From the West to the East – A Memoir of a Liberal American Rabbi – Purchase directly from the publisher at https://westofwestcenter.com/product/from-the-west-to-the-east/

I am writing now before the month of Elul begins next Wednesday, September 4, because there is much to think about for all of us in this month before the High Holidays in our personal lives, in the United States as we move towards the election and in Israel-Palestine as this war continues, the hostages remain in Hamas’ hands, and terrible danger lurks in the north of Israel and in the West Bank.

My Memoir is a distillation of a life-time of thinking, writing, social justice and liberal Zionist activism, and there is much, I believe, in its pages to stimulate your thinking and reflection before the High Holidays begin with Rosh Hashanah on Wednesday evening, October 2nd.

Here is praise of the book:

“From the West to the East is a beautifully written and thoughtful guide to the challenges facing American Jewry, shared by one of America’s most influential rabbis.”–Congressman Adam Schiff, author of Midnight in Washington – How We Almost Lost our Democracy and Still Could, lead Manager for the first impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump, lead congressional author of “The Protecting our Democracy Act”

“In this moving memoir, Rabbi Rosove models how a liberal Jew can be a passionate lover of Israel while remaining uncompromisingly faithful to the prophetic tradition. Now, at a critical crossroads for the community, he offers an indispensable guide to help American Jews navigate through a time of crisis.” -Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute, author of the New York Times bestseller, “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor”

“In his powerful and revealing memoir, Rabbi Rosove guides us through a consequential life as the religious leader of one of the most historic and influential congregations in the United States. He confronts some of the most challenging moral issues of our time, including Israel-PalestineIt’s a book full of lessons to help us navigate a world that often seems unrecognizable.” –Zev Yaroslavsky, former member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, author of Zev’s Los Angeles – From Boyle Heights to the Halls of Power, A Political Memoir

“From the West to the East is a beautifully written, intensely personal and deeply profound book. John’s love for Judaism, America and Israel shine through on every page. A rabbi’s rabbi, his memoir is a must read for rabbis and all who are interested in the contemporary Jewish experience.” -Rabbi Ammi Hirsch, Senior Rabbi, Stephen S. Wise Free Synagogue, Manhattan, NY – author The Lilac Tree, and host of “In These Times Podcast”

“Rabbi Rosove recounts the personal odyssey of a unique rabbi unafraid to wrestle with man and God in his quest for Tikun Olam.” -Anat Hoffman, Founder and Chair of Women of the Wall, former Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center

“Rosove’s memoir illuminates how the interplay of activist courage and faith have been builders of American liberal Zionism.” -Robin M. Kramer, former chief of staff for both Los Angeles Mayors Richard Riordan and Antonio Villaraigosa, and past president of the board of trustees of Temple Israel of Hollywood

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the late Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, wrote:

“Great leaders are great not just because they care for their own people – everyone except a self-hater does that – but because they care for humanity. That is what gives their devotion to their own people its dignity and moral strength… To be an agent of hope, to love the people you lead, and to widen their horizons to embrace humanity as a whole – that is the kind of leadership that gives people the ability to recover from crisis and move on. It is what made Moses, Isaiah and Jeremiah three of the greatest leaders of all time.”

As we prepare to vote in the coming election, I’ve been thinking a great deal about those personal qualities and virtues that make for great leadership, and I want to offer here my own thoughts and conclusions.

Taking everything into account, based on my own 40+ years leading synagogue communities and being engaged actively in a number of not-for-profit and political organizations watching good and bad leaders succeed and fail, I believe that great leadership requires, in addition to Rabbi Sacks’ insights, not just vision and high moral rectitude, but the love of truth, the love of humanity, the virtues of humility, gratitude, generosity and wisdom, a respect for the dignity of every individual and a commitment to further the common good.

Great leaders constantly are honing their skills, are curious, committed to learning and embrace experimentation in their work, and seek to synthesize information and apply what they learn carefully and thoughtfully. They don’t fear failure because they know that from failure they learn the most. They delegate responsibility to enable colleagues and followers to do their best work knowing that they can’t do everything themselves. They recognize that there are others who know more and are better able and well-suited in ways in which they themselves lack appropriate expertise and skills.

Great leaders support those they lead, offer fair criticism so that others may grow in their own right and according to their capacity, goals and dreams. Great leaders are available to advise and act as sounding boards for new ideas. They credit others generously for their respective successes both privately and publicly. They take pride in others’ accomplishments and thank them personally for what they do on behalf of the leader and/or the organization of which they are active members and/or leaders. They rely upon team-work and encourage everyone to do their best. They take responsibility when things go wrong and never blame others for mishaps and failures. They are open to constructive criticism and how they themselves can improve and grow. They work hard but they take time for themselves, for their families and friends. They encourage the people with whom they work to do the same because they understand that everyone needs balance between love and work.

In recent years, the servant-leader model of leadership, encompassing a values leadership approach in religious institutions and non-profit organizations has taken hold. Rabbi David Ellenson (z’l), the emeritus president of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, wrote:

“[The servant-leader] is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The servant-leadership model is one that promotes such values as collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and the ethical use of power and empowerment… relationship-driven leaders are more empathetic, patient and tolerant. They approach decision-making subjectively, using personal values as a guide, and they examine how each option will impact others. They are approachable, strive for harmony amongst their employees and work to build consensus and trust. They also admit when they are wrong and seek constructive criticism… they are adept at listening and forging personal connections.”

Doris Kearns Goodwin, the American presidential historian, offered these insights:

“Leadership is the ability to use one’s talent, skills, emotional intelligence to mobilize people to a common purpose and to make a positive difference in people’s lives. The qualities important for leadership are humility, empathy, resilience, self-awareness, self-reflection, the ability to create a team where people can argue with you and question your assumptions, and the ability to communicate to people with stories to make people feel a part of what you are saying. The most important thing is the willingness to take a risk because the ambition for the greater good has become greater for you than for yourself.”

Great leaders take risks even when they know they will be criticized and possibly attacked. “You must be headlights and not tail-lights,” said Representative John Lewis.

Leadership is often difficult, painful and lonely. Leaders need the support of allies who join them in their mission. They need, as well, trusted loved ones with whom the leader can confide his/her fears, doubts and despair, and who can advise them by always being honest with them.

Any government, political party, company or business, religious or educational institution, non-profit organization or cause succeeds or fails based upon the moral values, competency, skill and vision of its leader. It is therefore in the best interest of everyone to choose their leaders wisely and carefully and, in an ongoing manner, evaluate critically and fairly the leader against high moral and ethical standards.

Zev Yaroslavsky, a former long-time Los Angeles City Councilman and Member of the LA County Board of Supervisors, wrote: “I have long believed that the key question is not which positions politicians will support or oppose. It’s the issues they’re willing to lose their office over in the name of principles that matter.”

As we move closer to voting, perhaps these ethical and functional standards of great leadership can help guide us in our decision-making in the voting booth.

For us political junkies who crave not only a Harris-Walz White House victory on November 5, but keeping the Senate and winning back the House, I offer below an analysis of “Punchbowl News AM” published this morning (August 23) about the critical races being run by Democrats Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Jon Tester in Montana. I’ve met both Senators and they are worthy of our financial support. They must win for Democrats to keep the Senate.

I have given financial support also to Colin Allred in Texas, Jackie Rosen in Nevada, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Ruben Gallego in Arizona and, though he doesn’t really need it, my friend Adam Schiff in California.

My family and I are taking Michelle Obama’s inspirational advisory to heart – for everyone to do something going forward until election day – and that means giving financially to those campaigns that will be critically important to Democrats on November 5: phone banking, visiting Nevada or Arizona (for Californians), or other swing states to do whatever those state campaigns require of volunteers, and to be certain that everyone we know of voting age (family, friends and colleagues) are registered to vote and vote by mail or at the polls on election day.

Thankfully, the DNC and the Harris-Walz Campaign have hired thousands of lawyers in the swing states and across the nation to combat in the courts the MAGA Republican legal efforts to subvert the election by changing state election rules to favor Trump and Republicans, denying the vote to black and brown registered voters, and preparing for the day-after election Trump’s and his minions denial of Kamala’s victory, assuming that Trump loses the election, again.

Democracy and freedom really are on the ballot, and I hope that Democratic voters plus Independents and traditional Republicans, who have come to realize what is at stake and recognize Trump for the snake oil salesman and would-be autocrat that he is, will defy predictions of a close presidential election and produce a landslide for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz not only to keep the election-deniers to the minimum but to vanquish the criminal-Trump and Trumpism once and for all.

The following is the Punchbowl News AM report today of a conversation with Chuck Schumer at the convention:

“With West Virginia already flipping to the GOP, Republicans just need to win one more seat to retake the Senate majority. Their best pickup opportunities are in Montana and Ohio. But Republicans are also pouring millions into presidential battlegrounds like Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan, where Democrats are defending seats.

Ticket-splitting: Democratic Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio can’t win their races without a massive chunk of so-called “ticket-splitters” — voters who choose former President Donald Trump in the presidential race and Tester or Brown in the Senate race.

As we’ve written before, this is an increasingly rare phenomenon. We asked Chuck Schumer how Tester and Brown could possibly win enough ticket-splitters to overcome the massive edge Republicans have in those states. Schumer said it’s up to the candidates themselves — and Harris — to not veer too far to the left:

“There’s a good chunk of Republicans — those who voted not for Trump but for Nikki Haley, and even before that [Ron] DeSantis — who really don’t like Trump. So as long as our presidential candidate, but also our Senate candidates, can convince them that they’re mainstream, not too far left, and they care about their state above all, they can get a lot of those votes.”

Plato warned that passivity and withdrawal from the political realm carry terrible risks: “The penalty that good [people] pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by [people] worse than themselves.”

In May, I posted a blog entitled “Talking Points for College Students Concerning Palestinian Protests.” College and University students are now preparing to start classes in the coming weeks and they are likely going to encounter either demonstrations on their campuses on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza and against Israel or fellow students who have an incomplete understanding of the Hamas-Israel War and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In addition, in next week’s Democratic National Convention, Palestinian protestors and their supporters are planning mass protests outside the convention hall. Vice-President Kamala Harris has already encountered and responded to similar protests in her campaign.

I have written at some length about the Hamas-Israel War and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the republishing of my 2019 volume Why Israel and its Future Matters – Letters of a Liberal Rabbi to his Children and the Next Generation (republished after October 7 and available on Amazon) and in my recently published Memoir From the West to the East – A Memoir of a Liberal American Rabbi (available from the publisher at https://westofwestcenter.com/product/from-the-west-to-the-east/

I offer once again those talking points for you to share with your college age children and grandchildren and, for that matter, with anyone else you think might benefit from what I have written. You can access that blog here:
Talking Points for College Students Concerning Palestinian Protests – 31 Friday May 2024  

These are anxious times – be it as a consequence of American presidential politics, or threats to our democracy, or the suffering begun on October 7 and continuing in the Gaza Strip, Israel and the West Bank, or in Russia’s war against Ukraine, or whatever each of us is experiencing personally. Anxiety can be suffocating. Hopefully, each of us has ways to relieve the tension that builds up from the sense of powerlessness of which anxiety and fear are the consequence. Strategies can include turning off the news, exercising, listening to music, binging on TV series’ re-runs and old films, eating chocolate and ice cream.

Over the past 30 years, I’ve collected wise quotations from Jewish and world literature on every imaginable theme. I checked today the theme of “anxiety and fear” and found following. I hope at least one or two help bring you a measure of calm and/or inspiration.  

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” —President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’” —Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” —Epictetus (1^st-2^nd Century AD Greek Stoic philosopher)

“Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.” —Charles Spurgeon (19^th century English Baptist Preacher)

“Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action.” —Walter Anderson (20^th century American painter and writer)

“You cannot always control what goes on outside, but you can always control what goes on inside.” —Wayne Dyer (20^th-21^st century American author)

“Life is ten percent what you experience and 90 percent how you respond to it.” —Dorothy M. Neddermeyer (20^th-21^st century psychotherapist)

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

“Calm mind brings inner strength and self-confidence, so that’s very important for good health.” —Dalai Lama (1935- )

“There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.” —Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

 “What else does anxiety about the future bring you but sorrow upon sorrow?” —Thomas á Kempis (14^th-15^th century Dutch-German author)

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” —Pastor Reinhold Niebuhr (20^th century American Ethicist)

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” —Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

“America must not become a nation of onlookers. America must not remain silent. Not merely black America, but all of America. It must speak up and act … for the sake of the image, the idea and the aspiration of America itself… When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned … under those tragic circumstances that bigotry and hatred is not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful, and the most tragic problem is silence.” —Rabbi Joachim Prinz (1902-1988; words spoken on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, 1963 March on Washington)

“Despair is not an option.” —Yaron Shavit, Deputy Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel, President of the 38^th World Zionist Congress  

“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble…Do not get lost in a sea of despair.” —Congressman John Lewis (1940-2020)

“The world is a very narrow bridge; the important thing is not to be afraid.” —Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (Ukraine, 1772-1810)