“Can revival of the nuclear deal with Iran spark a new regional security dialogue? Are Americans – and U.S. policy makers – tired of the Middle East? Decades of conflict, along with reduced U.S. dependence on its oil, and a growing imperative to turn toward ‘great power competition’ with China and Russia, have reduced the appetite to stay engaged. … Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has asserted that the Biden Administration ‘…would be doing less not more in the Middle East.’

Yet desire does not always align with the demands of the moment. And the Trump administration’s high level of engagement in the region and disruptive policies have left Biden’s team with a transformed landscape. One element of Middle East policy holds the key: the Iran nuclear agreement, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The Biden team likely will make it a priority. But how that plays out will determine if a ‘do less’ approach is achievable – or even desirable – in the coming four years.

President-elect Biden himself is up front about his intentions. He wants to return to the global nonproliferation agreement accomplished under his watch as Vice President, and restore its core formula: constraints on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for economic relief. When President Donald Trump came into office, the international consensus was that the deal was working, verified by multiple reports of international inspectors vouching for Iranian compliance.”

From “Reverse Engineering” – The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2021 by Dalia Dassa Kaye

This carefully written comprehensive review of the issues and players concerning the Iran Nuclear Deal from which President Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States in 2018 is a must-read for anyone interested in the complexities of this matter that the Biden Administration now faces.

The author, Dalia Dassa Kaye, is a 2020-2021 Wilson Center Scholar. She was previously a Senior Political Scientist and Director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the RAND Corporation.

See – https://www.wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/back-to-the-future/reverse-engineering/

We, Rabbis, Cantors, and Jewish clergy from across the United States, call on the Biden Administration and all of our newly elected officials to act with urgency to ensure the rights and safety of refugees and asylum seekers. 

Our tradition teaches that there is no higher obligation than to save the life of another. Faced with the largest refugee crisis in human history, we take that mandate seriously and raise our voices for the rights, safety, and the very lives of people who are fleeing genocide, torture, persecution, and war.

Our country must act swiftly to address the policies of the last administration, which severely damaged every pathway to safety in the United States. These policies almost obliterated the U.S. refugee resettlement program and asylum system. They have denied basic human rights to countless people, including at the U.S.-Mexico border. Addressing this damage will take much more than a simple reversal of policies: it will take focused attention on reforming, reinventing, and modernizing our refugee and asylum protection systems, with the goal of treating each person with fairness and compassion.

In generations past, many of our families found safety and freedom in America.  And yet, we have also seen its doors slam shut during times of great need. 

We pledge to be your partners as the United States begins to welcome refugees again. As Jewish leaders, many of us have traveled to the border to bear witness, we have protested outside of airports and detention centers, we have built local coalitions and organizations, we have educated our communities and our youth, and we have made our voices known to elected officials at all levels.  

Today, the American Jewish community sees the struggle for the rights of refugees bound together with other values that we hold close. We are committed to being your partners in healing this country.

Whether we were born in this country or we immigrated here, whether we were refugees ourselves or are the grandchildren of refugees, we are united in protecting the humanity of others, of ‘welcoming the stranger.’ 

We thank you for your commitment to restoring humanity to our refugee and asylum policies and for recognizing the pressing urgency of the current moment. As Jewish leaders, we pledge to hold open our hearts and our doors, and work with you to welcome refugees and asylum seekers as new neighbors and friends.

If you are clergy and have not signed on, please consider doing so.

You can help amplify the letter and bring it to the attention of elected officials by using the attached social media toolkit and corresponding graphics.

Here are the relevant links:

·         Full Letter (plus full list of signatures, and a searchable list)

·         Sign-up form for anyone who would like to add their name

·         HIAS Take Action Page

Watching with (admittedly) unbridled glee as President Biden issues executive orders reversing the most bigoted, oppressive, regressive, divisive, destructive, and illiberal policies of Donald Trump, I’m flabbergasted (though I shouldn’t be) by Trump’s Republican party sycophants’ crying foul that Biden is violating his campaign and inaugural pledge to unify the country. Right-wing pundits and members of Congress didn’t give President Biden even 48 hours of a honeymoon before charging that his executive actions represent a violation of his pledge. Unity, of course, doesn’t mean uniformity, and elections do have consequences, as Republicans reminded Democrats after Trump’s election.

Why the Senate shouldn’t follow through on its constitutional responsibility to try an impeached out-of-office president because it will upset his most ardent followers is also maddening. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it right when she told reporters this week: “The fact is, the [former] president of the United States committed an act of incitement of insurrection. I don’t think it’s very unifying to say, ‘oh, let’s just forget it and move on.’ That’s not how you unify.”

In the midst of multiple national crises, the urgent need to at last address the Covid pandemic (after 410,000 Americans are dead!), support financially states and cities as they struggle to care for the sick and those who have lost jobs and savings and who are food insecure, to address climate change, racial injustice, voting rights and voter suppression, and so much more IS to bring greater unity to the land.

Kerry Eleveld, a writer for Daily Kos, said that “If President Biden continues to rise to the moment, the unity he engenders may ultimately be less about winning GOP votes for his policies than it is about unifying some 65% of Americans against a factionalized but dangerous party of seditionists.”

That’s as good a definition of unity in these times as I think there is.

Go Joe! So many millions are with you.

I couldn’t stop weeping yesterday as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took their oaths of office as President and Vice-President. My heart opened when I listened to the elevated inspired words and rhythmic cadences of a young poet laureate Amanda Gorman. And I felt confident in the reemergence of common decency in the top political and governmental leadership in our nation as I listened to our new President speak about the meaning of American exceptionalism and how we as a nation “can do anything if we do it together.”

Was our national nightmare of the last four years really over?

I watched with a sense of renewed possibilities for our nation the evening inaugural celebration moderated from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where Dr. King spoke of his dream for this nation.

Has our national leadership really returned to reflect the best of who we are as Americans?

I couldn’t stop saying aloud “WOW!” as I watched the spectacular pyrotechnic display as a crescendo of the day over the Washington Memorial signifying a new era of hope and possibility.

Is there really now reason for hope after so many horrid years?

We’ve witnessed these last few years the truth of the saying that “a fish rots from the head”; but it’s also true that great leaders can inspire the best in us. Great leadership isn’t about power and profit. It’s about decency, dignity, accountability, competency, and a commitment to the common good.

I believe that in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris we have such leaders, and because of this we have reason to hope.

Yesterday was a new beginning, and our tears of joy and hopes for the future were, I believe, a reflection of the truth that deep down we know we’ve embarked on a new beginning.

“Let America be America again. / Let it be the dream it used to be. / Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed – / Let it be that great strong land of love / Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme / That any man [person] be crushed by one above.”

-Langston Hughes, poet and novelist (1902-1967)

“Shakespeare’s Richard III brilliantly develops the personality features of the aspiring tyrant already sketched in the Henry VI trilogy: the limitless self-regard, the law-breaking, the pleasure in inflicting pain, the compulsive desire to dominate. He is pathologically narcissistic and supremely arrogant. He has a grotesque sense of entitlement, never doubting that he can do whatever he chooses. He loves to bark orders and to watch underlings scurry to carry them out. He expects absolute loyalty, but he is incapable of gratitude. The feelings of others mean nothing to him. He has no natural grace, no sense of shared humanity, no decency.

He is not merely indifferent to the law; he hates it and takes pleasure in breaking it. He hates it because it gets in his way and because it stands for a notion of the public good that he holds in contempt. He divides the world into winners and losers. The winners arouse his regard insofar as he can use them for his own ends; the losers arouse only his scorn. The public good is something only losers like to talk about. What he likes to talk about is winning.

He has always had wealth; he was born into it and makes ample use of it. But though he enjoys having what money can get him, it is not what most excites him. What excites him is the joy of domination. He is a bully. Easily enraged, he strikes out at anyone who stands in his way. He enjoys seeing others cringe, tremble, or wince with pain. He is gifted at detecting weakness and deft at mockery and insult. These skills attract followers who are drawn to the same cruel delight, even if they cannot have it to his unmatched degree. Though they know that he is dangerous, the followers help him advance to his goal, which is the possession of supreme power.

His possession of power includes the domination of women, but he despises them far more than desires them. Sexual conquest excites him, but only for the endlessly reiterated proof that he can have anything he likes. He knows that those he grabs hate him. For that matter, once he has succeeded in seizing the control that so attracts him, in politics as in sex, he knows that virtually everyone hates him. At first that knowledge energizes him, making him feverishly alert to rivals and conspiracies. But it soon begins to eat away at him and exhaust him.

Sooner or later, he is brought down. He dies unloved and un-lamented. He leaves behind only wreckage. It would have been better had Richard III never been born.”

-Tyrant – Shakespeare on Politics, by Stephen Greenblatt, the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, pages 53-54

“High though his titles, proud his name, / Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; / Despite those titles, power, and pelf, / The wretch, concentred all in self, / Living, shall forfeit fair renown, / And, doubly dying, shall go down / To the vile dust from whence he sprung, / Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.”

-Walter Scott, novelist and poet (1771-1832)

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The Preamble to the US Constitution is not law – it is an introductory aspirational statement that articulates the intent and values of the framers concerning the nature of America’s republic and democratic character. Contrary to conservative “originalist” constitutional interpreters who regard the Constitution as a static document, progressive constitutional scholars understand that the Constitution is imperfect and that much was left unaddressed in 1787.

Five values under-gird our American constitutional system – a democratic government, effective governance, justice, liberty, and equality. With these values in mind, the current state of our electoral system obviously needs reform. The Congress has an opportunity to address many of the imperfections now that both houses of Congress and the presidency are in Democratic Party hands.

There are a number of bills that the House of Representatives passed in the last term but were blocked from consideration by the Senate by Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Now, however, the new Majority Leader Chuck Schumer can bring these bills to the Senate for consideration and a vote and President Biden can sign them into law (see https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/3/8/1840627/-Voting-Rights-Roundup-Democrats-pass-historic-bill-to-ban-gerrymandering-and-secure-voting-rights).

In addition to the many remedies in our electoral system that these bills seek to address including our undemocratic Electoral College system, partisan gerrymandering, Citizens United, excessive money in politics, and voter suppression, the Senate is decidedly a non-representative body. The vote totals in the last three elections covering all 100 Senate races show how this is true:

• 2020 election – Democratic candidates earned 44.1 million votes; Republican candidates earned 42 million votes.
• 2018 election – Democratic candidates earned 53.1 million votes; Republican candidates earned 35 million votes.
• 2016 election – Democratic candidates earned 45.2 million votes; Republican candidates earned 39.3 million votes.
• The total number of votes cast for Senate in these 3 elections is 258.7 million votes. Democratic candidates won 142.4 million (55%) over Republican candidates who won 116.3 million (45%). That’s a difference of 26.1 million votes and 10% of the total, a Democratic “landslide.” Yet, the Senate remained in Republican hands with a Republican Party majority until this year. Today, despite the wide discrepancy in the popular vote, the Senate is split evenly at 50-50 with a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Kamala Harris.

It’s time that the electoral reform bills passed by the Democratic Congress be moved forward for consideration and a vote in the Senate to be signed into law by President Biden. Among the top priorities ought to be the reform of the Electoral College system to make it representative of the national majority popular vote, granting of statehood to Washington, D.C. (700,000 residents) and Puerto Rico (3.2 million residents), and elimination of the Senate filibuster to be replaced by a simple majority vote.

These reforms would go a long way to fulfill more completely the democratic values as articulated in the US Constitution’s Preamble and thereby have a major impact on public policy and Joe Biden’s presidency.

On February 13, 2017, only weeks after Trump was inaugurated President, I wrote a blog about Trump’s mental condition and whether it ought to disqualify him as president.

I’m certainly not a prophet nor the son of a prophet in the sense of predicting the future or in any other way. That said, the biblical prophet displayed only the capacity (regarding predictions) to see reality clearly as it was, to project forward the consequences of that reality, and then to be able to predict doom based upon the moral failures of the present. In that sense, the psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, political thinkers, historians, and friends of Trump that I cited characterized accurately who Donald Trump was and what America could expect going forward with him as President.

Nothing I said in that blog four years ago wasn’t true, and all of it has been borne out these past years and since the November election. Though I and many of us are shocked by what we’ve witnessed since the election, none of us should be surprised.

Trump, thankfully, will be gone from the White House on January 20, but we are hardly rid of him and his destructive, illiberal, autocratic, seditious, treasonous, anti-democratic, and anti-American presidency because he has infected his malignantly narcissistic toxicity into the hearts and minds of millions of followers who hail to him as their noble “leader.”

You can read my blog from four years ago here – https://rabbijohnrosove.wordpress.com/2017/02/13/should-trumps-mental-condition-disqualify-him-as-president/

“To allow Trump to serve out his term, however brief it may be, puts the nation’s safety at risk, leaves our reputation as a democracy in tatters and evades the inescapable truth that the assault on Congress was an act of violent sedition aided and abetted by a lawless, immoral and terrifying president.”

-NY Times columnist Bret Stephens

I could not agree more!

Further, every Republican office holder in Congress or in the states who aided and abetted this lawless autocrat of a President over the last few years should be defeated handily at the polls in the next election.

Those who quietly acquiesced to Trump’s increasing bullying and mob-boss cruel leadership without standing up and saying “J’accuse” are accountable and responsible for what happened yesterday in Washington and for the carnage he has effected and promulgated throughout his presidency, including Senator Mitch McConnell, House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy, and numerous members of Congress. Nothing they say today can cleanse their moral palate.

Silence in the face of criminality and immorality is complicity. We Jews have learned this lesson over the course of our history. In a free America, hopefully we’ve relearned these lessons in the past year at the least.

Yesterday reminded me of Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938 in Germany when the Brownshirt Nazis attacked Jews, synagogues, shops, murdering and pillaging everywhere. It can happen here. It did yesterday.