New York Jewish Week — Of all my duties at Temple Emanu-El, none brings me greater joy than teaching our Confirmation Class, a group of high school students who choose to continue their formal Jewish learning after b’nei mitzvah and then “confirm” Judaism’s place in their lives.
Our most recent class was extraordinary: Its participants all happened to be young women, and the class took place amid Israel’s war against Hamas and Hezbollah and the spate of antisemitism in America, which became throughlines of our conversations.
At the Confirmation ceremony, I asked the students to share their “spiritual autobiographies” recalling the evolution of their Jewish identities and anticipating how Judaism will guide them forward. And these young women spoke poignantly and candidly about present-day concerns that imperil their futures, including access to abortion and reproductive health, and their security as Jews in the world at large and on the college campuses they soon will inhabit. For all their determination to stand up for what they believe in, and for who they are, their apprehension was apparent.
Then my turn came to address them, and I was suddenly overcome by a profound sadness and began to weep. The world they are entering is terrifying. Everything, everywhere, all at once is unraveling. “When did being a Jew make me a target?” they must be wondering. “Am I safe…not just as a Jew but as an American? Could the school shootings all over the country happen at my school? Will this planet be habitable for my children?”
Considering such unanswerable questions, I understood why some of these students might be tempted to disengage, even to lose faith in the future.
Too much is at stake
Collecting myself, I shared with them a legend about Abraham. The biblical patriarch often visited the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to preach to their inhabitants, who were deceitful and violent. They murdered, even their own children. Abraham would rail against their wickedness, day after day beseeching them to lift their hearts to the God of justice and peace. He was tireless; he would not be silenced.
One day a stranger challenged him: “Why do you continue speaking when no one listens?” And Abraham answered, “At first I spoke to change these people. Perhaps one day I shall. For now, I speak so they don’t change me.”
I was trying to tell the Confirmation kids that when the world feels out of control, when we might even begin to question the cornerstones upon which we have laid our values and our hopes, that is precisely the moment we need to embrace with even greater tenacity those very ideals and beliefs. We cannot surrender them. Too much is at stake — for America and for our Jewish future here.
As Americans we are bifurcating into two distinct electorates with often irreconcilable perceptions of reality and diverging moral lenses. Religious, social and political philosophies can cause us to view the same world quite differently. And when facts collide with dogma, dogma generally prevails in bending facts to its purpose.
While this is true of both conservatism and liberalism, something changed after the 2016 presidential campaign and the rise of Trumpism. Statistics point to a marked increase in hate crimes since the 2016 presidential campaign, which featured much of the same rhetoric as this one. Disagreement is part of politics of course. At its constructive best, it sharpens our thinking and identifies common ground. But recent elections have been marred by a vindictiveness trampling any sense of civility.
The stability of our governing institutions too is in jeopardy. American democracy depends on our city, state and federal governments operating ethically, and jurists and officials serving impartially, without conflicts of interest. And American democracy depends on the peaceful transfer of power, and public trust in free and fair elections — a confidence now undermined not by evidence but by repeated aspersion.
Open hostility to fact, repetition of falsehoods, demands for trust, and calling opponents enemies to be eliminated can no longer be brushed aside as harmless rhetoric. As Yale historian Timothy Snyder notes, they recall the authoritarianism surging through Europe a century ago. The scapegoating of immigrants to stoke fear, and the singling out of the Jewish community, two percent of the population, as responsible for an election’s outcome, summon menacing nativist, racist and antisemitic tropes, and cannot be excused, particularly in an environment already rife with hate.
Meanwhile, far-left vitriol aimed at Israel since Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza has made college campuses feel unsafe for Jewish students. It doesn’t matter that some of these students have conflicted feelings about the Israeli government, the war and the tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — they often feel ostracized for the mere fact that they support the wellbeing of a country where 7 million of their fellow Jews live.
And it is not just rhetoric that is disillusioning young Jews like the members of our Confirmation class. Many Americans are afraid because they know the personal freedoms at stake when, in state houses and court houses across the country, politicians and judges substitute ideology for evidence and expertise. At threat is access to abortion, the right to which is firmly rooted in Jewish text; in vitro fertilization and comprehensive sex education; and hard-won equal rights for members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Some may want to throw up their hands in disgust. But no matter how ugly American politics have become, we must remain engaged. As the late Jewish social justice activist and political scientist Leonard Fein reminded us, “In the era of the modern state, there is no path to the fulfillment of Jewish interests and ideals that does not lead through the halls of government.”
If we really care about the array of critical issues at stake, we can’t turn away in despair. We should be out there registering voters, assisting at election sites as non-partisan monitors, and making sure that we, our children, and our grandchildren vote — and model a way of political engagement and disagreement that is constructive and civil.
What we do, or don’t do, now through this Election Day and those to come will determine the character of the nation and the nature of the society we leave for our children and their children.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.