The Ageism Behind the Movement for Biden Not to Run Again

If young people tell you, “Build!” and Elders tell you, “Tear down!”,
listen to the Elders and not the young people.
Because “building” for young people is, in fact, tearing down,
And “tearing down” for Elders is, in fact, building up.

—Talmud, Nedarim 40a

The murmuring is getting louder that it’s time for President Biden to read the writing on the wall.  His approval ratings are in the gutter, and a plurality of Democrats—if a New York Times/Siena College poll is to be believed—think that he should not run for reelection in 2024. The fear is if Biden chooses to run for a second term,  his weak candidacy could pave the way for another Trump or Trumpian administration in the White House (G-d preserve us).

There is a reasonable conversation to be had here. Politics demands pragmatism and in general it’s preferable to be in power rather than the opposition. It’s even possible that Biden could become a much more powerful world leader (as opposed to the cliché of a lame duck) by not running again, unfettered by relinquishing the need to have a constant eye on the polls and 2024. Maybe, maybe not.

But one aspect of the conversation concerns me deeply: The deep strain of ageism that is framing the debate. And we should call it out.

We might expect nasty caricatures about Joe as senile from the President’s enemies on the alt-right and generally in the sewage of social media. Bloggers, FoxNews, and late night comics love to replay news clips of Biden looking confused or struggling to speak clearly. Sometimes these are real, sometimes they are completely fabricated.

But what do we make of the blunt headline of Michelle Goldberg’s Times editorial, “Joe Biden is Too Old to be President Again”?

And, for that matter, what do we do with this month’s Times/Siena poll, which found that the #1 reason Democrats don’t want Biden to run again is “he’s too old”?

I find it incredibly troubling. It’s also a reminder that ageism is one remaining bigotry that is absolutely acceptable, even among progressives. (Well, I suppose there is also that other one.)

If Biden is cognitively compromised, that is something the public has the right to know. (Some have argued that Reagan was showing the effects of Alzheimer’s while he was in office, and chose to conceal it.) Of course, it is also known that Biden has always had a propensity for misspeaking, and he has struggled with stuttering all his life—so to what degree are the charges of “senility” in fact cruel mocking of his well-known disability?

I’m not in a position to know, but of this I am confident: old does not mean disabled—and to assert otherwise is ageist. For that matter, Elderhood should be seen as a virtue for leadership, not a disqualifier. (Reagan, you may recall, had the most perfect response to this.)

And I am confident that saying a person is “too old to be President” is offensive to Jewish values.

After all, the Torah tradition makes the case over and over again that not only is Elder status not a liability; in fact, it is a qualifier for leadership.

There are plenty of illustrations of this. In the Torah, “the Elders” are a sort of kitchen cabinet who are gathered around Moses, to give legitimacy to his leadership (starting in Exodus 3:16, and then repeatedly through Exodus and Numbers). Moses, himself, is said to be 80 years old at the time of the Exodus, and even after decades of leading the people through the desert, “his eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated” (Deut. 34:7). 

But the starkest example of this is found in the Book of Kings. After the death of King Solomon, there is a succession battle for leadership. Solomon’s son Rehoboam—a crude and entitled man—presumes he will be the next king. But the leaders of the Ten Tribes to the north have many well-founded grievances, which they present to Rehoboam before his coronation. Rehoboam consults the Elders of his father’s kingdom, seeking their guidance about how to treat the northerners’ petitions.

The Elders give Rehoboam sage advice, no doubt learned from experience. They tell him: If you respond to the people’s grievances today with empathy and sensitivity, they will be loyal to you forever.

Unfortunately, Rehoboam has another group of advisors—a group of young “best and brightest.” They tell Rehoboam to tell the northerners to piss off. And he follows their advice—in fact, he responds to them with vulgarity. No wonder the northern tribes go off and find a new leader; essentially, “anyone but Rehoboam.”

The result of all this? Civil war, and a tragic national schism which haunts Israel for the rest of the Bible—and, I suppose, for the rest of history.  That’s what happens when the wisdom of experience is cast aside. (All this is in 1 Kings 12.)

The point of this impromptu Bible study is: Yes, of course age is sometimes accompanied by cognitive and physical decline. But Judaism broadly takes another tack. Elders deserve attention precisely because they’ve seen and experienced more in their years than you have. The Talmud puts it this way:

Rabbi Yochanan used to rise in the presence of elders—even non-Jewish ones—exclaiming, “How many experiences have happened to these people!” (Nedarim 33a)

 
Look, maybe Biden should run again and maybe he shouldn’t. What I know is: Saying he’s “too old to run” is obnoxious, foolish, and un-Jewish.

Obviously age should not be the determining factor for leadership. I’ve known young geniuses and old fools. Sometimes Elders do experience cognitive decline. But the presumption from Jewish tradition—and most spiritual and cultural traditions around the word—is that an elder has, through her experiences, gained a perspective that younger people don’t have.

We might call that perspective: wisdom.

Photo credit: The White House By The White House - https://www.instagram.com/p/BEvzFGwFwc2/, Public Domain

Is the War in Ukraine a "Jewish Issue"?

First: I know it’s a crass and parochial question. I don’t mean for it to be. Wherever there is oppression, tyranny, and military aggression by a malignant dictator—and Putin checks all the boxes—a Jew should be anguished.  If it’s a human rights issue, of course it’s a Jewish issue.

But there are a few specifically Jewish dimensions to the Russian assault against a nation that has the 10th largest Jewish community in the world (depending on how you’re counting), a population that has been there for over 1,000 years.

Ukraine and Belarus were homes to some of the most glorious spiritual geniuses in all of Jewish history; the birthplaces of some of the great figures of Jewish modernity, especially early Zionists and Hasidic masters.  Through the end of the 19th century, this region was home to the largest Jewish community in the world, by far.

 
Putin’s gaslighting. “Gaslighting” is a tool of abusers everywhere. It means: to obfuscate a situation by accusing the other person of doing something that the perpetrator himself is doing. (“Election security!” comes to mind.) Gaslighting makes the victim feel like he is the one who’s crazy, like she is the one who is the problem.

Putin’s particular gaslighting is his call for the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. It’s not even clear what that means, but in recent years many people have found it useful to hurl the “Nazi!” epithet at their social and political opponents, which is especially ironic, given the rise of actual neo-Nazis these days.

It's gaslighting not only because of Putin’s tyrannical instincts, but also because his invocation of Nazis implies the persecution and annihilation of Jews—as if Russian (and Ukrainian) history wasn’t soaked with Jewish blood.

One Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said:

They tell you that we’re Nazis. But how can a people that lost 8 million lives to defeat the Nazis support Nazism? How can I be a Nazi? Say it to my grandfather, who fought in World War II as a Soviet infantryman and died a colonel in an independent Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Jewish president.  Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine in a landslide vote in 2019 after a career as a comic actor and stand-up comedian. (The Times of Israel: “He was catapulted to fame by playing a foul-mouthed schoolteacher on TV who became president after one of his students filmed his profane rant against corruption and posted it online.”) He caught the world’s attention by getting tangled up with Rudy Giuliani’s traitorous machinations and Trump’s first impeachment.

It does not seem that Zelensky’s Jewishness has particularly influenced his political outlook, nor was there a notable surge in antisemitism after his election. But you can be sure that if the Russian-Ukrainian situation devolves, murmurings about international Jewish cabals and conspiracies will be murmured in the dark corners of the Internet and the usual suspects.

Jewish canaries in the coalmine.  But perhaps the biggest fear is one that is linked to the region’s repulsive history. Jews are always the canaries in the coalmine at times of crisis.

Jews have long been identified by European mobs as “others” and outsiders, useful targets for hate. In Ukraine there was a 17th century proto-Holocaust known as the Chmielnicki Massacres; it is estimated that 100,000 Jews were slaughtered at a time when the world Jewish population was about 1.5 million. (Bodgan Chmielnicki, the cursed leader of the uprising, is remembered among Ukrainians and Russian nationalists today as a hero.)

Historically, the Jewish condition in the region was fraught. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (where untold numbers of generations of my ancestors lived until they thankfully escaped) were homes to some of the most glorious spiritual geniuses in all of Jewish history; they are the birthplaces of some of the great figures of Jewish modernity, especially early Zionists and Hasidic masters.  Through the end of the 19th century, this region was home to the largest Jewish community in the world, by far.

In 1881 Tsar Alexander II was assassinated—and the Jewish community was falsely implicated in the crime. Brutal pogroms were unleashed by bloodthirsty peasants with the knowing encouragement of churches, newspapers, and the government. And in a 30 year period, massive numbers of Jews got the hell out—approximately 2.5 million left, most of them heading to the shores of America’s goldene medina.

When the Soviet Union emerged in the 20th century, Jews were perpetual targets of discrimination, deportations to Siberia, and abuse. I know that I am not alone in my generation of Jewish Americans whose appetites for political action were profoundly shaped by the Free Soviet Jewry movement. (And we won—the Soviet Jewry movement has been called the most successful human rights campaign in history!)

There’s a reason why it’s so hard to visit a synagogue in Europe these days. When you go as a tourist and want to drop in on Shabbat services, there are hurdles to jump through; you can almost never simply show up and say you’d like to join the service. It involves calling ahead, always showing your passport, and often driving back and forth searching for a community that is self-consciously trying to keep its head down and not draw attention to itself. Such is the state of freedom of worship in “civilized” Europe.

So when we see this uncloaked Russian neo-Soviet aggression, our basic humanity is triggered and we worry about all the victims. But it also makes sense that we fear for the safety and well-being of Ukraine’s Jewish communities, who are on edge precisely because of the region’s awful history: When times are rough, Jews have always been the convenient scapegoat by oppressors.

Keep them all in your prayers this Shabbat, and for the awful weeks ahead that we surely have in store.

How can we help? Tzedakah Funds have been set up to help the victims of the crisis through the WORLD UNION FOR PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM and the JDC - AMERICAN JEWISH JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE.

Parashat Shemot: The Big Lie

A thought as Shabbat approaches.

With this week’s sidra, we return to the Book of Exodus. As Exodus opens, the Israelites are well settled in the region of Goshen in the Land of Egypt. Then, of course, a new Pharaoh comes to power—a king who does not know history and the legacy of Joseph. This Pharaoh is a brute and a thug, but also a master manipulator of his citizenry. And he speaks words of incitement:

הָ֥בָה נִֽתְחַכְּמָ֖ה ל֑וֹ פֶּן־יִרְבֶּ֗ה וְהָיָ֞ה כִּֽי־תִקְרֶ֤אנָה מִלְחָמָה֙ וְנוֹסַ֤ף גַּם־הוּא֙ עַל־שֹׂ֣נְאֵ֔ינוּ וְנִלְחַם־בָּ֖נוּ וְעָלָ֥ה מִן־הָאָֽרֶץ׃
He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us.
Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase;
otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies
in fighting against us and rise from the ground.” (Ex. 1:10)

They’re just words, right? The same sorts of words and logic that common gutter racists have used countless times throughout history. But immediately in the next verse, Pharaoh’s audience acts on his words:

וַיָּשִׂ֤ימוּ עָלָיו֙ שָׂרֵ֣י מִסִּ֔ים לְמַ֥עַן עַנֹּת֖וֹ בְּסִבְלֹתָ֑ם
So they [they?!] set taskmasters over them to oppress them
with forced labor… (Ex. 1:11a)

That’s how Israel became enslaved. You can imagine their bystander neighbors muttering, “Hey, I’m not racist, but if we don’t do something, there won’t be any real Egyptians left around here anymore…”

Yet lying tyrants are never satisfied. They always have to up their game:

וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ מִצְרַ֔יִם לַֽמְיַלְּדֹ֖ת הָֽעִבְרִיֹּ֑ת אֲשֶׁ֨ר שֵׁ֤ם הָֽאַחַת֙ שִׁפְרָ֔ה וְשֵׁ֥ם הַשֵּׁנִ֖ית פּוּעָֽה׃
וַיֹּ֗אמֶר בְּיַלֶּדְכֶן֙ אֶת־הָֽעִבְרִיּ֔וֹת וּרְאִיתֶ֖ן עַל־הָאָבְנָ֑יִם אִם־בֵּ֥ן הוּא֙ וַהֲמִתֶּ֣ן אֹת֔וֹ
וְאִם־בַּ֥ת הִ֖יא וָחָֽיָה׃
The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives,
one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,
saying, “When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birthstool:
if it is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.” (Ex. 1:15-16).

This is the Egyptian version of the Big Lie, a term coined in Mein Kampf. If you repeat Big Lies often enough, and with enough charisma, people who don’t know better will follow, even to the point of dehumanizing others. Even to the point of radical violence.

Here’s what Yale history professor Timothy J. Snyder says about the Big Lie, in his crucial book On Tyranny (New York, Tim Duggan Books, 2017):

As observers of totalitarianism such as Victor Klemperer noticed, truth dies in four modes, all of which we have just witnessed.

The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality…

The second mode is shamanistic incantation. As Klemperer noted, the fascist styled depends upon “endless repetition,” designed to make the fictional plausible and the criminal desirable.

The next mode is magical thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction… requiring a blatant abandonment of reason.

The final mode is misplaced faith. It involves the sort of self-deifying claims… “I alone can do it.” (pp.66-70)

The American version of the Big Lie has been cultivated for a long time, by Donald Trump, his enablers, conservative media, et al. They have told their audiences outright falsehoods for years. They have repeated those mantras constantly (“Socialism!”, “Lock her up!”, “The elections are rigged!”). They love magical thinking (“the pandemic will disappear like a miracle”). And the misplaced faith: scientists, journalists, experts in the field, etc., are all lying; only Trump tells you the truth.

As you know, over sixty court cases verified that Trump decidedly was the loser in the November election. Governors and election officials from both parties around the country confirmed that the election was completely secure and accurate.

And yet the President and his minions repeat their Big Lie, that it was rigged and stolen.

The angel of decency passed over these people.

Now we’ve seen the fulfillment of what the Big Lie has done after all these years. Monsters in Auschwitz shirts and MAGA hats, with their gun in one hand and the flag of Southern treason in the other, storming the United States Capitol.

And when it was over, and the U.S. Congress reconvened to ratify the results of the November election, still eight Republican Senators and one hundred thirty-nine Republican Representatives voted to overturn the democratic election results representing the will of the American people. Learn their names; they are seditious traitors to democracy.

But those ignoble 147 know an open secret: Repeat the Big Lie long enough and the true believers will fall into line. And then G-d have mercy on the nation.

Don’t expect divinely-ordained miracles—a/k/a “Ten Plagues”—to rescue America from the suffering that the Big Lie has created. As Snyder instructs us:

            Post-truth is pre-fascism. (p.71)

But Shabbat is coming, so we have to find solace and comfort somewhere. It’s there in the Torah: While the rest of the Egyptians were following the lies that Pharaoh fed them—“we have to put Egypt First”—there were some heroes. We know their names: Shiphrah and Pu’ah, two midwives, who said that no matter how personally risky it would be for them to defy Pharaoh’s whims, they would not throw babies into the Nile.

We know their names.

The Torah doesn’t tell us the name of this Pharaoh. As far as the text is concerned, he’s just another tyrant of the sort we’ve seen in every generation, as the Haggadah reminds us. But these two Hebrew midwives, people with the strength of character to stand up to tyrants, who do what is right and decent and life-affirming, those are the names that get recorded and celebrated for all posterity.

Each of us is called upon, at this crucial moment, to be a Shiphrah and a Puah. Pharaohs and their enablers inevitably crumble under the weight of their own lies. Their names will, eventually, be buried in the shifting sands. Those who speak the truth, and apply it with decency, compassion, and love, will be the ones whose names endure.

Photo credit: Olam HaTanakh: Shemot, Tel Aviv, 1998

Statement from the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis on the Assault on America, January 6, 2021

Statement by the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis on the Assault
on the Nation’s Capital on January 6, 2021

23 Tevet 5781 | January 7, 2021

Like all Americans of good faith, the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis is horrified and appalled by the acts of insurrection in Washington, DC on Wednesday. We urge the members of our rabbinic council, and all the members of our communities, to renew the call for justice and decency in our country in accordance with our Jewish and American values:

1.    The perpetrators of Wednesday’s violence and their enablers are criminals and enemies of American democracy.

As Jews, we cherish dissent, differences of opinion, and the precious freedom to question authority and express unpopular opinions. Wednesday’s events, which included vandalizing the Capitol building, invading the offices of national representatives, and the clear threat of violence, violate each of these principles.

The Mishnah enjoins us: “Pray for the welfare of the government, for if it does not inspire respect, people will devour one another” (Pirkei Avot 3:2). Today we pray for those who defend the nation’s laws and maintain order with integrity and evenhandedness, especially those who have been put in harm’s way.

2.    Wednesday’s violence was predictable and, considering the history of incitement,  sadly inevitable. We demand accountability from President Donald Trump and his enablers.

One resounding lesson from Jewish history is that violent words directly lead to violent actions. The President’s winks and nods to alt-right and white supremacist groups—from his refusal to disavow neo-Nazis at Charlottesville in 2017, to his encouragement of the racist Proud Boys to “stand by”, to his feeble and cynical words of “We love you” for Wednesday’s insurrectionists—implicitly endorsed the assault on the Capitol.

We have no doubt that the President’s words incited Wednesday’s violence. Prior to the election, the President refused to indicate if he would support a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost. Earlier this week, the President encouraged his followers to go to Washington to protest the election that he lost, insisting that the protest on January 6 would be “wild.” The President’s counsel, Rudy Giuliani, likewise encouraged violence when he insisted the demonstrations would be “trial by combat.”

The President’s insistence that November’s election, which he decisively lost, was rigged and invalid has been proven unequivocally to be a lie. Over sixty court cases, and the affirmations of the election results by governors and election officials all over the country, have demonstrated that the elections were valid. The President’s public refusal to accept the results is not only a demonstration of his low character, but it also is an assault on the democratic institutions of our country, which directly led to Wednesday’s violence.


3.    We demand clarity about the clear racial disparity in the use of force by the authorities in responding to the attack on the Capitol.

Why were the responses of the Capitol Police and law enforcement so disproportionately mild compared to similar events of the past year, when Black Lives Matter protesters and other left-leaning protests were met with much more severe displays of force? MBR’s continued commitments to racial justice and our partnerships with our neighbors compel us to call attention, yet again, the unfair and unequal application of the law.

Our Torah insists: You shall have one law for stranger and citizen alike (Leviticus 24:22). We call for official investigations into the disparity of the applications of the force of law, and the apparent lack of security preparations, given the size and toxic incitement of the crowd.

We call upon our Rabbis and other leaders to name the transgressions that led to this moment. Rabbis should not engage in partisan politics from their pulpits, of course, but rabbis often feel constrained in voicing moral truths so as not to upset some members of their communities. But this is not a partisan moment: Democrats and Republicans, left-leaning and right-leaning constituents alike must be able to identify the profound offenses that have taken place in order to move our country forward.

Jewish tradition warns of “righteous people who had the power to protest the actions of others, but did not” (Talmud, Shabbat 55a). American democracy is resilient, and we are confident that the potential for national healing exists. But our shared future is in our own hands; we have much work to do.

This is not a time for  self-righteous pieties or genteel calls for peace. This is a moment to reclaim the integrity of our democratic institutions from those who would pervert them, and to demand accountability, even unto the highest office in the land.

Massachusetts Board of Rabbis Executive Committee
Rabbi Neal Gold, President (ndzahav@gmail.com)

Election 2020 / A Lesson from the Days of Barry Goldwater

On October 21, 1964, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf wrote the following in his monthly synagogue bulletin:

 In every single deviant position, Senator Goldwater has opposed not only the American consensus but also the religious commonality. No religious body in America, no serious church leader, no responsible congregation would today dream of sharing his dangerous nationalism, his economic primitivism, or his incredible appeal for good feeling rather than plain justice between the races. No Protestant, no Catholic, no Jew. Goldwater has placed himself squarely against the whole ecumenical struggle of the American churches to find a better way to live together.

…I believe that religious men and especially Jews, and most especially members of this congregation, of whatever party and whatever conviction, should take it upon themselves to name Goldwater their enemy… He will not be the last threat to our American integrity, but he is the clear and present danger, and we should fight him while we still can.

 May G-d help us to elect Lyndon Johnson president![1]

Rabbi Wolf was one of the great Jewish voices of the 20th century. Much of his career was based in Chicago, first in its northern suburbs (where this was published), then, after an interim at Yale, on the south side of city. He was a profound religious philosopher and a great teacher of halacha and the imperatives that underpin being a religious person in the modern world.

He obviously knew that congregations are not supposed to be politically partisan. The power of this writing is that he was saying: there is a limit; we are at a once-in-a-lifetime moment where our typical behavior must change.[2]

My commentary to the above, in light of where we are right now in America:

In every single deviant position. Goldwater was an extremist and nuclear warmonger. But at least in 1964 they were debating issues! Today that notion seems almost quaint. This election is not about a rational discussion about the issues that challenge our nation. It comes down to this: Does Donald Trump have any middot/virtuous character traits that you would want your child to emulate? 

No religious body in America. I presume Rabbi Wolf was overstating the situation in 1964, just as this would be an exaggeration today. Conservative religious bases are often the last refuge of right-wing extremists, especially since Reagan.

But I understand it this way. People of good faith do not have to agree on policy matters, as long as we agree to a certain common ground, namely: Human beings are endowed with a basic dignity. Hungry people should be fed. Homeless people should be housed. The oppressed should be liberated. Peace is a primary value. So is equitable distribution of justice. The individual’s pursuit of dignity and success and happiness should not be infringed upon—unless that pursuit causes harm to one’s neighbor. And every human being, being made in the image of G-d, is therefore endowed with inalienable rights.

And people of good faith—conservatives and liberals—can rationally disagree on the valid, best paths to take in order to arrive at these shared goals. It seems to me that this is the basis of how to live together respectfully in a community, or family, of people with different opinions.

I see nothing in today’s Trumpian agenda that shares those once-mutual goals. That is why Wolf’s “no religious body…” statement remains valid.

Between the races. 1964! And 2020. The Trumpian embrace of white supremacy is just one of a multitude of reasons why this regime must be vomited out.

No Protestant, no Catholic, no Jew. It was 1964, so this is what was understood to be an ecumenical/interfaith statement. Will Herberg’s famous sociological study of the American mid-20th century melting pot was called Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and surely that is what Wolf is referencing. Of course in 2020 we wouldn’t say it that way; our interfaith tent is much wider, to include many other faiths, especially Muslims (who continue to be cast as a fifth-column by right-wingers), Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Native American traditions. Our pluralistic tent is richer and broader than it was in the Sixties, to the betterment of all.

He will not be the last threat. Yup.

While we still can. The current president’s dictatorial instincts have been made clear in the past few weeks (and in truth, much much longer), and the urgency of this message is that the basic institutions of our democratic society—such as fair and free elections and peaceful transition of power—are gravely at risk.

This is a most perilous moment for everything America represents; like never before has its democracy been ready to unravel. Rabbi Wolf was prescient about the stakes in 1964, a time when it was time to say yesh g’vul, there is a limit to what we, in a free society, may accept.

May G-d help us to elect Joe Biden president!

Photo credit: Doug Mills, New York Times

[1] Congregation Solel (Highland Park, IL) Pathfinder, October 21, 1964; in Unfinished Rabbi: Selected Writings of Arnold Jacob Wolf, Ivan R. Dee: 1998, 187-188.

[2] Sometimes—with great and weighty hesitation—extreme moments call for conventional rules to be broken. In the language of halacha:  It is a time to act for the L-rd, for they have violated Your Torah (Psalm 119:126). The Rabbis read this verse backwards, violate Your Torah, because it is a time to act for the Lord;  and they interpret: Because we are facing the most extreme set of circumstances, the moment calls for extreme measures to be adopted. Rashi: “When the time comes to do something for the sake of the Holy One, and we must violate the Torah.” See the Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 69a; Berachot 63a.

Have We Forgotten What Good News Looks Like?

Today there was good news in the world. After months of unremitting bad news, I fear we may have forgotten what good news looks like.

Watching the historic peace treaty signings today between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, I felt detached and dispassionate about the proceedings. I’m usually much more emotional when it comes to these things. I have strong memories of September 13, 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed on the White House lawn. I was alone in my apartment in Jersey City, NJ, with tears streaming down my cheeks as Yitzhak Rabin z”l intoned, “Oseh shalom bim’romav…”

And I still have hanging over my desk a large photo of Rabin and King Hussein lighting each other’s cigarettes on the occasion of the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan in October 1994. It makes me melancholy and wistful when I look at the faces of these leaders from a different era. I take these things personally.

Today: no tears, and no goosebumps. Maybe that’s because Trump and Netanyahu are a different species of leader: unvarnished opportunists with grotesque records when it comes to promoting democracy. Or maybe because the UAE and Bahrain have abysmal human rights records, and it feels a bit like making friends with the nasty kid on the playground—he’s cool as long as he picks on others, not us.

But my own sentimentality doesn’t matter. To tell the truth, I am well aware that this is, in fact, a momentous occasion.

I’ve had conversations with lefty friends in recent days who scorned this turn of events. They’ve said that Trump is a self-serving narcissist, and doesn’t care about peace, and this is all about his reelection. They point to his unabashed statement this summer, when he admitted that the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 was “for the evangelicals”—recalling Secretary of State James Baker’s “F—k the Jews, they didn’t vote for us.” They argue that Bibi, too, is an autocrat who is solely bent on self-preservation.

To all of which I say: Point taken, but so what?  It’s not exactly breaking news to say that politicians act in their own political interests.

But I fear there’s something dangerous in my friends’ opposition to these peace deals. I think that they would unequivocally support the exact same deals if they were marshaled together by an American president whom they respected. I think that some left-leaning, pro-Israel people oppose this deal because Trump himself is so noxious, and they imagine that anything that makes Trump look good—anything that he can put in his “win” column—makes his prospect for reelection go up, G-d forbid.

In other words, they say: if it’s good for Trump, we oppose it.

That’s a pretty disastrous way of thinking. It’s just like hoping that the economy will tank, because presidents tend not to be reelected in a bad economy. Or hoping that there won’t be a coronavirus vaccine until after the election. It’s a manner of thinking that says: Trump is so grotesque that I don’t care how many people suffer in the short term, as long as he is booted out decisively in November.

I, for one, hope that in the short term, bad things won’t happen: that the economy won’t completely implode; that there won’t be more slayings of innocent black people by police; that there won’t be any more school shootings; that the fires ravaging the American West will stop.  (Can you imagine someone saying, “I want the fires keep burning until after the election?” That’s just sick.)

And I can hope for all these good things while campaigning with vigor for Trump to lose. You know what they say about broken clocks… 

In that spirit, I can rejoice that finally Israel is normalizing relationships in its “neighborhood.” This is what we’ve been yearning for since at least the Six Day War, when people prematurely fantasized that, due to Israel’s victories, the Arab nations would accept the fact that Israel was a permanent part of the modern Middle East. To hold otherwise is to play right into the hands of those who believe that what is good for them is what’s good for the world—and vice-versa.

What about the Palestinians? Yes, they are going to be the losers here—because of precisely this same logic. People who say, “You shouldn’t be allowed to engage with Israel until there is progress with the Palestinians” miss the whole point. When the PA and its enablers give up the pipe dream of “from the River to the Sea”, and engage with Israel as a permanent neighbor, there will be progress. I’m not absolving Israel of its responsibilities toward the Palestinians—Israel’s policies of dissembling and humiliation have been disastrous. But, frankly, I think that the deals with the UAE and Bahrain (and others that have been whispered) show that this has nothing to do with the Palestinians. Or, if anything, that the Arab world is nearly as exhausted with Palestinian rejectionism as Israelis are.

And while these protagonists make it impossible to feel unmitigated happiness, we should be able to recognize good news when it comes our way. At the end of a year’s ceaseless flow of bad news, this is indeed good news. Kein Yirbu—may it grow and expand in the New Year ahead.

On the 24th Yartzeit of Yitzhak Rabin ז״ל

Today is the 24th anniversary of the murder of Yitzhak Rabin ז״ל - a sobering anniversary. Rabin was murdered in a maelstrom of hate at a time when political conversations amidst family, friends, and communities broke down to such a complete degree that communication across lines no longer seemed possible. It was a time when the tinderbox of violent radicals was fertilized by politicians and rabbis with the most extreme rhetoric - who then walked away saying, "It wasn't our fault."

I'm revisiting this piece I wrote in 2016 - and I can't help but remain haunted by those first words I wrote then: "A horrible question arises: was the murder a complete and unmitigated success?"

A sobering anniversary indeed.

Are We Ever Allowed to Make Holocaust Comparisons?

Wherever you stand on today’s hysteria about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s use of the phrases “concentration camps” and “Never Again” in regard to the mass detentions of immigrant children on the U.S. border probably has been predetermined by your politics.

That is to say, liberals will come to her defense, saying that we face a horrible moral situation and we need language that sparks people to action. Conservatives will decry her, saying her rhetoric cheapens the legacy of the Holocaust. Everyone will retreat to their previously drawn lines.

I don’t want to be guilty of that, so before making one or two points, I want to come clean: I am generally on the political left, but I think it is possible and necessary to be critical of leaders with whom you are sympathetic. The antisemitic blindspot of the left is an outrage, and people who care about the climate change, racism, LGBTQ issues, economic justice, and reining in unfettered corporations had better wake up quickly before the Democratic party slides into full-blown Corbynism. Which would be a disaster for everyone.

So let’s try to back off of how we feel about the messenger, and soberly ask: Was AOC wrong to use those terms? I would make a few points:

First: Being specific in our language is very important, especially when it comes to the Shoah. “Concentration camps” are not the same as “death camps”—and during the Shoah there were both. To quote Deborah Dwork, a preeminent contemporary scholar of the Shoah:

Initially, the Nazis established concentration camps to incarcerated Communists, Socialists, asocials, or other who did not fit into the national community. Their primary purpose was to “teach” these Germans what they needed to know to return to society. Jews, by definition, could never belong to the national community… The many Jews among these political prisoners were therefore treated worse and assigned to the most difficult and dangerous labor details.[1]

These concentration camps were limitless in their brutality, and of course enormous numbers of Jews died there. But they are not identical with the death camps—Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek, Belzec, Chelmno; each name seared into our consciousness—where the singular goal was to use all the technology available to annihilate enormous numbers of Jews as efficiently, and as brutally, as possible.

There have been concentration camps before and since the Shoah. Totalitarian regimes have “concentrated” groups of people into “camps” many times in our awful history. Auschwitz, however, is something different. (See the map below.)

Second:  Is the Shoah a singular event? I believe it is. That’s why I prefer the Hebrew shoah, “cataclysm”, to the English holocaust. This language preserves the Jewish ownership of our history, and it reminds us that while others were persecuted by the Nazis, the Jews were uniquely targeted. Furthermore, there’s something unsettling about the origins of the word holocaust, with its connections to biblical burnt-offerings. As if to say: there was something “sacrificial” about the murders, which of course there wasn’t.

Likewise for genocide, a word that needed to be coined because no linguistic precedent existed for the crimes that the Nazis committed against the Jews. “Genocide” is not a synonym for “murder,” even “mass murder,” and it should not be used as such. But still: There have been other genocides, some attempted and some fulfilled, in the past three-quarters of a century, and we need to identify them as such.

Third:  So, are we ever allowed to make comparisons to the Shoah? We’ve become so accustomed to calling our enemies “Nazis.” (I’ve done it.) Perhaps there is solace in knowing that the nastiest word we can come up with for the scummiest people is “Nazi”—isn’t it an acknowledgment of the evil of the Shoah if that’s the most extreme word we can think of?

But we should usually avoid using that language. Thoughtful people with diametrically different points of view from our own are not “worse than Hitler.”  But still…

Do we really believe that we should never make Shoah analogies? If so, what was the point of all that education, all those Holocaust Museums, all those Yom HaShoah commemorations? I thought the point was: Learn from history. Recognize the signs of creeping fascism in order to cut it off. Don’t let another human being be dehumanized to the point where they are treated like vermin.

I thought that’s what “Never again” meant: “Never again” to us—that’s why we needed Zionism; “Never again” to anyone—that’s why we needed a human rights movement.

Through our Shoah education, Jewish strength has become a Mitzvah (here in the sense of “commandment”). So, too, has Jewish empathy for others’ victimization.

We’ve properly used the Einsatzgruppen analogy when considering the annihilation of the Darfuris. We’ve correctly called the Rwandan devastation a “genocide.” When Arabic textbooks in Palestine and elsewhere show caricatures of hook-nosed Jews grubbing money and drinking blood, we say, We know where we’ve seen this before, and we call it out.

And I, for one, make the connection between those faces on the U.S. border—concentrated as they are into camps—and the faces of Jewish children in Germany during World War II.

So my take on AOC’s comments?    

The humanitarian disaster taking place on the U.S. border is a stain on our country. The Trump administration’s family separation policies diminish our moral authority everywhere. The failure of the other parts of the government to react is a disgrace, although we should appreciate the moral voices on both the right and the left that have spoken out.

If AOC had called it “Auschwitz,” she should be condemned. If she had called it “genocide,” it would be an abhorrent abuse of language. But she didn’t. She called it a “concentration camp” and she said “Never again.” I agree with her on both counts.

[1] Deborah Dwork & Robert Jan van Pelt, Holocaust: A History, 2002, p.356.

From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org

Broken Clocks (on the U.S. Embassy Opening in Jerusalem)

Gen. Edmond Allenby dismounts from his horse and enters Jerusalem on foot, December, 1917.

I was wrong.

I was wrong in December when I wrote ambivalently about moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. At that time, I wrote that while of course Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, “sometimes it is better to be smart than to be right.”  It’s hard to admit being wrong, but I was.

And it’s even harder when the messenger is someone like President Donald Trump, who it seems is determined to wrap even the moments when he’s right with so much narcissism, abuse, and seventh-grade-bully smarminess that you just want to say, “what he’s for, I’m against.”

But you know the saying about broken clocks, and it is foolish to conclude that, just because another’s motives are suspect, they are actually wrong.

I was ambivalent about moving the embassy because I thought it was bad for Israel’s security, because I thought it would launch tirades of anti-Israel violence, and because I thought it would isolate American foreign policy as a broker in the Middle East.

I realize now that each of these premises was faulty. American isolation is following apace due to the Administration’s other “America First” policies and obnoxious diplomacy, not because of the embassy. But regarding Israel, in fact, a trickle of countries are tentatively indicating that they will follow the American lead and move their embassies as well (Guatemala, and possibly Honduras and Romania, although the Czechs seem to have changed their minds). This is a very good thing, and I hope we quickly reach a tipping-point of other countries following suit.

Further, the expected waves of violence in Arab countries did not follow. (The Hamas-inspired violence on Gaza’s border is not because of the embassy move. If anything, it is connected to the 70th anniversary of the Independence/Nakba, and the delusions that terrorism will reset the world’s clocks to a time when there was no Israel.) 

And I argued that moving the embassy was symbolic; no one’s life (except for the ambassador's) would be enhanced by moving it, so the risk of disaster outweighed the benefits of symbolism.

But symbols are important. Our religious and civic lives are full of symbolism. For instance, at the Brandeis graduation yesterday, I was struck again by how full of  “ancient” symbolism our academic exercises are (from caps and gowns—make sure your hood is the right color!—to the regalia that the university president wears, to the solemn intonation of an alma mater). Israelis understandably feel delegitimized by the refusal, even of allies, to acknowledge that Jerusalem is the authentic capital of the State—the place where, de facto, everyone knows the political and legal seats of government are.

The move really has nothing to do with Palestinians, and nothing to do with peace processes, or two states, or even preventing a future Palestinian state from having its capital in East Jerusalem.

So the administration was right—I daresay, even courageous in moving the embassy.

And I was wrong.  I just hope and pray that six months from now, I won’t be writing a blog that says, “I was wrong about being wrong.”

Because these people sure know how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Instead of approaching Jerusalem with modesty and humility, as when Gen. Edmond Allenby dismounted his horse and entered the City of Cities on foot in 1917, the embassy opened with triumphalism and backslapping. Instead of celebrating Jerusalem, they celebrate themselves.

“Modesty and humility” are incoherent to these people. (“When President Trump makes a promise, he keeps it,” said son-in-law Jared Kushner, the sort of sycophantic and self-serving comment we’ve come to expect in lieu of what could have been a moment of oratorical inspiration.) The presence of uber-racist pastors, the voices of the evangelical hard right, is obscene. So, too, was the presence of the pro-Israel but anti-Jewish millenialist reactionaries (hello, Michele Bachmann? Are these people really interested in reviving this lunatic’s career?).

Supporters of the Administration love quoting the Bible. Some of them even compare Donald Trump to a modern day Cyrus of Persia! (As if Zionist history never happened! As if we hadn’t already returned to the Land!)

They might consider other parts of the Bible, such as the words of Jeremiah. Over twenty-six hundred years ago, Jeremiah (7:1-15) warned about the hypocrisy of those who spend too much time mouthing praises of Jerusalem (“The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord are these!!”, v.4) while simultaneously promoting injustice, moral perversion, and arrogance. Jerusalem demands morality, both personal and social. To behave otherwise is to mock its religious premise.

Moving the embassy is a very good thing. It should be accompanied by a set of moral values that represent city’s ancient heritage: a place for God to dwell among human beings, a place of seeking moral repair, and a place of yearning for real peace.

Nuclear Dreams

If you can stomach just a few more words about the State of the Union…

I have no intention here of analyzing Donald Trump’s speech—nor the First Lady’s clothes, the opposition’s behavior, or any of that nonsense. States of the Union are usually non-events, and this one was no different.

But there’s one part of his speech that chilled me to the bone, and in the newspapers and websites that I read, I didn’t see any particular mention of it.

He said:

As part of our defense, we must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal, hopefully never having to use it, but making it so strong and powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression. Perhaps someday in the future there will be a magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, we are not there yet.

On the page, those words are grotesque enough. But there was an insidiousness to how he said it—especially that last sentence, which had a sickly, condescending tone. It triggered some old, primal fears.

I was a teenager in the 1980s, at the height of U.S.-Soviet anxieties. I’m sure I’m not the only one of my generation who remembers waking in the middle of the night from nightmares about nuclear war. Our schools and popular culture scared the hell out of us with the prospect of the annihilation of the planet.

My memories of ‘80s pop culture echo the helpless fear that our leaders would be “forced” by our enemies to use nuclear weapons—the ultimate weapons of mass destruction. Like a lot of ‘80s detritus, much of it today seems campy and silly—but we took it very seriously. 

For instance, my favorite movie around the time of my Bar Mitzvah was WarGames, which imagined that two computer nerds (with their crackling antediluvian modems and monochrome computer screens) could inadvertently set off a chain of events that would lead to war. Today, we giggle at some of the dialogue:

 “Wouldn’t you prefer a nice game of chess?”
“Later. Let’s play global thermonuclear war.”

But back in 1983, it wasn’t so funny. It scared the hell out of us.

Pop music at the time got on the nuclear fear-stoking bandwagon, too. U2—when they were young, vaguely punky, and cutting-edge—recorded War and The Unforgettable Fire, which seemed to nod toward these themes. Pink Floyd released the vinyl quaalude The Final Cut, which droned on about nuclear apocalypse. Even a disposable act like Frankie Goes to Hollywood released a hit single called “Two Tribes” about the dangers of nuclear proliferation—this is what passed as dance music in those days!

In school, they gave us books like Alas, Babylon (a holdover of the previous generation’s atomic terror) which depicted the aftereffects of a nuclear war. But the worst, by far, was The Day After—a televised movie “event” that was considered so important that it was aired without any commercials! It was about the futility of survival after the nukes go off, because of the environmental cataclysm that comes afterwards, making the planet uninhabitable. By the end of the film, the blast’s survivors have succumbed to radiation poisoning, nuclear winter has started to settle in, and the extinction of the human race seemed assured. Everybody watched it; it was one of the highest-rated TV programs of all time.

This is what we were raised on. One night in June 1989 there was an explosion at the Hercules munitions plant in my hometown, shattering windows miles away. I remember falling out of my bed from the blast, but the worst part was the sheer terror that this was it:  it was so loud, surely that it meant that the Soviets had launched their nukes (and we all knew that Picatinny Arsenal, not far away, would be a primary target when doomsday actually came). I don’t think I’ve ever been so metaphysically terrified at any other time in my life.

Even as teens, we knew the numbers: that our nuclear arsenal was so large it could destroy the planet hundreds of times over. We couldn’t comprehend the logic: if we could only completely destroy the entire Soviet Union 178 times, was it really more of a deterrent to be able to wipe them out 212 times? 

Miraculously, the Soviet Union collapsed without any of these horrors coming to be, and the Doomsday Clock slipped backwards a few clicks from midnight. But I presume I’m not the only one who senses that keeping nukes out of the hands of terrorists and lunatics couldn’t be more important. It’s a big part of why I take Israel’s warnings about Iran’s nuclear threat so absolutely seriously: a nuclear weapon in the hands of an apocalyptic regime is the stuff of real nightmares.

So to hear the President speaking of the need to “rebuild” our nuclear arsenal triggers certain long-dormant reflexes in me. Conservatives and progressives alike should be able to find common cause in being able to restrain this insane return of a ghost that should be resting permanently in peace.

Jews, especially, should know that exponential power of nuclear weapons is a moral anathema. A tradition that demands that when you go to war, you must not destroy the fruit trees in enemy territory (Deuteronomy 20:19) should be appalled at the idea of devastating entire ecosystems with weapons of ghastly force.

Moreover, the standard interpretation of an obscure passage in the Talmud (Shevuot 35b) is that a war that would kill a massive number of civilians—a sixth of the population, an atomic proportion—is absolutely prohibited.

Furthermore… my God, do we have to do this? Do we really need religious prooftexts to say that we shouldn’t contemplate wreaking devastation on a planetary scale? Can we just call this one of those things that the Talmud considers סברא הוא, just plain common sense?

As Joshua said back in ’83—and everyone in Eisenhower Middle School in Roxbury, NJ could quote it—it is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.