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Rabbi John Rosove's Blog

Category Archives: Quote of the Day

Victor Frankl and today’s health care workers will be remembered

26 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Quote of the Day, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

More and more harrowing and inspiring stories are becoming known about medical school students at NYU and UCSF medical schools (among others) and emergency care doctors and nurses in NYC and around the country who are committing themselves to helping the sick at great personal risk. Their courage and selflessness will be one of the noble memories that we will recall once this crisis has passed.

Victor Frankl reflected with these words – I did not change the gender language as he wrote it:

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. ” 

On Accountability and Responsibility

20 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Quote of the Day, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

As I watch the news, I am deeply impressed by leaders such as Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo, NY City Mayor Bill De Blasio, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, governors, mayors, city councils, boards of supervisors, Democratic members of the House and Senate, as well as the nation’s doctors, nurses, health care workers, and regular citizens who are stepping up to help the sick, shut-ins, the elderly, poor, and incarcerated.

I am also grateful to the major news organizations who not only are reporting truthfully what is happening and asking the hard questions of the President and the federal government that need to be asked in order to understand what the government is doing and not doing, but using their air, digital, and print-time to educate the population about this crisis and what we can do to protect ourselves, our families, and communities. All of them exhibit our best angels of spirit, intelligence, decency, and will.

They are all filling a yawning chasm left by an irresponsible President Trump who denies the truth, makes false and self-serving exaggerated pronouncements, commands but doesn’t follow up, shirks responsibility (and admits it – “I am not responsible”) that any “war-time” president and administration would take, and blames everyone but himself for the state of this crisis.

I think of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, and Winston Churchill as the extraordinary leaders that they were in the darkest of times, and their memory reminds me that our leaders have the capacity to respond to this crisis if they utilize their intelligence, will, and common decency to do so. I exclude from this criticism people like Dr. Anthony Fauci and a few others in the Federal government who are trying to work around Trump to do what is right for the people of our nation.

On this Shabbat eve, I offer a few quotations from Jewish tradition and beyond on the themes of moral accountability and responsibility. Many of our leaders and citizens are rising to the occasion and fighting the good fight despite the overwhelming speed of the disease’s relentless spread. Their decisions and actions are turning out to be the difference between life and death, and we citizens ought to be enormously grateful to them.

“One who is able to protest against a wrong that is being done in his family, his city, his nation, or the world and doesn’t do so is held accountable for that wrong being done.” (Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 54b)

“The legal status of a person is always that of one forewarned, and [that person] is liable for any damage caused, both when awake and when asleep.” (Talmud Bavli, Bava Kamma 3b)

“Few are guilty, but all are responsible.” (Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel)

“Alas, after a certain age every person is responsible for his face.” (Albert Camus)

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.” (Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar)

“You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.” (Erica Jong)

“The buck stops here!” (President Harry S. Truman)

“The personal is political” – Early feminist phrase

05 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Human rights, Quote of the Day, Uncategorized, Women's Rights

≈ 1 Comment

George Will reflected the early feminist phrase when describing Joe Biden’s experience and his approach to political problem solving and governing.
 
“[Joe] Biden has twice experienced an agony that has become relatively rare but until recently in the human story was commonplace, that of a parent burying a child. This might be related to his approach to politics as an arena of transactions, not of ever-impending tragedies. Such emotional maturity is a prerequisite for restoring national equilibrium.”
 
George Will – The Washington Post, “Sensible Americans might be saved from dismay in November” – March 4, 2020

January 28 Commemorates the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz

26 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, Ethics, Human rights, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Quote of the Day, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

For decent people to contemplate the evil done to the 6 million Jews and 5 million others murdered during the Shoah is to be overwhelmed with grief and stunned by the enormity of the Nazi crime. Yet, the Jewish people has survived and thrived in the State of Israel and Diaspora communities since Auschwitz was liberated 75 years ago on January 28, 1945.

We can only imagine the enormous contribution to the Jewish people and to the betterment of the human condition that these victims would have contributed had they not perished.

The following two statements remind us that goodness, justice,  compassion, and peace require us to fight always against genocide, to challenge cruelty wherever it raises its ugly head, and to work to eliminate the inhumane conditions that diminish God’s image (Tzelem Elohim) anywhere in the world.

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” Edmund Burke, Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher (1729-1797)

“A person may cause evil to others not only by one’s actions but by one’s inaction, and in either case a person is justly accountable to them for the injury.” John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)

Zichronam livracha – May the victims of the Shoah be remembered for a blessing.

 

 

 “I hate when anti-Semitism takes over all Jewish discourse” – Rabbi Donniel Hartman

03 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Jewish Identity, Quote of the Day

≈ Leave a comment

“I hate when anti-Semitism takes over all Jewish discourse. I hate to talk about anti-Semitism, because I want to talk about what Judaism can learn from and contribute to the modern world, and not merely how we can survive it. I was raised on the belief that contemporary Jewish life, whether in Israel or North America, had a critical choice to make between Auschwitz and Sinai, as to which was to guide our lives and shape our core identity. Auschwitz was to be remembered and mourned, but it is Sinai and the teachings of the Jewish tradition over the millennia that give Jewish life meaning and value, and consequently, a future.”

– Rabbi Donniel Hartman

Remember these words in the weeks ahead

24 Tuesday Dec 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Quote of the Day, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Re: the Congressional and Senate Republicans, it’s best to remember these words:
 
“You have not converted a man/woman because you have silenced [them].”
-John Morley, statesman and writer (24 Dec 1838-1923)

The Wisdom of Lincoln!

27 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Quote of the Day, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

“The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both Congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

-Abraham Lincoln

Impeachment Whirlwind – Alexander Hamilton

22 Friday Nov 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Quote of the Day

≈ 1 Comment

“When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents…is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity–to join in the cry of danger to liberty–to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion–to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day–It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

Alexander Hamilton, quoted by David Remnick in “Impeachment Whirlwind,” The New Yorker, November 25, 2019, p. 21.

The source of our troubles

14 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Quote of the Day

≈ 3 Comments

In watching the congressional impeachment hearings yesterday, I was reminded of this statement by the writer P.J. O’Rourke:

“No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.”

George Orwell on political speech

05 Monday Aug 2019

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Quote of the Day, Social Justice

≈ Leave a comment

Since the tragic two mass murders in the United States this past week, both apparently provoked by white nationalist extremism, I’m reminded of the words of George Orwell:

“…one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. …Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind….” (Politics and the English Language – 1946)

 

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