We look strongest when supporting the weakest. Don't bet on Trump saying that tonight. But will he use the R-word?
That would tell us a lot. With the president projecting brutality and sharing AI videos of himself in a hockey fight, this most powerful religious message bears repeating: Empathy is good.
The Empathy Monster is rearing its ugly head again. In light of the Epstein revelations, with millions of files featuring various Epstein-endorsed “Masters of the Universe” taking turns raping the underage Sabines, spouting crackpot theories of eugenics and spitting out expletives, Caroline Bologna, writing in The Huff Post, discussed the “E” word last week:
Proponents of the “toxic empathy” critique now argue that empathy can cloud moral judgment or be manipulated to advance policies they see as unbiblical. That shifting view on empathy in this era of “MAGA Christianity” concerns many religious scholars and advocates.
“In the last several years, especially within MAGA-aligned Christian spaces, I’ve watched empathy get rebranded as weakness,” said Malynda Hale, executive director of the Christian nonprofit The New Evangelicals. “In choosing to care about the lived experiences of others ― whether they are immigrants, LGBTQ people, Black communities, anyone outside the white evangelicals’ space and ideological lane ― people are framed as being ‘too emotional,’ ‘unbiblical,’ or even ‘compromising your faith.’”
Hey, in the category of “the sun came up today and a Trump regime official used the R-word,” we have this breaking news from Yahoo: White House Communications Director Steven Cheung called two lawmakers the R-word in a social media post shared Friday evening.
Well, it’s not as if the man is in charge of communications or anything.
Cheung called Democratic Representative Ro Khanna and Republican Representative Thomas Massie “some of the dumbest r****** ever to be in Congress.”
In fact he is in charge of communications. And his job is to communicate abuse of anyone who is not white, male, Christian and wealthy. He was staying on brand. Donald Trump’s ungracious treatment of the US women’s hockey team isn’t the most egregious thing he’s ever done to women. It doesn’t even crack the top 10,000. But it demonstrated just how ungracious a boor he is. Again, staying on brand. They really think empathy is evil.
I’m sending this out before tonight’s State of the Union so that you can all make sure to put the R-word on your Bingo cards. If Trump doesn’t use it, you can be sure it will be on a t-shirt or sign somewhere. It has become MAGA’s badge of pride.
Oh, Trump’ll make fun of empathy. And Canadians. And especially Canadians who have empathy.
To all our friends up north, I’m with you, Canada!
“MAGA Christianity” has spread like a virus to other faith traditions, including Judaism. Trump’s lapdogs in Israel have been quick to take their cues from the American religious right, as they’ve been doing for decades. In Ha’aretz, columnist Odeh Bisharat writes in today’s edition:1
“People who used to advocate for public diplomacy have largely reached the conclusion that there’s no chance of Israel convincing the world that it is in the right. The old view, that the Arabs were the aggressors and Israel was only defending itself, has been broken. So the world will get used to Israel’s cruel face.
This approach has been internalized to such a degree that people here actually believe the aggressive approach is what will convince the world, and that other nations will support harassing the Palestinians. This internalization of aggression, crudeness and supremacy runs so deep that those who adopt this approach even think the world agrees with it.”
Might makes right also applies to internal politics in Israel. The majority rules and if you don’t like it, no soup for you! That’s what Israel’s Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich basically said this week when a Supreme Court ruling reasserted a decade-old agreement where part of the Western Wall plaza would be set aside for mixed-gender, egalitarian and progressive Jewish worship.2 That area has been partially closed since 2018, when a 400-pound stone fell and the state failed to repair the structural flaws. The court gave the government 90 days to submit a plan to complete the repairs. The government is trying to pass a law putting the entire Kotel area under the Ultra-Orthodox auspices, which would end any discussion of representation for half of world Jewry.
Any sane government wishing to gain an easy PR win would take the decision as a tiny loss but then use it as a chance to show support the vast majority of diaspora Jews, who support the liberal religious movements and other progressive organizations like the Women of the Wall. It was a no-brainer.
Unfortunately, it can’t be a no-brainer if you don’t have a brain. Or, more to the point, a heart. And face it, since we’re going all Elphaba here, no courage either.
The courts gave Netanyahu’s government an easy offramp, but much like the Trump administration’s doubling down on its cruel immigration policies every time the courts slap them down, Israel’s worst-of-the-worst Finance Minister took a few minutes off from trying to annex the West Bank to stick his thumb in the eye of the majority of American Jews, saying "I cannot understand how some tiny group, which weighs a quarter of a percent of the population, comes and demands to be respected and wants to pray on its own terms.”
How dare a small minority seek respect! What nerve!
While Reform Jews are a minority in Israel, there are 300,000 of them, according to CEO of the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism Anna Kislanski.
She added, as reported in Ha’aretz,
“Reform Judaism is the largest Jewish denomination in the world and serves as a central bridge between the State of Israel and the Jewish diaspora. Disregarding this community is a disservice both to Israeli citizens and the country’s moral and strategic ties with world Jewry,” Kislanski warned, adding that the movement sees egalitarian Jewish prayer at the Western Wall not as a provocation, but as a demand to “honor the rule of law, which should be fundamental in a democratic state.”
“Every Jew has the right to practice their traditions and prayers freely and equally,” she said. “The Western Wall belongs to all Jews, not just one denomination.”
Not according to Smotrich. 3
They want to be seen as bullies. They think smashing those who are weaker or smaller is good for their brand. They want to be Trump. They really want to be Putin.
I’ve dealt with the topic of empathy often, as recently as yesterday. But in the face of this relentless push of brutality, with the American president sharing AI videos of himself in a hockey fight, this most powerful and obvious religious message bears repeating again and again.
Empathy is good.
Here’s what the Talmud teaches (clip and save in your pocket - this passage is golden)
This verse is a perfect example of how the Jewish ethos is based on the notion that all creatures are linked in a web of interdependence. Blogger Natalia Cervantes notes that the Hebrew word for empathy is Rachamim, which is derived from the word “rechem,” meaning womb. “Empathy is this idea of our ability to connect with others on a deep and nurturing level, similar to the bond between a mother and her child.”
Empathy comes from parental nurturing, not from raping Sabines.
Elon Musk believes all empathy is weakness. No love of another is allowed, save for the love of Dear Leader. For MAGAniks, empathy is at the root of all evil, precisely the opposite of what psychologist Gustav Mark Gilbert said after he interviewed Nazi leaders during the Nuremberg trials:
“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil,” Gilbert wrote. “I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
As we juggle the question as to whether this administration is premeditatively evil or blissfully incompetent, I agree with the point made by Paul Krugman:
My answer is both. Musk is incompetent and evil. He suffers from billionaire brain — that special blend of ignorance and arrogance that occurs all too frequently in men who believe that their success in accumulating personal wealth means that they understand everything, no need to do any homework. But he also clearly detests anything that makes life better for non-billionaires.
Yes, Musk, Trump plus the cast of characters in the Epstein Universe - they’re all ignorant and arrogant, incompetent and evil.
My dogs showed more compassion for me when I came home from my prostate surgery a year ago than Elon Musk showed for Holocaust victims when he visited Auschwitz. And that’s how we beat back this plague of Trumpism and Bibiism. Demonstrations help. Political posturing, fundraising and media messaging have their place. Winning a few races and court cases will help enormously. But that’s the playing field Trump, Musk and Co. are used to being on. They can fend off their enemies by amping up the aggression, crudeness and white-Christian supremacy.
But they can’t compete on the field of empathy, which is why they are constantly demeaning it. All they can do is put out hockey memes.
Kill ‘em with kindness. Stand up for the smallest. Bury the bullies with ballots. Torture them with acts of love.
We look strongest when supporting the weakest.
Full article:
The Smotrich article, from Ha’aretz:
Some background: This mistreatment of progressive Jews is not a new phenomenon, but for anyone who thinks that non-Jewish minorities face discrimination in the Jewish State, Jewish minorities have long faced religious discrimination too. There are very few countries in the world where if I perform a wedding - as a rabbi - the state will not automatically recognize it. Israel is one of them.
The fact that it’s always been like that does not make it any more acceptable. Nor does it make my attachment to Israel any less solid. It is an imperfection that needs to be addressed, like the many inequalities that exist here in America. And it is one that the Supreme Court is addressing, and if the Jewish world remains steadfast, there can be progress.
The way to address discrimination in Israel - and in America too - is with a strong, independent judiciary. And it is the judiciary that is being targeted by Smotrich and his allies, even more than they are targeting progressive denominations like mine. The Supreme Court has long assisted the movement for egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall. A decade ago, its rulings spurred a grand compromise that would have gone farther than ever before to unite the Jewish people at our holiest site. But with elections coming, the government wants to project strength against the courts, and Reform and Conservative Jews are easy victims as collateral damage.
