“The plague had swallowed up everything and everyone. No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all. Strongest of these emotions was the sense of exile and of deprivation.”

So wrote Albert Camus, Nobel Prize winner for Literature, in his 1947 novel The Plague, words that well could have been written in these times.

Set in the French Algerian city of Oran, The Plague was published only two years after the end of World War II. In this novel, the plague acts as metaphor for the destruction and evil the world had just survived.

To read my reflections on Camus’ The Plague see my blog at The Times of Israel at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/its-a-matter-of-common-decency/

In each of my books Why Judaism Matters – Letters of a Liberal Rabbi to his Children and the Millennial Generation (New Jersey: Turner Publishing, 2017) and Why Israel [and its Future] Matters – Letters of  a Liberal Rabbi to his Children and the Millennial Generation (New Jersey: Ben Yehuda Press, 2019) I address core identity issues for Jews of all ages and for non-Jews who want to understand what it means to be a liberal ethical Jew and a lover of Israel in an era when neither is automatic. Each book includes an Afterword by my two sons Daniel (35) and David (30).

I invite you to give them as Hanukah gifts to those you love. They are available on Amazon.com or through the publisher.

Endorsements:

“Why Judaism Matters”

“John Rosove does what so many of us have struggled to do, and does it brilliantly: He makes the case for liberal Judaism to his children. As Rosove shows, liberal Judaism is choice-driven, messy, and always evolving, “traditional” in some ways and “radical” in others. It is also optimistic, spiritual, and progressive in both personal and political ethics. Without avoiding the hard stuff, such as intermarriage and Israel, Rabbi Rosove weaves all of these strands together to show the deep satisfactions of living and believing as a liberal Jew. All serious Jews, liberal or otherwise, should read this book.” – Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President Emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism and a regular columnist for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz

”Rabbi Rosove gets it. Here is a religious leader not afraid to tell it like it is, encapsulating for his audience the profound disaffection so many young Jews feel toward their heritage. But instead of letting them walk away, he makes a powerful case for the relevance of tradition in creating meaningful lives. In our technology-saturated, attention-absorbing age, Rosove offers religion-as-reprieve, his fresh vision of a thoroughly modern, politically-engaged and inclusive Judaism.” – Danielle Berrin a columnist and commentator on CNN, MSNBC, The Guardian, British Esquire, The Atlantic, and The Jewish Forward

“Rabbi Rosove has written a wonderful book, a love letter to his children, and through them, to all our children. Prodigiously knowledgeable, exceedingly wise, and refreshingly honest, Rabbi Rosove has described why Judaism matters. It should serve as a touching testament of faith, spanning the generations for generations to come.” – Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, Senior Rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, New York

“Why Israel Matters”

“Morally unflinching, intellectually courageous, Rabbi John Rosove has provided us with a desperately needed map for how to navigate the growing tensions between progressives and the state of Israel. By calling out Israel when it has done wrong and calling out its critics when they exaggerate Israel’s flaws, Rabbi Rosove echoes the ancient prophets, who criticized their people but always loved and defended them. This thoughtful and passionate book reminds us that commitment to Israel and to social justice are essential components of a healthy Jewish identity.” – Yossi Klein Halevi, Senior Fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem

“Through a series of letters to his sons, Rabbi John Rosove movingly describes his own relationship to the State of Israel and provides advice and a way forward for a new generation to forge its own relationship with the Jewish State. Rosove’s optimism, and his boundless faith in Jewish peoplehood and Jewish values, makes this book an invaluable blueprint for Jews, both in Israel and around the world, to help the Jewish State live up to its founding values of acceptance, pluralism, and democracy and become a true light unto the nations.” – Anat Hoffman, Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center and Chair of Women of the Wall

“Rabbi John Rosove’s letters to his sons are tender and loving, but also gripping and challenging, as he grapples with modern Israel, Jewish identity, relations between Israelis and Diaspora Jews, and perhaps most significantly whether ‘you can maintain your ethical and moral values while at the same time being supporters of the Jewish state despite its flaws and imperfections.’…This book will raise as many questions for Rosove’s sons as it answers; it is a book that many of us wish we had written for our own children.’” Daniel Kurtzer, Former US Ambassador to Israel (2001-2005) and US Ambassador to Egypt (1997-2001), Professor of Middle Eastern Policy Studies, Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

“Rabbi Rosove’s truths reach minds and open hearts. I urge each and every individual who feels in any way connected to the Jewish People, to ponder this powerful assemblage of candid, insightful messages which address the core issues facing Israel as a nation, and as a notion. A must-read!” – Isaac Herzog, Chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel and former opposition Labor party leader in the Israeli Knesset

My wife and I took a walk this week with our 22-month-old granddaughter. We wore masks. Coming towards us on the sidewalk was a young man without one. We veered away but I was tempted to ask why he wasn’t covering his face out of consideration for the health and well-being of others. I said nothing.

How is it possible still that people don’t wear masks when infectious disease experts say that doing so is the most effective prophylactic against spreading and/or getting the virus?

This incident reminded me of a terrifying experience I had on the road thirty years ago. I’d turned from a side street onto a well-traveled LA canyon road about one hundred yards in front of an oncoming pick-up truck. I quickly got up to speed, but before I knew it the other driver passed me on the left, gave me the finger, turned into my lane, stopped, opened his door, got out, stood on the pavement, and glared at me while shouting expletives. I stopped my car with about 40 feet between us, locked my doors, refused to engage, prepared to swing around him if he approached me and get away as quickly as I could. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he wanted a fight. Seeing that I froze, as though confronting a bear in the wilds, he got back into his truck and sped on.

I saw recently on YouTube an ugly exchange between a maskless man and Black Lives Matters activists that challenged him to put on a face covering. While screaming he approached the group and coughed on them.

I ask, gentle reader, what would/do you do when encountering maskless people on the street, in markets, elevators, and other closed spaces? Certainly, it’s good to get far away from such people, but is it better to say nothing or to request compliance (nicely) that they abide by health officials’ standards and risk an uncivil or violent reaction?

The current system of electing an American president in which the Electoral College awards all delegates from each state to one candidate that wins the popular vote in that state distorts our politics, encourages campaigns to focus on a few unrepresentative states, and can defy the popular will of the nation to the interests of a few smaller states. The Electoral College determines who becomes President of the United States and does not function as a democratic institution. It’s time either to eliminate it entirely or to mitigate its deleterious effects on our democracy.

Two of the last six presidential elections were won in the Electoral College by candidates who did not win the popular vote (George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016). If this were to occur in any other nation, Americans would rise up and criticize those nations out of democratic outrage. But, we tolerate this assault on our own democracy here.

For my full blog at the Times of Israel, see https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/its-time-to-mitigate-the-american-electoral-college-system/

“T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights,” asked me to write a d’var Torah on this week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, to appear on its site almost immediately after the election.

Here is the link to the piece –

Ancient Wisdom for this Post-Election Era

I never met personally Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, but I have read many of his books and consider him to be one of my most esteemed teachers. A public intellectual and global moral leader, humankind lost a magnificent mind and indomitable spirit this past Shabbat when he succumbed to cancer at the young age of 72.

Formerly the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom (1991-2013), Rabbi Sacks’ influence extended far beyond his own nation and the English speaking world. His wisdom, learning, understanding of the human condition, and open heart will be missed by many. Those who knew or read his works can never forget him.

Everything Rabbi Sacks wrote (25 books, countless articles and divrei Torah) is worth reading. If you wish to narrow your focus, I recommend two works that are particularly apt for this era:

Not in God’s Name – Confronting Religious Violence (New York: Schocken Books, 2015)

Lessons in Leadership – A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible (Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 2015)

Zichrono livracha – May the memory of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks be a blessing to us all.

My Hebrew teacher in Jerusalem sent me this, and though the words are not my theology, neither is it (apparently) of the performers. It’s performed movingly and with a gentle passion.

[Note: Chemi Shalev, a regular commentator in Haaretz, is always a keen observer of American and Israeli politics. The following was published today. Haaretz is arguably Israel’s equivalent of The New York Times. Shalev’s analysis of the growing divide between Israeli Jews, who love Donald Trump by wide margins, and American liberal Jews, who despise him by equally wide margins, is worth reading. I am posting this piece because one has to subscribe to read Haaretz, which I have advocated for years as must reading for the American Jewish community that cares about Israel.]

“Public opinion loves the president’s pro-Israel policies and ignores the rest, including the fear and loathing he elicits among fellow Jews

Channel 13 released another poll on Sunday night that highlighted the overwhelming Israeli preference for U.S. President Donald Trump over former Vice President Joe Biden. According to the poll, 68 percent believe Trump would be “better for Israel,” and only 12 percent think Biden would. In a previous poll, Trump trounced Biden with a whopping 40 percent majority, 70 to 30, and an even more emphatic 54 percent majority among Israeli Jews, 77 to 23.

The most immediate explanation for their lopsided choice is that Trump is perceived by many Israelis as the most pro-Israel U.S. president in history, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly reminds them. The flip side is that Biden is identified with for President Barack Obama as well as the Democratic Party, both systematically demonized by Netanyahu and other right-wingers ever since the bitter U.S.-Israel clash over the Iran nuclear deal in 2015.

Many Israelis don’t know and don’t care to know too much about Trump beyond his pro-Israel, or rather pro-Netanyahu, decisions and gestures. They know Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and brokered peace with three Arab countries. They appreciate the fact that unlike all its predecessors, the Trump administration never criticizes Israel, and they applaud its condescending take-it-or-leave-it approach to the Palestinians.

Empathy for Trump, however, extends far beyond and much deeper than his unabashedly unbalanced favoritism towards Israel. Jewish public opinion in Israel today, with the exception of a dwindling and secular center-left, is mostly right-wing or conservative or both, with a growing appetite for simplistic populism. On top of his direct benefits for Israel, many of Trump’s traits, including his abrasiveness, anti-elitism, disdain for Europe, hostility towards the media and rants against the liberal left – and, in some quarters, his racism and misogyny as well – render him a more natural fit for Israel than for the United States itself. Israelis either turn a blind eye or couldn’t care less that Trump has polarized America and sown division and hate, possibly because, after a dozen straight years with Netanyahu, it’s what they’re used to at home. Historically and instinctively wary of foreign intervention and coalitions, most Israelis applaud Trump’s disruption of the Western alliance and share his disdain for international coalitions and human rights groups. If Trump gets everyone to mind their own business and stop carping about the occupation, Israelis will cheer him on.

The fact that the views of Israeli Jews on Trump are the polar opposite of those held by the overwhelming majority of American Jews is first and foremost a function of the famous aphorism coined by the late Rufus Miles, a senior U.S. administration official and author, by which “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” According to this view, both communities see Trump through the narrow prism of their own self-interest: American Jews detest Trump and fear him because of his domestic policies, problematic personality and antagonism towards minorities, while Israeli Jews love and admire him for showering them with gifts and asking for nothing in return, at least ostensibly.

Nonetheless, Israelis view the overwhelming American Jewish support for Biden as an extension of their misguided support for Obama, especially over the Iran agreement. With the Democratic Party increasingly and misleadingly portrayed in Israel as beholden to a radical anti-Zionist wing, many Israelis view the abiding loyalty of American Jews to Trump’s opponents as naïve at best and a stab in the back at worst. Long estranged from the essence of so-called diaspora communities, Israelis have been trained to judge them solely on the basis of their level of support for Israel and whatever policies its government pursues. American Jews, for their part, are disheartened and dismayed by the Israeli near-consensus in favor of Trump. In their eyes, whatever benefits Israel has gained from his presidency dwarf in comparison to the untold damage Trump has inflicted on his own country. How on Earth do Israelis favor a president whose vain irrationality enfeebled America’s fight against COVID-19 and caused the needless deaths of thousands? Whose authoritarian recklessness endangers the very foundations of U.S. democracy? Who demeans and distances himself from most democratically elected world leaders while embracing and promoting its most dangerous dictators?

From the American Jewish point of view, Israel’s Trump worship is a moral and ethical failure. It is also a symptom of the growing gap between the two communities, which widened as a result of the confrontations between Netanyahu and Obama and deepened in the wake of the budding romance between the Israeli prime minister and the president that American Jews despise. Israel’s preference for Trump over Biden is virtually incomprehensible for many American Jews who still hold the Jewish State dear to their hearts.

American Jews are outraged by Trump’s attacks on minorities, in which they include themselves; Israeli Jews see themselves as a majority, however, and are inherently apprehensive about minority demands. American Jews are terrified of Trump’s evangelical-inspired dismantling of the separation between church and state; Israelis have never known anything other than theocracy. American Jews see Trump as a clear and present danger to equality, immigration, women’s rights and freedom of the press, once shared and cherished values that many Israelis now spurn.

American Jews feel directly threatened by Trump; Israelis have no idea what they’re on about. American Jews are worried about the rising prominence of white supremacy and its increasingly belligerent militias; Israelis either don’t know, don’t care or think their U.S. cousins are exaggerating. American Jews are convinced that Trump is bad for America, bad for democracy, bad for the world and ultimately bad for Israel; Israelis feel Trump’s been good to them, and all the rest is debatable. Israelis habitually reprimand American Jews for not placing Israel and its needs among their top priorities, but American Jews can now say the same about Israel’s own lack of concern for their safety and wellbeing. The distance between the two communities has grown so big they can hardly see each other, but in this argument, one must admit, the American side has a better case.

One can argue about the decline in recent years of blind support for Israeli policies, but the American Jewish community has a long and proud tradition of caring about Israel and helping it in its time of need, while Israelis have an equally long but shameful record of ignorance and apathy towards American Jews. Their total disregard for American Jewish sensibilities, arrogant dismissal of their feelings of insecurity and fear, and adamant refusal or inability to acknowledge the instincts or appreciate the concerns of a Jewish minority that feels threatened, is testament to the triumph of Israeli nationalism over Jewish solidarity.

The Israeli contention that a vote for Biden is a vote against Israel does not stand up to scrutiny. The former vice president is one of Israel’s steadiest and most stalwart friends and has given no indication that anyone else will manage his Middle East policies. Israel’s blind worship of Trump, a President who embodies the antithesis of traditional Jewish values and the kind of populist leader that Jews have been learned to be wary of for two millennia, is both an abandonment of American Jews in distress and a blot on Jewish history.

Liberal and moderate American Jews, who comprise 70 to 75 percent of the community as a whole, deserve an apology. For now, it will only be forthcoming from the miniscule 12 percent minority that agrees with them and is praying with them for a Biden victory on Tuesday night.”

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.highlight-israel-s-self-centered-trump-worship-warrants-an-apology-to-american-jews-1.9282550

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