I have spent the last month licking my wounds, steering clear of having to listen to Donald Trump’s voice, reading only headlines in the NYTimes and Washington Post about what he’s doing to populate the American government and malign our democracy, and listening to a few well-chosen podcasts that focus on what went wrong for the Democratic Party in the election and what we who are supporters must do going forward towards the mid-terms. I have avoided watching the news on Cable TV (CNN and MSNBC) for my sanity’s sake.
On my early morning walks, I listen for a while to the podcasts noted above (e.g. Pod Save America, the War Room with Al Hunt and James Carville, Hacks-on-Tap, and The Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller) until I’ve had enough. I also listen to podcasts out of Israel (e.g. The Times of Israel Daily Briefing, The Promised Podcast, and Haaretz Weekly), and then I listen to classical music mostly. I also walk quietly, watch the squirrels and birds and listen to their songs, and commune with the coyotes who seem to have grown more numerous in our neighborhood in Sherman Oaks. I mostly just try and “be” or I spend time “thinking” about God knows what? (family mostly and ideas I’m mulling around).
And I photograph some of the extraordinarily beautiful images of first light as I see it is emerging into day above me. I’m attaching below a few of those images.
I find myself signing off emails these days since the election saying simply “Stay safe and sane!” and I wish that for all of you.
Apologies for former blog in which Ruth Messinger’s Op-Ed was not accessible. Here is the entire article.
Despair is not a strategy. Here are 4 things those mourning the election results can do right now.
By Ruth Messinger, The Daily Forward – Op-Ed – November 25, 2024
This essay was adapted from remarks the author delivered at her synagogue, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, and at a conference of the Jewish women’s group Elluminate.
Three weeks after the disastrous election that will return Donald Trump to the White House, I am, first and foremost, grieving. Grieving the failure of the second female candidate of a major party to shatter the ultimate glass ceiling, grieving the continuing and ongoing series of threats to our democracy, grieving the inadequacy of our organizing efforts, grieving the vast chasms among our citizenry that so desperately need healing they are unlikely to receive in this administration.
Our Jewish traditions that guide us through the loss of loved ones can help us with this kind of grief as well. The ritual of shiva, the seven-day period of intense mourning after a funeral, is well known. When it ends, the mourners are meant to get up and walk around the block, a cathartic reentry into the world, into their new normal, accompanied by members of their community.
So instead of playing the blame game about what went wrong, we must get up and focus instead on where we go from here.
Bottom of Form
First, in the spirit of this week’s holiday of Thanksgiving, we can start with some gratitude.
We held a free and fair election, without evident scandal or corruption. Boards of elections, poll workers, and various state and local bodies did their jobs. There was open debate, and there will soon be a peaceful and lawful transition of power.
This is not something that we should take for granted, in a world full of despots and coups. It is something that should be treasured and defended.
The result of the election is terrifying to me. Trump made clear in the campaign and has confirmed through his appalling cabinet appointments that he is determined to reshape our world through his own brand of racism, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia. He intends to target and tear apart immigrant communities and is committed to launching mass deportations. He continues to profess a denial of the climate crisis. He will attack Jews, Muslims, trans people and protesters of all kinds.
Despite our best field outreach and organizing efforts, his party will control both houses of Congress, and he will expand the conservative majority on our Supreme Court, leaving little hope for the checks and balances the Constitution is supposed to provide against the abuse of power.
There is plenty to mourn, but after the grieving must come strategic thinking that leads to action. And as I first said in a synagogue speech after Trump’s first victory in 2016, “despair is not a strategy.”
People in the most vulnerable situations in our society and around the world cannot afford for us to wallow in despair, and the teachings of our tradition won’t let us do that either.
So here are four first steps that can start to shape a path forward:
Drill down on a single issue. Whatever moves you most: trans rights, the environment, Israel. Get focused, and get involved. And don’t go out and create a new nonprofit to address your cause. Find the right group and be ready to work with others on the issue you’re passionate about wherever and however it arises. Be an ambassador, an educator and a lobbyist for the issue.
Focus on the midterms. We cannot afford to wait until the 2028 presidential cycle to turn the tide. The entire House and a third of the Senate will be on the ballot in 2026, and history suggests the opposition party will have major opportunities to flip seats. Find a candidate you care about and start giving and canvassing. There are even elections in 2025: the Wisconsin Supreme Court, for example, and open seats for governor in both Virginia and New Jersey. Each and every ballot in this divided country is essential.
Invest in education for a democracy. One lesson from this campaign is the curse of misinformation and disinformation in a fractured, filter-bubbled media landscape. We have endless new ways of communicating, and we must ensure that reliable, trustworthy, fact-based content reaches broad audiences. Support nonprofit and local journalism, invest in the teaching of civics and media literacy, share reliable information on candidates and issues across social media and other channels.
Engage in/with the resistance. Maybe you are not the type or no longer in the mood to march on Washington. Fine. But when Trump follows through on his promise of mass deportation — when he deploys the National Guard to remove the newest New Yorkers from the hotels where they have been sheltering, or to empty the synagogues and churches and mosques that have provided sanctuary — we will each have to decide whether to stand in the way or stand silently and watch. Think now about how much you are willing to risk, how much you would sacrifice, for the lives and rights of people more vulnerable than you are.
It may sound daunting. It may feel easier to stay in mourning; it may seem too hard to walk around the block. But we have faced crises before and survived, both as Jews and as Americans.
As Jews, we know that for millennia our ancestors lived under governments that ranged from friendly to hostile, welcoming to brutal. We have not only learned how to survive, but developed the tools to thrive, to be there for each other’s safety, and to experience the joys of life under any circumstance. We know that our responsibility to continue to work for justice is central to our tradition.
So get up we must. If your steps are unsteady, be guided by the teaching of the Chinese philosopher Lu Xun. “Hope is like a path in the countryside,” he wrote more than a century ago. “Originally, there was no path, yet as people walked all the time in the same direction, a way appeared.”
Ruth Messinger is right – read her op-ed in the Forward (November 25, 2024) in which she describes a path on which we dispel our despair after a period of mourning (as in the Shiva process) after the election and on which we then rise up and commit ourselves to do all we can as we anticipate the mid-term elections in 2026.
“America has split, and flipped, by education levels. Democrats have largely lost the working-class voters who elected Barack Obama, and college-educated professionals are shifting away from the Republican Party.”
So reports Axios (by Erica Pandey – November 11, 2024) on the percentage of Americans who voted for Donald Trump who do not have college degrees and the percentage of Americans for Kamala Harris who do.
By the numbers: College graduates made up 43% of the electorate, and 55% voted for Vice President Harris, per exit polls.
56% of voters without degrees voted for President-elect Trump.
The states below that level are almost all reliably red, and the states above it are almost all reliably blue.
And several of the states that hover right around the middle are closely watched battlegrounds.
As Trump prepares to eliminate the Department of Education, it becomes clear what his and the right wing’s attempt to dumb-down America mean generally and specifically on matters of race and gender – namely, to keep America divided between red and blue states and to sway swing states into red states in order to create a permanent right-wing red state dominated federal government.
Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of history at Boston College, explains in her “Letters to an American” the history, purpose and specifics of funding that the Department of Education provides for K-12 students. Controlling what and how students learn and don’t learn by allowing states alone to set the standards for public education serves the extreme right wing of the MAGA Republican Party that relies on voters with less education to elect its state and federal leadership.
I can only hope that after 4 years of the Trump presidency that the next president (should he/she be a Democrat) will reestablish the Department of Education, federal funding of K-12 schools for a variety of important purposes, and the open and inclusive values that are the mission of thhe the Department.
Here is Dr. Richardson’s piece from yesterday (November 16, 2024):
“One of President-elect Trump’s campaign pledges was to eliminate the Department of Education. He claimed that the department pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” He promised to “return” education to the states.
In fact, the Department of Education does not set curriculum; states and local governments do.
The Department of Education collects statistics about schools to monitor student performance and promote practices based in evidence. It provides about 10% of funding for K–12 schools through federal grants of about $19.1 billion to high-poverty schools and of $15.5 billion to help cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.
It also oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program, including setting the rules under which colleges and universities can participate. But what really upsets the radical right is that the Department of Education is in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding, a policy Congress set in 1975 with an act now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This was before Congress created the department.
The Department of Education became a stand-alone department in May 1980 under Democratic president Jimmy Carter, when Congress split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two departments: the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education.
A Republican-dominated Congress established the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower as part of a broad attempt to improve the nation’s schools and Americans’ well-being in the flourishing post–World War II economy. When the Soviet Union beat the United States into space by sending up the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, lawmakers concerned that American children were falling behind put more money and effort into educating the country’s youth, especially in math and science.
But support for federal oversight of education took a devastating hit after the Supreme Court, headed by Eisenhower appointee Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional in the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Immediately, white southern lawmakers launched a campaign of what they called “massive resistance” to integration. Some Virginia counties closed their public schools. Other school districts took funds from integrated public schools and used a grant system to redistribute those funds to segregated private schools. Then, Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 that declared prayer in schools unconstitutional cemented the decision of white evangelicals to leave the public schools, convinced that public schools were leading their children to perdition.
In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan ran on a promise to eliminate the new Department of Education.
After Reagan’s election, his secretary of education commissioned a study of the nation’s public schools, starting with the conviction that there was a “widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The resulting report, titled “A Nation at Risk,” announced that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”
Although a later study commissioned in 1990 by the Secretary of Energy found the data in the original report did not support the report’s conclusions, Reagan nonetheless used the report in his day to justify school privatization. He vowed after the report’s release that he would “continue to work in the months ahead for passage of tuition tax credits, vouchers, educational savings accounts, voluntary school prayer, and abolishing the Department of Education. Our agenda is to restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.”
The rise of white evangelism and its marriage to Republican politics fed the right-wing conviction that public education no longer served “family values” and that parents had been cut out of their children’s education. Christians began to educate their children at home, believing that public schools were indoctrinating their children with secular values.
When he took office in 2017, Trump rewarded those evangelicals who had supported his candidacy by putting right-wing evangelical activist Betsy DeVos in charge of the Education Department. She called for eliminating the department—until she used its funding power to try to keep schools open during the Covid pandemic—and asked for massive cuts in education spending.
Rather than funding public schools, DeVos called instead for tax money to be spent on education vouchers, which distribute tax money to parents to spend for education as they see fit. This system starves the public schools and subsidizes wealthy families whose children are already in private schools. DeVos also rolled back civil rights protections for students of color and LGBTQ+ students but increased protections for students accused of sexual assault.
In 2019, the 1619 Project, published by the New York Times Magazine on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans at Jamestown in Virginia Colony, argued that the true history of the United States began in 1619, establishing the roots of the country in the enslavement of Black Americans. That, combined with the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, prompted Trump to commission the 1776 Project, which rooted the country in its original patriotic ideals and insisted that any moments in which it had fallen away from those ideals were quickly corrected. He also moved to ban diversity training in federal agencies.
When Trump lost the 2020 election, his loyalists turned to undermining the public schools to destroy what they considered an illegitimate focus on race and gender that was corrupting children. In January 2021, Republican activists formed Moms for Liberty, which called itself a parental rights organization and began to demand the banning of LGBTQ+ books from school libraries. Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo engineered a national panic over the false idea that public school educators were teaching their students critical race theory, a theory taught as an elective in law school to explain why desegregation laws had not ended racial discrimination.
After January 2021, 44 legislatures began to consider laws to ban the teaching of critical race theory or to limit how teachers could talk about racism and sexism, saying that existing curricula caused white children to feel guilty.
When the Biden administration expanded the protections enforced by the Department of Education to include LGBTQ+ students, Trump turned to focusing on the idea that transgender students were playing high-school sports despite the restrictions on that practice in the interest of “ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.”
During the 2024 political campaign, Trump brought the longstanding theme of public schools as dangerous sites of indoctrination to a ridiculous conclusion, repeatedly insisting that public schools were performing gender-transition surgery on students. But that cartoonish exaggeration spoke to voters who had come to see the equal rights protected by the Department of Education as an assault on their own identity. That position leads directly to the idea of eliminating the Department of Education.
But that might not work out as right-wing Americans imagine. As Morning Joe economic analyst Steven Rattner notes, for all that Republicans embrace the attacks on public education, Republican-dominated states receive significantly more federal money for education than Democratic-dominated states do, although the Democratic states contribute significantly more tax dollars.
There is a bigger game afoot, though, than the current attack on the Department of Education. As Thomas Jefferson recognized, education is fundamental to democracy, because only educated people can accurately evaluate the governmental policies that will truly benefit them.
In 1786, Jefferson wrote to a colleague about public education: “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness…. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against [the evils of “kings, nobles and priests”], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
Many Jews tell me they are unbelievers because religion causes war and enmity between religious groups and peoples. I say, bad religion causes war and enmity, but good religion does the opposite – it promotes unity, love and kindness.
For me, my Jewish faith in God isn’t based in the super-nationalist, misogynist, homophobic, intolerant, reward-and-punishment God of ancient Biblical tradition, but rather in the mystic’s God, the creative and life-affirming God of quiet “inwardness” that affirms the unity of humankind and the infinite worth and dignity of every woman, man, and child. And my ethics grow from the ethics of the ancient biblical prophets.
Jewish religious and ethical tradition does many things, and two of the most important are that it feeds the mind and inspires the soul. I write in my recently published book “From the West to the East – A Memoir of a Liberal American Rabbi” about Jewish faith and ethics in this way and about the core Jewish values that have enabled me to address the greatest challenges facing Americans, Israelis, the Jewish people, and humankind in the modern era. I tell many consequential stories in my life and how my values and faith have buttressed me as I have sought to make sense of them all. I tell of 3 prominent mentor guides whose voices live within me and my conscience and are often in conflict with one another.
I’m beginning my book tour this coming Friday evening on Shabbat in Seattle, WA, and next Tuesday evening in NYC. If you live in either of those places, I’d love to see you. Here is my schedule in the next several months:
-Friday Shabbat, November 15, 6 PM – Temple De Hirsch Sinai, Seattle, WA
-Tuesday, November 19, 6:30 PM – Stephen S. Wise Free Synagogue, NY
-Friday Shabbat, December 6, 6 PM – Congregation Sherith Israel, San Francisco
-Friday Shabbat, January 3, 6:15 PM – Leo Baeck Temple, Los Angeles
-Sunday, February 23, 10:15 AM – Washington Hebrew Congregation, Washington, DC
I hope you will consider acquiring a copy of my Memoir and learn more about how my Jewish faith and ethics have buttressed and helped me to clarify my Jewish moral compass in what I’ve done as a rabbinic leader over many decades of service to the Jewish people.
If you already acquired a copy, thank you. If you found it meaningful, please consider writing a brief review and posting it on Amazon. If you’d like to reach out, I’d love the chance to speak in person or virtually with your community about my Memoir and the ideas and activism that have filled my life and been so meaningful.
The following letter was sent by Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, to Reform Jewish Leadership with a sign-on opportunity. If you are inclined, please hit the link below and add your name.
Dear Friends,
This morning, the nation woke up to news that will shape us for the next four years and beyond. Like everyone else, I am experiencing a range of strong emotions. I also awoke believing in the same core Jewish commitments that have called generations of our people to use our God-given gifts to shape a world of holiness, dignity, justice, and love, even as we face this challenging new day.
These are the deeply held Jewish values that undergird our movement’s commitment to civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ equality, caring for the health of our environment, every individual’s right to reproductive and other forms of health care, and more.
Across the country, Reform Jews, communities, and congregations are experiencing the pain of the demonization of difference that has become normative in our contentious political culture. This pain may be accompanied by fear, anxiety, sadness, confusion and even anger. We must remain steadfast in our dedication to supporting one another in fostering compassion, resilience, and understanding within our communities. Together, we will confront these challenges by promoting dialogue, embracing diversity, and advocating for a society rooted in justice and respect for all.
There will be opportunities to advance our vision of justice, based on the knowledge that we are all made more whole when we treat others with the respect every human being deserves.
The strength of our movement has always been in the community that we are, standing alongside each other in moments of joy and moments of challenge. We will care for the orphan, the widow, and the stranger. We will remain firm in our values and bring them to bear in the public square. We will speak truth to power.SIGN THE LETTER
Join us in adding your name to this letter to President Trump amplifying this expression of our values and commitments.
In solidarity, Rabbi Rick Jacobs (he/him) President, URJ
The polls are making me crazy. I know I’m not alone. I’ve written in this blog about my incredulity that so many millions of Americans continue to support Donald Trump and that current Republican office holders who can’t stand Trump refuse out of cowardice to say so publicly.
Many have sought to explain Trump’s appeal, including Ezra Klein most recently in a thoughtful verbal essay a week ago on his podcast and, following that, by an in-depth interview with NYT’s journalist Maggie Haberman who, among journalists, knows Trump better than most. It ought to be clear to everyone by now who he is, the danger he poses to our democratic institutions, and who Kamala Harris is too.
Understanding that no candidate for public office is without his/her flaws and weaknesses, Kamala Harris has hers as well, though for middle-left Democrats she has shown herself to be a strong, honest, empathic, smart, pragmatic, experienced, competent, and charismatic leader based in broad liberal democratic values, supportive of the US Constitution and rule of law, and of America’s traditional place in the international order.
Given Donald Trump’s enormous weaknesses as a candidate and as a man and his utter lack of empathy, I’ve struggled to understand why he remains so competitive in the polls. In any former election before the so-called “Trump Era,” his behavior and character would have been disqualifying for the presidency.
David Plouffe, Kamala Harris’ Senior Advisor, explained that since September, nothing substantial has changed in the polls. Harris and Trump are historically close and Harris’ lead in the key swing states is within the margins of error. Plouffe and others say, however, that we would rather be us than Trump, that Kamala is a far better candidate with better policies that positively will impact the economy and the lives of more Americans, and will preserve the United States’ role internationally. Harris also has a far better ground-game and has more money than Trump to make her case.
James Carville wrote an opinion piece in the NY Times last week in which he argued why he is certain that Kamala Harris will win the election just as the historian Allan Lichtman has argued since she became the Democratic standard-bearer in July.
This past week on the MSNBC Podcast How to Win 2024 with former Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill and former RNC Chairman Michael Steele, Steele sought to allay the anxiety that so many of us Democrats feel (we are a nervous bunch, to be sure). He explained that the polls are being skewed by the deliberate infusion of hundreds of MAGA leaning polls to jack up the confidence of Trump supporters that can drive his base to the polls and lay the groundwork for Trump’s denial of the results if/when he loses the election.
Steele’s argument calmed me down a bit, as well as the recent revelations of General John Kelly in his NYT’s interview with Mike Schmidt, and the news that 200 former Republican office holders and members of past Republican administrations are voting for Kamala Harris. And then there are all the celebrity endorsers such as Beyoncé’s appearance with Kamala in Houston, Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, Michelle and Barak Obama’s barnstorming in swing states, a plethora of strong cutting-edge Harris ads flooding social media, and Harris and Walz appearing everywhere in interviews and rallies.
It’s difficult, nevertheless, not knowing how this election will turn out given the enormous stakes. That’s the source of my anxiety and fear. I’ve tried to contain my anxiety by distracting myself with other things, in remembering that turn-out and only the final poll (i.e. the vote) matters, and that the advantages are with the Harris-Walz campaign.
Here are a few thoughts by others that have helped me address my fear and anxiety in these final days. I hope they might help those of you who feel as I do as November 5th approaches:
“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” -Dale Carnegie, no relation to Andrew Carnegie, (1888-1955)
“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” -Rosa Parks (1913-2005)
“Read to children. Vote. And never buy anything from a man who’s selling fear.” -Mary Doria Russell, science-fiction writer (b. 1950)
“Anxiety’s like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far.”-Jodi Picoult, American novelist (b. 1966)
“Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.”-Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Remember to vote and be sure everyone you know votes – hopefully, for the Harris-Walz ticket. If you are willing and able to volunteer to get out the vote, go to Pod Save America’s non-partisan “Vote Save America PAC” at https://votesaveamerica.com/
When my father died at the age of 53 from a heart attack in 1959, the last image I had of him was him saying good night to my brother and me as he stood in the doorway between our darkened bedroom and his backlit bathroom in naked silhouette. Early the next morning, long before my brother and I awakened, he was taken by ambulance to the hospital, and 24 hours later my mother informed me of his death using these words: “Daddy is no more!” I cried as I’d never cried before and rarely since. I’ll never forget that moment.
Since his passing, I’ve lived a long life of study, reflection, spirituality, Jewish learning, liberal Zionist and human rights activism. My Dad’s lasting image in that doorway will never go away, and through my memoir “From the West to the East – A Memoir of a Liberal American Rabbi” I sought to crystallize images of my life for my sons and grandchildren as I discussed many issues of concern in my own life and in the life of the communities I served as a rabbi in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Hollywood.
I’ll be traveling on a book tour this fall and winter, and if I am in your city, I would love to meet you at one of the following:
-Friday Evening Shabbat, November 15, 6 PM – Temple De Hirsch Sinai, Seattle, WA
-Tuesday Evening, November 19, 6 PM – Stephen S. Wise Free Synagogue, Manhattan, NY
-Friday Evening Shabbat, December 6, 6 PM – Congregation Sherith Israel, San Francisco
-Friday Evening Shabbat, January 3, 6:15 PM – Leo Baeck Temple, Los Angeles
-Sunday, February 23, 10:15 AM – Washington Hebrew Congregation, Washington, DC
As we approach election day and whatever happens following November 5, your reading my Memoir may offer an opportunity to reflect on the essential values and experiences that have enabled me to cope with and address the greatest challenges facing Americans, Israelis, the Jewish people, and the world over the past 7 decades.
Thank you if you acquired already a copy of my Memoir. If not, I invite you to do so on Amazon or on the publisher’s link below (I will have books available at each of my book-talks above). Please leave a review of the book on Amazon, if you find it meaningful. If you’d like to reach out, I’d love the chance to speak in person or virtually with your community about my Memoir.
This Rosh Hashanah I spent much of my time in synagogue thinking about this past awful year in the life of the Jewish people and the State of Israel – the October 7 Hamas massacre, the hostage-taking, the ensuing war, the destruction in Gaza, the 18,000 missiles launched by Hezbollah against Israel, Iran’s April attack, the extremist Iran-based Houthi attacks, Israel’s military response against all these Islamic extremist terrorist groups seeking the destruction of Israel, and the dramatic rise in anti-Israel, anti-Zionism and antisemitism in America and around the world. I’ve been weighing and evaluating what this traumatic year will mean for our liberal Jewish and Zionist identity and values and what we might commit to doing in the New Year.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that this has been the most horrific, frightening and sad year in the life of the Jewish people since the end of the Holocaust. The most inspiration I have drawn from the events of this year has been the response of Israel’s civil society in support of the hostage families and the young soldiers and reservists who left their homes, families and businesses and did whatever was asked of them in defense of the Jewish people and State. I’ve been inspired as well by the loving and positive response of world Jewry to our Israeli brothers and sisters, and by President Biden’s and America’s support of Israel’s right to defend itself, and also by his and his administration’s concern for Palestinian civilians who have suffered so severely in Gaza as a consequence of this war.
Haviv Rettig Gur, an Israeli commentator on The Times of Israel Daily Podcast, suggested this past week that Rosh Hashanah this year may well be the inflection point for Israel that we’ve been waiting for, when Israel and its enemies take a turn, find a way to end this current conflict, to the return of the hostages, and to determining the next steps that will lead to greater regional stability and peaceful coexistence with the Palestinian people on a path to a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and to an expansion of the Arab nations in the Abraham Accords.
He noted that Rosh Hashanah is a holiday unique among all the major holy days in the Jewish calendar year. The other major Jewish festivals of Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot begin with a new moon. Rosh Hashanah begins in darkness, without a full moon, beneath a firmament of stars the lights of which come to us from a far earlier era in the history of the Milky Way Galaxy. These High Holidays, beginning in darkness and moving towards an expansion of light as the crescent moon reaches its fullness on Sukkot, call upon the Jewish people to begin again, to seek moral and spiritual enlightenment, to emphasize the sacred character of life, to reaffirm our faith in the best of the human condition and in our innate ability to solve our many personal and societal problems, and in the hope that change and goodness can come in this New Year.
To those amongst our people who have thrown up their hands in disgust by the killing and destruction in Gaza and by the corrupt leadership of the most extreme right wing government in the history of the Jewish State, I understand the rage and despair. I have felt it too. But I ask for caution before you step away from the State of Israel and the Jewish people as some are now doing. The founding and development of Israel is arguably the greatest accomplishment of the Jewish people in the past two thousand years. Yet, this year has been a test for many Jews, and some have turned their backs on Israel and Jewish life. This is not the time to turn away. Since the anti-judicial reform movement that took place during the year before October 7 (and still threatens Israeli democracy as long as this current government rules), Israelis have turned to us Diaspora Jews for our moral and emotional support. After October 7, our solidarity with Israelis has meant much to them. They tell us so in ways I’ve never heard before. Israelis are concerned for us too and our well-being as antisemitism has grown in America and in many European capitals. We Jews there and here are one family, and though there are Israeli Jewish extremists with whom I don’t identify in any way, there are hundreds of thousands of Israelis with whom I do identify very strongly, with love for and pride in who they are and who we are as Jews who share common liberal Jewish and Zionist values.
This is the time for us Diaspora Jews to reinvest in ourselves as Jews, as supporters of Israel, and in who we are as a people. It isn’t enough any longer to be merely so-called “cultural Jews” or “culinary Jews.” Many American Jews have turned away because they don’t believe in the God of Jewish history and tradition. But, Jewish faith in God is only a portion of what characterizes the Jewish people in the modern era. If you don’t believe in God or in the religion of the Jewish people, there is still so much more to what constitutes Judaism and Jewish peoplehood that is appealing and self-affirming – our common history, a shared historic Homeland, an ethical tradition, the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages of Yiddish, Ladino and Aramaic, the Jewish arts of painting, sculpture, film, dance, song, and literature, and the long list of Israeli and Jewish accomplishments and inventions that have enhanced Israeli and modern Jewish life and the world as a whole. In all of that, we have a right to feel a deep sense of pride as Jews – but only if we know what our people has accomplished and what liberal Jewish values characterize us.
I encourage everyone to set as one goal in this New Year to read Jewish history, to learn about Zionism and Zionist thought as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and as our people’s social justice movement. Contemporary Jewry, by and large, does not know nearly enough Jewish history or about the content of our classic religious, theological, and philosophical texts from the Hebrew Bible through the writings of our rabbis, sages, philosophers, mystics, Enlightenment, and Zionist thinkers. Encourage the young people in your families, from post-bar and -bat mitzvah age to university age to take courses on Judaism, Zionism, the history of the State of Israel, and Jewish ethics, history, and tradition. A Jew cannot know his/her path in life without knowing from whence they’ve come as a people and why we are who we are and what we value.
This ten-day period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur has the capacity to restore and reinvigorate our sense of our Jewish identity, to realign our Jewish moral compass, to refocus and renew our support for our Israeli brothers and sisters, and to gird ourselves for more uncertainty in the Middle East and in America.
As we come together on Yom Kippur this coming week, I hope for the end of this war, the immediate return of the hostages to their families, the safety of Israel’s soldiers and innocent Palestinians too, for the victory of the IDF against Israel’s enemies, for our strength in standing against antisemites on the left and the right in America, and for peace with security for all peoples at war not only in the Middle East but in Ukraine and everywhere around the world.
Gmar tov u-l’shanah tovah u-m’tukah.
May we be sealed in the Book of Life and be graced with a good and sweet New Year.
On the morning of Rosh Hashanah in 1980 (5741), I delivered a sermon about the central theme in the national conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs to a packed sanctuary of 1,400 congregants. As a fledgling 30 year-old rabbi at Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco, I had no idea what my congregants were thinking. I was a rookie rabbi then speaking about what was – and still is – one of the most hotly debated issues in the world. As I spoke, I watched their faces and eyes, and I paid attention to their body language as I moved through my text. I knew that what I was saying was controversial, but I didn’t know if they were with me or against me. I would find out immediately after the service ended.
My first instinct was to push things further than I did – to call for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But that was 1980 and no one was doing that except a few of my friends who were left-wing Labor Zionists (and not congressional rabbis) and a small minority of Israelis. I was told that I’d lose my job if I gave the sermon I really wanted to give.
44 years later, as this awful war between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas continues and the hostages languish in tunnels beneath Gaza, and recent polls show overwhelming distrust and fear felt by Israelis towards Palestinians and Palestinians towards Israelis, and as Israel fights the Iran-created and -controlled terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon that has fired 8000 precision rockets at Israel since October 8 last year, and a wider war threatens all the peoples of the Middle East, I could lift much of what I wrote then and give a similar sermon this year, with adjustments given the passage of time and events.
In my newly published book “From the West to the East – A Memoir of a Liberal American Rabbi” I tell the whole near-violent story of what happened that day 44 years ago, and I explore and go deeper into what I’ve learned throughout my 45-year career as a liberal rabbi in San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles. I talk about family, faith, human rights that I’ve championed (and the blow-back I’ve so often received), travel, Israel-Palestine (of course), and everything in-between.
If you have already purchased my book – thank you. If not, I invite you to do so now. It is filled with many dramatic stories that I’ve experienced; and I share my encounters with many remarkably wise and consequential people who have helped to shape my ideas and attitudes.
My Memoir is available on Amazon or through the publisher – see links below. If you are moved by the book, please consider posting a review on Amazon.
If you would like to reach out, I’d love the chance to speak with your community in person or virtually about my story and the moral, religious and political challenges confronting us all in these difficult and challenging times.
I hope that this New Year 5785 will be for you and all those you love one of good health and well-being, and that the Jewish people and all peoples of the Land will know peace and security in the New Year and the hostages will be returned home.
Rabbi John Rosove's Blog 