights.

The war killed about 36.5 million Europeans, 19 million of them civilians, and left many of those who had survived homeless or living in refugee camps. In its wake, in 1945, representatives of the 47 countries that made up the Allies in World War II, along with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and newly liberated Denmark and Argentina, formed the United Nations as a key part of an international order based on rules on which nations agreed, rather than the idea that might makes right, which had twice in just over twenty years brought wars that involved the globe.

Four years later, many of those same nations came together to resist Soviet aggression, prevent the revival of European militarism, and guarantee international cooperation across the Atlantic Ocean. France, the U.K., Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg formed a defensive military alliance with the U.S., Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland to make up the twelve original signatories to the North Atlantic Treaty. In it, the countries that made up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) reaffirmed “their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments” and their determination “to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.”

They vowed that any attack on one of the signatories would be considered an attack on all, thus deterring war by promising strong retaliation. This system of collective defense has stabilized the world for 75 years. Thirty-two countries are now members, sharing intelligence, training, tactics, equipment, and agreements for use of airspace and bases. In 2024, NATO countries reaffirmed their commitment and said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had “gravely undermined global security.”

And therein lies the rub. The post–World War II rules-based international order prevents authoritarians from grabbing land and resources that belong to other countries. But Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, for example, is eager to dismantle NATO and complete his grab of Ukraine’s eastern industrial regions.

Trump has taken the side of rising autocrats and taken aim at the rules-based international order with his insistence that the U.S. must control the Western Hemisphere. In service to that plan, he has propped up Argentina’s right-wing president Javier Milei and endorsed right-wing Honduran president Nasry Asfura, helping his election by pardoning former president Juan Orlando Hernández, a leading member of Asfura’s political party, who was serving 45 years in prison in the U.S. for drug trafficking. Trump ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and seized control of much of Venezuela’s oil, the profits of which are going to an account in Qatar that Trump himself controls.

This week, Trump has launched a direct assault on the international order that has stabilized the world since 1945. He is trying to form his own “Board of Peace,” apparently to replace the United Nations. A draft charter for that institution gives Trump the presidency, the right to choose his successor, veto power over any actions, and control of the $1 billion fee permanent members are required to pay. In a letter to prospective members, Trump boasted that the Board of Peace is “the most impressive and consequential Board ever assembled,” and that “there has never been anything like it!” Those on it would, he said, “lead by example, and brilliantly invest in a secure and prosperous future for generations to come.”

The Kremlin says Putin, whose war on Ukraine has now lasted almost four years and who has been shunned from international organizations since his indictment by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, has received an invitation to that Board of Peace. So has Putin’s closest ally, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, who Ivana Kottasová and Anna Chernova of CNN note has been called “Europe’s last dictator.” Also invited are Hungary’s prime minister and Putin ally Viktor Orbán as well as Javier Milei.

And now Trump is announcing to our allies that he has the right to seize another country.

Trump’s increasing frenzy is likely coming at least in part from increasing pressure over the fact the Department of Justice is now a full month past the date it was required by law to release all of the Epstein files. Another investigation will be in the news as well, as former special counsel Jack Smith testifies publicly later this week about Trump’s role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Smith told the House Judiciary Committee in December that he believed a jury would have found Trump guilty on four felony counts related to his actions.

Smith knows what happened, and Trump knows that Smith knows what happened.

Trump’s fury over the Nobel Peace Prize last night was likely fueled as well by the national celebration today of an American who did receive that prize: the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. The Nobel Prize Committee awarded King the prize in 1964 for his nonviolent struggle for civil rights for the Black population in the U.S. He accepted it “with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind,” affirming what now seems like a prescient rebuke to a president sixty years later, saying that “what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up.”

Trump did not acknowledge Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year.

While the walls are clearly closing in on Trump’s ability to see beyond himself, he and his loyalists are being egged on in their demand for the seizure of Greenland by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who is publicly calling for a return to a might-makes-right world. On Sean Hannity’s show on the Fox News Channel today, Miller ignored the strength of NATO in maintaining global security as he insisted only the U.S. could protect Greenland.

He also ignored the crucial fact that the rules-based international order has been instrumental in increasing U.S.—as well as global—prosperity since 1945. With his claim that “American dollars, American treasure, American blood, American ingenuity is what keeps Europe safe and the free world safe,” Miller is erasing the genius of the generations before us. It is not the U.S. that has kept the world safe and kept standards of living rising: it is our alliances and the cooperation of the strongest nations in the world, working together, to prevent wannabe dictators from dividing the world among themselves.

Miller is not an elected official. Appointed by Trump and with a reasonable expectation that Trump will pardon him for any crimes he commits, Miller is insulated both from the rule of law and, crucially, from the will of voters. The Republican congress members Applebaum called on to stop Trump are not similarly insulated. Tonight Danish troops—the same troops who stood shoulder to shoulder with U.S. troops in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021—arrived in Greenland to defend the island from the United States of America.”

The Gestapo Tactics of ICE – A First-Hand Account

16 Friday Jan 2026

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The following is a Facebook Post by Carin Mrotz, Senior Advisor at the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. My colleague, Rabbi Jill Jacob, posted it on her Facebook Page.

What is happening in the Twin Cities of Minnesota is unprecedented in the United States in most of our lifetimes. Our support for the citizens of that city needs to be expressed peacefully by all Americans.

Here is Carin Mrotz’s post:

“A post for my friends and family outside of Minneapolis – There is a lot of misinformation flying around and I want to share my perspective if it’s useful or compelling or helps cut through the clickbait and profiteering.

Over the past several weeks, thousands of ICE agents have been deployed to the Twin Cities and more are expected this week. There are currently more ICE agents than local law enforcement in the metro area. In some places they are visiting businesses that are likely to employ or serve immigrants looking for people to arrest. In some places they are camping out in cars on highway exit ramps and pulling over drivers they believe look like they could be immigrants. In neighborhoods like mine that are primarily residential with few business corridors, they are staging targeted raids of homes. But they mix it up; yesterday they were driving around the neighborhood and a neighbor reported that an agent pulled over and asked her husband, who was out walking the dog, if he was a US citizen.

Yesterday morning I received a text in my neighborhood group chat that more than a dozen agents were staging outside of a house a few blocks away, legal observers were needed. I put on boots and drove over to a home near our middle school and found the street full of SUVs and men in militarized but not standardized gear with big “POLICE” labels all over them. These men were carrying big guns. Several of my friends had already been maced and one of the agents was spraying mace into a crowd of observers as casually as a dad might spray his lawn with a hose in the summer. The agents brandished their guns at us a warning, or a threat, maybe both. Neighbors stood on the front lawns and blew whistles or banged on drums and asked to see the agents’ warrant. ICE is not supposed to be able to enter a home without a judicial warrant, which is a warrant signed by a judge. If you are a law and order person, that might mean something to you.

Yesterday, after a few minutes of arguing with neighbors, 10-15 agents mustered and broke down the door of the single family home. They entered and after a few minutes, they re-emerged with a tall Black man in a tee shirt, shorts, an unzipped hoodie, and rubber slides. They led him to their vehicle. It was about 15 degrees out. His wife stood on the front lawn, begging to know why they took him. Behind her the front door stood broken, offering no security to a house full of family members,
including children.

Several of us observers asked to see the warrant, and I took a picture. I will not share it out of concern for the man’s privacy, but it was an administrative warrant, signed by an ice agent, not a judge. If it matters to you that residents follow the law in engaging with our occupying agents, this should matter to you. If you are a law and order person, you might consider that what I witnessed was an abduction, not an arrest.

Across the Twin Cities, raids like this continued all day. On the Southside, ICE agents surrounded a legal observer in her vehicle, broke the windows, and dragged her and her passenger out of the car and detained them. Everyone I know knows someone who has either had a relative (or multiple relatives) taken or has been a witness to one of these abductions. The pace of the operations has been relentless, manic, and the agents are acting with remarkable brutality. Yesterday, as one of my neighbors attended to another who’d been sprayed with mace, pouring clean water in her eyes on the icy sidewalk in below freezing temps, her mother stood nearby on the phone with MPD, asking them to send someone to help. I don’t know if their decision not to was strategic or just simply about capacity, no local law enforcement has been present at any of the operations I’ve witnessed.

If you are someone who believes that you should absolutely just do whatever law enforcement tells you to do and you will be safe and respected, I would ask if you’ve ever had big guns drawn on you by someone yelling orders at you, those orders sometimes conflicting and unclear; and what if they were also spraying you with chemical irritants in 15 degree weather. If someone maced you for blowing a whistle at them, how confident are you in their ability to calmly follow procedure and not shoot you? This summer, our House Speaker Emerita and her husband were murdered in their home by someone impersonating a police officer. How confident are you that you could make sense of the meanings and markings of a uniform under stress? If armed men filled your street and broke down your neighbor’s door without a warrant, how confident are you that you could stay calm? These are questions we are asking ourselves constantly.

I have a lot of opinions about why this is happening, why Minnesota has been targeted and why our elected leaders are making the decisions they are and what will happen next, but this post is primarily to level set and let you know what’s going on. Because I also want you to know how we are responding.

First, I want to say that my experiences are those of a white professional who is not at risk for deportation. Immigrants and people afraid of being mistaken for immigrants are having a different set of experiences. ICE has been putting detainees on planes and sending them to places like Texas before their families can even hire lawyers or find out where their loved ones have been taken. People are afraid and avoiding leaving their homes, even to get groceries. After ICE tear-gassed parents and school staff at a local high school last week, our public schools closed and have now re-opened with hybrid learning so that parents who are afraid to send their kids to school have an option.

Neighbors are organizing to protect and care for each other. We observe and document raids. We show up at schools at drop-off and pickup time, we pick up groceries for those who are staying home. Some of the muscle memory of the neighborhood watches we formed during the uprising 5 and a-half years ago has reengaged. The Twin Cities is connected and resilient and pissed off and will continue to protect each other.

That is the important thing to know right now: Our cities are under occupation and we are being attacked by our federal government. And we are tenacious and we love each other and we will continue to protect each other. We will continue to blow whistles and bang pots and pans to alert our neighbors that ICE is nearby. We will continue to argue with them and waste their time knowing that someone else will have 15 more minutes to get away. We will continue to share videos of them slipping and falling on their asses on the icy walks and we will laugh hard at them. We have legal tools to fight them and we also have our long history of organizing and resistance.” 

Early Morning Winter Images

14 Wednesday Jan 2026

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Early morning is my preferred time of day. I love walking the dark streets before most people have awakened. As I pass my neighbors’ homes with only a few scattered lights opened within, before our coyote neighbors begin their search for food, before the neighborhood dogs bark and disturb the pre-dawn quiet, and as the stars flicker their light from so very long ago, it is then that I feel the greatest sense of calm serenity. As the day emerges with the sun painting the clouds orange, magenta, and pink against the blue sky, I marvel as the colors change from moment to moment. The air is so still, quiet, and cool then, and when it rains on occasion and I step around the puddles and over the rivers streaming from the foothills, and there is no one outside except me, I feel wonderfully alive.

The following are images I have captured before, during, and after heavy rain has drenched my community, and other images too. I hope they communicate my experience in those early hours.

If the Trump Administration isn’t Fascist, I don’t know what is

11 Sunday Jan 2026

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The American historian Heather Cox Richardson offers a characterization of Fascism in her “Letters From An American” substack. She writes that the events carried out by President Trump and key leaders in his administration during the past year make it “clear that officials in the Trump Administration have fully embraced the same fascism that underpinned the Nazi government that American soldiers were fighting 80 years ago.” (see her January 10, 2026 posting)

That is, obviously, a serious indictment. However, after reading the following with in mind the actions Trump and company have taken, Professor Richardson’s description of fascism as it relates to the MAGA movement is not an exaggeration.

If you have family and/or friends who support Donald Trump, for whatever reason, please consider sharing the following with them and, if they acknowledge what is happening in this country and consequently break away from the Trump camp, your effort would be worthwhile.

Professor Cox Richardson posted on January 9, 2026:

“Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”

“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”

Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”

The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.

“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”

—

Notes:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=armytalks

War Department, “Army Talk 64: FASCISM!” March 24, 1945, at https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/mode/2up

PS – Ezra Klein spoke with Masha Gessen, the Russian-born NY Times Opinion columnist on January 10 on The Ezra Klein Show on the theme of “Venezuela, Renee Good and Trump’s ‘Assault on Hope.’” It is worth hearing as it relates to the above.

MURDER IN COLD BLOOD – SAY HER NAME “RENEE GOOD” – by Dan Rather

09 Friday Jan 2026

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Introductory Note:

Dan Rather said it as clearly as anyone can in his following Substack “Steady.” In the last 2 days, social media has been filled with the visual evidence that an ICE agent murdered Renee Good. The only way for us Americans to have any hope of stopping the outrageous policies of the Trump Administration’s ICE military force and the corrupt lying leadership of Trump including Kristi Noem and VP Vance, is to peacefully resist and say the names of the innocent victims out-loud-all-the-time-all-at-once.

RENEE GOOD – May her memory be a blessing and may she never be forgotten.

Here is Dan Rather

“This is not right. Not justifiable. Not who we are as Americans. Full stop.

The act of violence by a federal officer that killed an unarmed American is an unimaginable horror and a national atrocity.

Renee Good was murdered by an ICE agent on her way home from dropping off her first grader at school. Video from three different angles shows Good driving onto a street full of protesters and agents near her Minneapolis home. One can then see Good maneuvering her car at the command of several agents.

According to eyewitnesses, two agents were yelling at her simultaneously and at cross purposes to turn around, back up, stop, and get out of the car. She rolled down her window to hear and speak with them.

Moments before the shooting, she was inching her car forward. An agent, who was standing on the left side of the car, raised his gun and shot Good at point-blank range. A doctor in the crowd offered to help Good. The agent would not let him, saying, “I don’t care.”

Good was a poet and stay-at-home mom who was born and raised in Colorado. She has been described as a devoted Christian who was not politically active, according to her ex-husband’s father. Her social media accounts appear to bear this out.

Once again, the president and his lackeys are asking Americans not to believe what they see with their own eyes.

Rather than console the family or condemn the violence, he orchestrated a fiction to cover up ICE’s criminality, abuse of power, and the failures of his draconian deportation policies.

Trump claims the ICE agent acted in self-defense and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called Good a domestic terrorist who weaponized her car to target the agents. While die-hard Trumpsters might gobble that up like it’s Thanksgiving dinner, the real story can be seen on the video taken by multiple bystanders.

ICE stokes fear and heightens tensions rather than de-escalating them. Since Trump took office last January, four people have been killed and five injured by ICE agents in 15 shootings. Though there is clear evidence that the agent who killed Good did not act in self-defense, it is unlikely even he will see the inside of a courtroom, never mind a prison cell.

The agent who killed Good was identified by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He is an Iraq War veteran who has been with ICE since at least 2016. The agent was previously injured in a traffic incident while seizing an undocumented man who was later convicted of dragging the agent with his car. This doesn’t justify what happened. At all.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration guru, who is not a lawyer, maintains ICE agents are untouchable. “You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop or obstruct you is committing a felony,” he said on Fox. This is patently false in America — always has been and always should be.

Though Minneapolis’s mayor and Minnesota’s governor vowed to seek justice for Good, Trump & Co. made sure they were unable to. The FBI announced on Thursday morning that it would be handling the investigation alone, boxing out the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Historically, the agencies work together.

The BCA said in a statement that the U.S. attorney’s office “had reversed course: the investigation would now be led solely by the FBI, and the BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.”

With no independent investigation and a Justice Department in the president’s pocket, the agent who killed Good may not even get a slap on the wrist.

Unless we demand it.

Renee Good’s death will not be in vain. It has already drawn needed attention to a rogue president and agency acting with impunity. She could be any mother, in any city, at any time. She could be any one of us. It is time to draw the line in the sand. And to say her name while doing it.”

The Most Consequential Leader in History

04 Sunday Jan 2026

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This week, in synagogues around the world, Jews read the first chapters in the biblical book of Exodus. There we meet Moses and read about his birth to enslaved parents, his adoption into the palace and growth as a prince, his defense of an abused slave, his exile, his becoming a shepherd, and his encounter with God at the burning bush. There God commands Moses to go to the most powerful king on earth and demand the liberation of the enslaved Israelites. At first, Moses demurs believing he has no agency to stand before Pharaoh, but God reassures him and inspires in him the courage to do what must be done.

The narrative is infused with Ancient Near Eastern mythology that tells of a slave child becoming the redeemer of his people, but we have no archaeological evidence (except the Hebrew Bible) that Moses ever existed. Nevertheless, he would come to represent the model of prophetic leadership that took root in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and western civilization.

One of the most important aspects of the Moses story is that, on God’s behalf, he destroyed the master-slave order of ancient Egypt and ushered in a new era in which every human being was to be regarded as a creation in the Divine Image and therefore worthy of ultimate dignity, respect, and freedom. (1)

Moses was singularly significant as God’s most intimate and important prophet regardless of the lack of historic evidence that he lived. Scholars have argued that even if no historic evidence outside of the biblical text exists, there had to be a figure like Moses who gave rise to the prophetic and legal tradition that he initiated and embodied.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), arguably one of the greatest Jewish thinkers and social justice activists of the 20th century who lost his entire family in the Holocaust and who was a strong ally of Dr. Martin Luther King, characterized prophecy and the prophet’s nature in this way:

“Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of this world. … God is raging in the prophets’ words.” (2)

“The prophet … feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at [humankind]’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony …; no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy … is a form of living, a crossing point of God and humankind.” (3)

“The prophet … employs notes one octave too high for our ears [and] experiences moments that defy our understanding. [The prophet] is … an assaulter of the mind [whose] words begin to burn where conscience ends.” (4)

Years ago, I wrote a poem about Moses and his encounter with God at the burning bush, and I edited it this past week because the story of Moses offers us still a preferred paradigm of moral and spiritual leadership that we need so badly in these times.

We walk in a daze / eyes sunk in creviced faces / fettered to worldly tasks / blind to rainbows.

I imagine Moses in Midian like that / brooding in exile / burdened by his people’s suffering / knowing each day their pain and stopped-up hearts.

A simple shepherd-prince Moses was / now staff in hand counting sheep / until one day / weaving through rocks amongst bramble bushes / he heard thorns popping.

Turning his head / his eyes opened / to see a bush burning / but not consumed by flames.

God had long before taken note of him / from his birth / but waited until this moment / to choose him as Prophet.

“Open to Me, My dove / My twin / My undefiled one.” (5)

Moses heard God’s voice / and beheld angels / his soul flowing in a sacred river / of Shekhinah light. (6)

‘Why me?  / Why am I so privileged to behold such wonder? / Unworthy as I am.’

God said / “Moses – I choose you / because you are humble / the most humble of any human being on earth (7) / and your heart is burdened / because you know the world’s cruelty / and you are not cruel / ‘Nor do you stand idly by when others bleed.’ (8) / You are a tender of sheep / and you will lead my people / with the shepherd’s staff / and inspire them to open their stopped-up hearts to Me / without fear / with love.”

Trembling – Moses looked again / into the bush-flames / free from smoke and ash.

His eyes opened as in a dream / and he heard a soft-murmuring-sound (9) / the same that breath makes as it passes quietly / through lips.

MOSHE MOSHE!—HINEINI (10)

Two voices—One utterance.

He hid his face / for the more Moses heard / the brighter the light became / and he knew he must turn away or die. (11)

The Prophet’s thoughts were free / soaring / no longer of self / to this day there has not been a purer soul than Moses.

God said / “Come no closer / Remove your shoes” (12) / stand barefoot / I want your soul.

I am here with you / and in you / I am every thing / and no thing / and you are Me / I see that which is / and which is not / and I hear it all.

Take heed Moses / My shepherd-prince / “For My people‘s blood calls to Me from the ground” (13) / and the living are suffering a thousand deaths.

You must take them out / every last one / every crying child / every lashed man / every woman screaming.

And Moses know this / “With weeping they will come / and with compassion I will guide them.” (14)

The people’s exile began with tears of pain / and it will end with tears of joy.

I have recorded their story in a Book / “Black Fire on White Fire” (15) / letters on parchment / telling of slaves / seeing light / turning to Me / becoming a free people / and a nation.

The Book is My spirit / the Letters are My heart / “They are near to you that you do them” (16) / and teach them / and redeem My world / and free every human being / my cherished ones / all children of humankind / that the world not be consumed in flames.

This Book I give to you / O purest of souls / “that you may live / you and your generations to come.” (17)

Poem by Rabbi John L. Rosove

Notes:

  1. Genesis 1:26.
  2. Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Religion in a Free Society,” The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1959), 11–12.
  3. Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row & The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1962), 5.
  4. Ibid. 10.
  5. Song of Songs 5:2.
  6. Ezekiel 10:4.
  7. Numbers 12:3.
  8. Leviticus 19:16.
  9. 1 Kings 19:12.
  10. Exodus 3:4.
  11. Exodus 33:20.
  12. Exodus 3:5.
  13. Genesis 4:10.
  14. Jeremiah 31:8.
  15. Rashi commentary, Deuteronomy 33:2.
  16. Deuteronomy 30:14.
  17. Deuteronomy 30:19.