Bruce DePuyt, a journalist and part-time lay pastor, shared with me a sermon he gave to his Delaware congregation last Sunday, just after the midterms. I was honored to have my words relayed at his service. He began by quoting my pre-election posting on the sanctity of voting. You can find that part about 10 minutes in on the video below.
He said:
“It’s a sacred moment, voting,” Rabbi Hammerman wrote, “a moment of pure prayer: a taste of the heavenly Jerusalem in a mundane school gym.
“This ballot box is our Western Wall, a note inserted into its crevice, a dispatch from the front, an epistle from the heart, containing my deepest response to the Cry of our times, a Cry that demands action — action that we can all take, that all of us must take.
“The fate of the nation will be determined in school gyms and libraries and community centers by long lines of voters waiting hours to do something so simple, yet so earth-shaking,” he concluded.
“It is all worthy of a blessing.”
Friends, this day is worthy of a blessing, in part because things that weren’t possible a few days ago — extraordinary things — may be possible now. For our planet and for ourselves.
May we rise to meet the moment, again.
You can read more of his excellent sermon below.1 But what struck me in particular was this passage:
If you feel good about the turnaround we’re seeing in the country… if you feel like a weight has been lifted… and that like-minded people have entered the chat… if you’re feeling good, FEEL GOOD.
I promise you, you will not jinx the future by feeling good about the present.
Our souls need uplift. Take the win and use this moment and these feelings as fuel. Because in many ways, friends, the hard work is just beginning.
…Look around. You made this happen. We fought back. And we can feel good about out that — because, friends, when you stand up for your values, it’s okay to take a moment to feel good.
As we’ve begun to move beyond an extraordinary election, it’s human to quickly leave the past behind and focus on upcoming challenges. Social media algorithms and legacy news outlets coax us to magnify small gripes and redirect our frustrations toward manufactured controversies. Some of these battles are important, like choosing party leaders, but we can’t let them overshadow the miracle of the moment. We’ve got to take a second to feel good.
See: A Discussion Packet for your Thanksgiving table: "Developing and Attitude of Gratitude" (poems, prayers and discussion questions)
I’ve always been amazed at how quickly in Exodus the Israelites moved beyond the exhilaration at the Red Sea right to complaining about their hardships. How quickly was that? After they left the sea, in the very next verse they complained about bitter water. And it took only seven verses for them to long for the good old days in Egypt!
Remember, they had just experienced the greatest miracle of all time, and one verse later, it was kvetchy2 business as usual. At least it took Americans four whole years to forget the hardships of the first Trump presidency and the miracle of democracy’s survival on January 6. It’s hard to believe that we will ever forget the hell Trump has put us through this time, but the Israelites forgot the pain of enslavement and yearned for the “fleshpots of Egypt.” So who knows?
It’s human nature to forget pain. I suppose it has its good side, like forgetting the pain of childbirth - so I hear. Otherwise, no one would ever have a second child. And it’s human nature to complain.
There’s a whole genre of Jewish jokes about complainers - like the one about the waiter at the Jewish deli who, knowing his audience, comes over and asks, “Is anything OK?”
One might excuse the ex-slaves in the Bible for having PTSD, rendering them incapable of appreciating the greatest miracles ever or the God who provided them. And true, they did need water and food to survive in the wilderness. This wasn’t like a customer at Target returning a pair of socks. But again, these were no run-of-the-mill miracles. It was the Red Sea, on top of the Ten Plagues - the stuff that inspired holidays.
“When you stand up for your values, it’s okay to take a moment to feel good.”
While it is not in the scope of this posting, I asked AI for a theological / psychological analysis of the Israelites’ incessant complaining. The replies provide insight into our own dizzying political patterns. See that analysis, and my own observations, below.3
We need to take the win and appreciate it. The new freshman Democratic senators came to Washington on Monday, each of them with an backstory of courage and resilience, many of them history-makers. They reminded people of The Avengers, coming to save the day.
This photo was unimaginable two weeks ago - and two more Dem frosh, from Mississippi and Alaska, are expected to join them. Nine seats in all - up to nearly a tenth of the Senate - flipped.
We need to imprint this picture in our mind’s eye and keep it there, so that the amazement doesn’t wane. We’ll need that boost to get us through the trying days ahead,
As Bruce DePuyt put it in his sermon, “Fascism is powerful because it causes people to lose hope. And when you lose hope, you stop trying. You stop dreaming. And you retreat. That’s dangerous for society and it’s dangerous for us as individuals. And it’s what they want.”
And so, remember that if, after an election reversal that pumped democracy and hope from the heartland to the world, we need to look back at what we’ve done and appreciate it, because there is so much work yet to do.
Thanksgiving could not be coming at a better time. Maybe your Trumpy, grumpy Uncle Joe will mind his manners this year. It’s doubtful, given the foolhardy, confrontational response of Trump and Congressional MAGA thus far. But still, it’s not the time to pile on and mock Joe - actually better to hug him, though without giving ground.
No one, not Uncle Joe nor even Trump can spoil this moment and douse this flame of hope - unless we let them.
We need to take the win. And then gear up for tough battles ahead.
Sermon excerpt:
This week, the American people stood up. They stood tall. They found their voice. They reached deep and touched that part of themselves that craves — and is willing to put themselves on the line for — a better, more just world… not only for themselves — but for their families… their aging parents… their children… their trans cousin… their immigrant coworker… the neighbor with dementia… the cop who was beaten with a flag pole on January 6… the elections official whose life was threatened because they were doing their job… and people they will never meet — the American people looked into their soul this week, and they looked out at our battered, bruised nation… and they said “Enough!”
In what I believe we will come to regard as the Second American Revolution, the people fought back. Not with muskets. But with ballots.
So tired — so unbelievably tired — from two years of attacks on our neighbors, two years of self-dealing, two years of lies — an avalanche of lies and falsehoods and crazy-making misstatements of plain fact — two years of war and greed and incompetence and misconduct, two years of running roughshod over the systems we’ve crafted to help us govern our affairs… of tech bros using their algorithms to have us at each other’s throats morning, noon and night… the American people stood up and proclaimed, “This is not who we are.”
It was so loud, even Fox News noticed.
People have been predicting for well over a year that the 2026 election would be a repudiation of the regime. I told friends before the election that the winning side would emerge with 54 Senate seats. That now looks like the floor. The number could rise.
While the early voting data and polls all pointed strongly to what the broad outlines of the election would be, no one that I know saw the Big Beautiful Wave — the Blue-nami — that hit this week.
Trailblazing African-American and Hispanic governors in Georgia, California and Texas
Kansas, where they elected a progressive minister, breaking a nearly 100-year losing streak in the process
Alabama, where they elected a trans person to the state legislature
Texas, again, where the state legislature flipped, the state school board flipped, and where MAGA and MAGA-adjacent candidates and incumbents lost all 17 statewide seats
Longtime office-holders elsewhere who took their re-election for granted… out. Never saw what hit ‘em
Upsets in South Carolina and Maine and Iowa and Michigan
Enablers of misconduct defeated in too many states to mention
And on and on.
This was a repudiation of all the cruelty we have seen.
Kvetch is loosely translated as complain, but in a whiny way. Literally, "to squeeze, pinch, or press.” So it’s not like your just complaining to a clerk at the electric company about your bill. You’re going straight to the manager.
What AI had to say about this topic.
MY TAKE: All three of these points correspond to the disturbing patterns we are finding in American - and worldwide - elections lately:
SPIRITUAL AMNESIA: It is shocking how that amnesia can be triggered by any degree of economic insecurity. People always have voted on pocketbook issues, but more existential, collective issues have been overshadowed in prior elections - but not this time, It was reassuring that last week, democracy and corruption were indeed high priorities for voters, although even those needed to be tied to economic pain to be potent. Does that mean that Americans will shift on a dime back to a strongman autocrat in two years if gas prices are high? Or have we developed a muscle memory for corruption that will innoculate us for a while?
ROMANTICIZING BONDAGE: Will Texans and Georgians go back to romanticizing the days when men were men and women weren’t running virtually every statehouse? Will Latinos ever recall in fondness the Trump years? Has “Make America Great Again” reached its expiration date? If so, good riddance!
TARGETING LEADERSHIP: We’ve developed a disturbing pattern of always seeking to throw the bums out, as if that is the default answer to all our problems. No doubt many incumbents deserve to be evicted from office (especially this year), but there is something to be said for experience. But even Moses needed term limits. Rebellion is sometimes needed, but rebellion for its own sake gives us people like Trump - who was elected specifically to break things, without having any idea how to build things.
