Jewish Wanderings in a Political Wasteland

I’ve never considered myself a moderate, centrist, or even slightly conservative. I have always felt fully aligned with progressive politics and the Democratic party—a leftist, through and through. I am a straight-ticket voter who didn’t need a voter’s guide as long as I knew a candidate’s political party. For the past 44 years of my existence, that has worked just fine. As a Jew and a rabbi, I felt that progressive politics were the American manifestation of my Jewish values in action. Love your neighbor as yourself; defend the widow, the orphan, and the stranger; all human beings, created in the divine image, have infinite worth, and we are all God’s partners in repairing the world.

The Intersection of Jewish Identity and Progressivism

Being Jewish and being progressive go hand in hand. Right? Right???

As Sarah Hurwitz, author and former political speechwriter for Michelle Obama, writes in her book, Here All Along:

“Jews have played a disproportionate role in American social justice movements. Jews have been at the forefront of the labor movement, leading major American movements (I too was once a labor union rep). Jews helped create the NAACP, traveled south to support African Americans in the Freedom Rides and Freedom Summer (two-thirds of the white people who participated in the Freedom Rides in the summer of 1961 were Jewish, and played an important role in drafting the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act). Jews like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan played seminal roles in the feminist movement, and a Jew named Harvey Milk is a gay rights icon. Today, leaders and employees in numerous antipoverty, criminal justice reform, human rights, and immigrant and refugee assistance organizations are Jewish. In a recent survey, a majority of American Jews said that ‘working for justice and equality’ is ‘an essential part of what being Jewish means to them.’”

For the longest time, the relationship between the progressive left and the American Jewish community was reciprocal, mutually beneficial, and even, one might say, loving…until it wasn’t.

A Watershed Moment

October 7th was a watershed moment, not just for Israelis but for Jews around the world. Overnight, we saw “friends” become foes and “allies” turn adversaries. For decades, Jews stood shoulder to shoulder with other minorities, fighting for their rights and freedoms, expecting that one day, should the need arise, that favor would be returned.

It wasn’t, and they didn’t.

With that betrayal, many of us in the American Jewish community suddenly found ourselves politically homeless.

Perhaps you don’t feel this way. Far be it for me to ascribe feelings that you don’t feel or speak on anyone else’s behalf, but for me, this struggle has been real and heartbreaking. Many of you don’t know this, but I didn’t grow up wanting to be a rabbi. I wanted to be a lawyer and then run for public office. I have always loved being Jewish, and having conflated Jewish values with progressive politics, this was, in my mind, the best way to show my Jewish pride while making the world a better place.

When I finally realized, in my late 20s, that Judaism had so much more to give than campaign slogans and petty political maneuverings, I gave up on that idea and applied to rabbinical school. One of my fondest memories of my late father, zichrono livracha, was when, in the penultimate year of his life, he saw my ordination pictures and started to cry. I thought he was sad that he had been too sick to attend my ordination, but no, these were happy tears. He looked up at me and said, “I’m so glad that you didn’t become a lawyer.”

Ironically, it was my father who inspired my love of the law and politics. In his youth, he had been very active in politics. He worked on the famous McGovern v. Nixon campaign in 1972. I have fond memories of him walking hand-in-hand with my mother to our local polling place to vote in every election, major or minor, insisting that my sister and I accompany them so that we would understand the value of participating in the democratic process. In 2008, he never left the house without an Obama/Biden t-shirt. He died four days before Rosh Hashanah in 2014, and although losing him was heartbreaking for my family, I take some comfort in the fact that he was spared the 2016 presidential election debacle and everything that has happened in American politics since.

Reflections on a Changing Landscape

I do wonder, though, what he would make of the situation right now. As the son of a Holocaust survivor and the father of a rabbi, would he also feel untethered, caught in this morass of political homelessness?

Throughout history, Jews have been excluded from all kinds of clubs, associations, and political groups simply because they were Jews. In America, this has been tempered by many of the democratic ideals that we hold dear, but they have never been absent. After the Holocaust, much more sympathy (although not empathy) was extended to American Jews, and new opportunities opened up. Jews in America flourished. We had finally made it!

And that is exactly what the Jews of Germany thought at the turn of the 20th century.

To be clear, I don’t think that we are living on the edge of Nazism in America, although the rise in antisemitism here in the US and around the world is alarming. The similarity, as I see it, is profound Jewish optimism being met by latent yet virulent antisemitism. Whenever we Jews see even a glimmer of hope that the world has changed, we run toward it with open arms, only to learn that, as Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, wrote, there is nothing new under the sun.

But Jewish history teaches us something else, too. It shows that we, the Jewish people, are the ultimate survivors. In this time of uncertainty, we must do the thing that we have always done, the thing that we do best; the one thing that has helped to ensure our survival in the face of extreme adversity: our secret to Jewish resilience. We must find the blessing wrapped in the curse.

The Call for Dialogue

After the election of Donald Trump in 2016, many progressives began speaking about the need to escape our echo chambers. We needed to engage in real conversations with people from opposite sides of the political spectrum to understand their points of view and heal the political divide. We all nodded our heads in agreement and then did nothing. We didn’t find new opportunities to engage in dialogue. We didn’t find new friends on social media to have robust yet respectful debates. We didn’t turn to alternative news channels for information. We just kept doing what we had always done because, just like my straight-ticket voting, it was comfortable and easy, yet, I would argue, patently un-Jewish.

There is an account in the Talmud of the great sages, Hillel and Shamai, and their great academies of learning. Beit Hillel and Beit Shamai would enter into endless debates about Jewish law and often arrive at very different conclusions. One day, when the argument became particularly heated, a bat kol, or divine voice, interrupted the discourse and said, “Both these and these are the words of the living God.” This means both interpretations, those of the House of Hillel and those of the House of Shamai, are in service to the Divine, “but the halachah, the Jewish legal application, shall follow the teachings of Beit Hillel.”

Why?

Because Beit Hillel always did something rather unusual. They would first listen to the arguments of Beit Shamai before making their own ruling. They saw value in their opponents’ ideas, even if they ultimately disagreed. They did something that we are usually unwilling or unable to do in our current fraught political environment: they listened. They held strong opinions, but they held them gently, willing to let go of them if they heard a more compelling, well-reasoned argument. In American politics, we call this flip-flopping. In real life, we call this sanity.

I say this, and yet, let me be the first to admit that I have not always held my opinions gently. Like many, I have sought out echo chambers to reinforce my views and comfortably rail at those on the other side from a safe distance. Having a real engagement is scary. What if the other side manages to outmaneuver me? Even worse, what if they change my mind? Who am I without my opinions, my unflinching beliefs, my dogma?

…And then October 7th happened, and everything changed.

The Shift in Political Dynamics

Politicians that I had voted for in the past were now chanting “from the river to the sea” and advocating for the erasure of the Jewish state—true ethnic cleansing if ever there was. They started openly questioning Israel’s right to exist. Israel, the one safe harbor that Jews have had in 2,000 years of exile and persecution. They began and continue to bandy about terms like genocide, knowing full well how triggering that term is for Jews—the very people for whom the term was coined after the Holocaust.

What was going on? What is going on?

These were my people! These were the progressives that I had worked with, studied with, and voted with. These were my friends and neighbors. But they weren’t Jews. And the fact that I was suddenly became a problem. Thanks to the facile, reductionist thinking promoted in both mainstream and social media, we have been reduced to a simple equation:

• Jews = Zionists

• Zionists = Racist, Genocidal apartheidists

• Therefore, Jews = Racists, genocidal apartheidists.

  
  

If you happened to see some of the comments that people posted on Facebook about Masa Seattle’s very innocuous ads for Rosh Hashanah (comments which I have diligently deleted), you would see this math play out in real time. I would never have flown this flag before October 7th, but anti-Zionism is quickly becoming the new anti-Semitism. This has caused other very serious problems with black-and-white, reductionist math on the other side:

• Criticism of Israel and its government or policies = Anti-Zionism

• Anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism

• Therefore, critiquing Israel or its government = raging antisemite.

  
  

Folks, we have entered the House of Shamai. Beit Hillel, the house of Hillel, does not exist in this new world order. And perhaps, therein lies the blessing wrapped in the curse. Our task, our opportunity, is to bring Beit Hillel back.

Embracing New Perspectives

October 7th pushed me over the edge and out into the political wilderness. When I finally stopped doom-scrolling through the headlines for hours each day, I started picking up books, listening to podcasts, and seeking out new opportunities to better understand how we arrived at this moment in Jewish history. My rabbi, Joe Black, serves as a mentor in a rabbinic fellowship called Amplify Israel and suggested I apply. I was accepted last fall, and the experience has been life-changing.

I am part of the second cohort of Reform rabbis who have been blessed to learn from some of the most amazing scholars, authors, rabbis, and political pundits in the Jewish world today. If you have been following any Israeli news sources or listening to any Jewish podcasts, you will recognize these names. We were given one-on-one time with Haviv Rettig Gur, the senior political analyst for The Times of Israel, former Knesset member Einat Wilf, journalist and authors Yossi Klein Halevi and Matti Friedman, podcaster Dan Senor, women’s rights activist Cochav Elkayam Levy, and many more.

It is such an extraordinary privilege to sit at the feet of these great thinkers in this historic moment for the Jewish people. But I will tell you, the most profound part of this fellowship is that I get to learn in one of the most politically diverse groups of young rabbis I have ever encountered. We have much in common. We are proud Jews, we are Reform rabbis, we love Israel and the Jewish people, but we are deeply and profoundly divided on politics.

If you had been a fly on the wall in our tour bus in Israel last January, you would have heard some of the most raucous, and sometimes ridiculous debates. But if you would have been a fly on the wall from Beit Hillel, you would have recognized right away that we were passionately engaged in what is called machloket l’shem shamayim, arguments for the sake of heaven. We argue because we care, about both the subject matter and each other, and because of this, we are all still friends and colleagues to this day.

This experience has taught me how to have deep and respectful conversations about the things that matter most. A few months ago, a local colleague reached out to me, upset by something I had posted to our Rabbinical Conference’s Facebook page. Ultimately, it turned out to be a misunderstanding, but his initial anger opened a door for far more important communication. I asked him to meet me for coffee to talk about Israel. We sat for almost three hours, having a wonderful, open, and honest discussion. He felt heard, I felt heard, and we both walked away with a little more knowledge and a lot more respect for one another.

For this and so many other incredible moments, I have to give a big shout-out to Rabbi Ammi Hirsch, who conceived of this amazing fellowship, Rabbi Tracy Kaplowitz, who lovingly manages the fellows (difficult as that may be at times), and my mentor, Rabbi John Rosove, and fellow mentee, Rabbi Ari Jun, who enthusiastically embrace all my crazy shtus.

The Power of Listening

Over the past year, I have come to realize that this act of listening brings us closer to the divine. Interestingly, there is no word in ancient Hebrew for “obey”; there is only the word “listen.” Sh’ma. Sh’ma Israel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad. Listen, Israel, Adonai is your God, Adonai is one. It doesn’t say “obey this God,” or “do what God says or else.” It says “listen,” listen for God. The prophet Elijah was said to have encountered God on a mountaintop in just this way.

The prophet writes:

“There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks through the power of Adonai. But Adonai was not in the wind. After the wind—an earthquake, but the Almighty was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake—fire; but God was not in the fire. And after the fire—kol d’mama dakah, a still small voice.”

October 7th was the shattering of the rocks, the earthquake, and the fire. But that is not where or what God was. God is in the kol d’mama dakah, the still small voice, that we can only hear…that we can only experience…when we listen—truly listen.

There is a lot of noise right now, blocking out that still, small voice. That noise comes in the form of reductionist thinking and bombast. Party labels and clannish political subservience on both the left and the right. It takes the form of memes, TikTok videos, and social media posts. It shouts inflammatory words and slogans. It turns up the volume on hate so loud that you can’t think straight. But this is the wind, the earthquake, and the fire—forces of destruction and distraction. We must wander through this political wasteland, but this is not where God is. God is in the kol d’mama dakah, the still small voice.

Have arguments, but be Beit Hillel—have them for the sake of heaven. Listen for the kol d’mama dakah. It’s always there; it’s always with you.

Sh’ma, sh’ma Israel. Listen, Israel. Listen to one another… in this new wilderness, that’s where you will encounter the divine.