On One Foot: Joshua Hammerman's Blog

Author of "Embracing Auschwitz" and "Mensch•Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi - Wisdom for Untethered Times." Winner of the Rockower Award, the highest honor in Jewish journalism and 2019 Religion News Association Award for Excellence in Commentary. Musings of a rabbi, journalist, father, husband, poodle-owner, Red Sox fan and self-proclaimed mensch, taken from essays, columns, sermons and thin air. Writes regularly in the New York Jewish Week and Times of Israel.

Sunday, March 30, 2025

MAGA has E.D.S (Empathy Derangement Syndrome). Time to Flood the Zone with Empathy.

What’s relevant to Signalgate is not whether the participants were evil or incompetent but that they were not capable of imagining a pilot's widow. Here's a simple strategy to thwart Trumpism.

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman

Mar 28, 2025

*Two diverse ducks taking a dip in my backyard creek this week, a sure sign of spring.*

Do not judge your fellow until you can put yourself in their place - Talmud, Avot 2:5

Elon Musk has told us point blank what every sociopath knows: the real enemy for him is not woke-ness or inconvenient alliances or common sense gun laws or a compassionate-but-secure immigration policy, or D.E.I. or a social safety net for seniors and vets. The real enemy, the one at the root of all of these, and it’s the one thing that a billionaire narcissist can never buy or steal, is empathy.1

BTW, I’m not labeling Trump. Musk and co. as narcissistic sociopaths. A lack of empathy is not sufficient for that diagnosis. But it doesn’t hurt!

Musk said the following to Joe Rogen, and CNN sent this headline out to the world:

“Elon Musk wants to save Western civilization from empathy”

On Rogen’s podcast, Musk said, quoting Canadian scholar Gad Saad, “We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on.”

While Musk claimed that “you should care about other people,” CNN reports that he also thinks empathy’s destroying society:

“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said. “There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
Empathy, he said, has been “weaponized.”

It certainly has. And it’s the one weapon a sociopath can never acquire for himself. It can’t be bought. And therefore, in the sociopath’s mind, it must be destroyed. And therefore, we normal people should aim to mass-produce it like Ukraine manufactures drones. Empathy is our greatest weapon.

Before we laugh Musk’s War on Empathy off as a watered-down plot of an Ayn Rand novel, we should note that the author of The Fountainhead actually had a more nuanced view of compassion than the cartoonish Musk and his colleagues, who are so obviously living out their pimply dorm room fantasies pretending to be her heroic Masters of the Universe.

In an interview in 1964, Rand told Playboy, “I regard compassion as proper only toward those who are innocent victims, but not toward those who are morally guilty.” At least for Rand, empathy was proper in some cases, whereas for Musk, not so much. Not even at a death camp. It was after a photo-op visit to Auschwitz, of all places, that his biographer labeled him a sociopath. Yahoo reported that Julia Gray, the partner of Gidon Lev, the 89-year-old Holocaust survivor who was the guest of honor at Musk’s much-publicized visit to the death camp, shared a “scathing perspective” on the event.

“I chatted with Elon Musk. I spent hours with him and walked with him through Auschwitz. I stood with him, looking at the nauseating heaps of hair, luggage, and shoes flooded with violet light meant to preserve it,” Julie Gray wrote on Facebook.
“Is Musk an antisemite?” she continued. “People, actually, it’s worse—he doesn’t care whatsoever… He was unmoved by the experience.”

Musk’s antisemitic, pro-Nazi leanings are well-documented. But to disdain empathy also flies in the face of thousands of years of Jewish wisdom.

It is anti-Jewish to shun empathy.

This passage from the Talmudic tractate Avot is case in point:

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.”

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 (minus Jeffrey Goldberg) on the Signal chat - they’re all ignorant and arrogant. But the common thread that runs through ignorance and arrogance is that, if they cared just a whit about someone beyond themselves, like, say, an American pilot flying over Yemen - and his potential widow - the whole ignorance vs. arrogance conversation would be purely theoretical. What’s relevant to the Signal scandal is that they were not capable of caring, not whether they are wicked or stupid. If they possessed even an ounce of consideration, they would have moved the chat to a more secure space to

avoid having to notify a widow that her partner was shot down.

I believe we have entered a world of connection rather than separation and distinction. Right now we are living in the birth pangs of this interconnected world…We are all woven into the same human tapestry – if you scrape, I bleed. If you mourn, we all mourn.

My dogs are neither as smart nor as selfish as most people, but damn, they are empathic. And that makes them better beings than these Signaliens. They have trained me to be more caring too, to put myself in other’s paws. As I dealt with various internal plumbing issues after my recent prostate surgery, my dogs looked at me and seemed to be saying, with their wide eyes, “You got this, Dad! As puppies, we were housebroken in record time. We know you can do it, just like us!”

My dogs showed more compassion for me when I came home from the hospital than Elon

Musk showed for Holocaust victims at Auschwitz. And when it came time for their housebreaking, the dogs cared, therefore they held it in. They also wanted treats. But when I think of the self-control they needed to generate as puppies, with no prior experience to fall back on, I can only see it as an act of love - whether more for me or treats is another matter.

Torture them with Love.

And that’s how we beat back this plague of Trumpism. 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’t compete on the field of empathy, which is why they are constantly demeaning it. They insult empathy more than they pick on Biden.

Kill ‘em with kindness. Torture them with acts of love.

“Let them know that they matter”

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks said empathy is “seeing the world through someone else’s eyes, entering into their feelings, and acting in such a way as to let them know that they are understood, that they are heard, that they matter.”

It is a core value of Judaism and of many world religions.2 Some say Judaism has an “empathy gene.” But for MAGA, it’s more like nails on a chalkboard. For the vast majority, empathy soothes, but for those with E.D.S., it seethes. It screeches.

Yes, Musk, Trump and the entire cast of characters on the Signal chat - they’re all ignorant and arrogant. But the common thread that runs through ignorance and arrogance is that, if they cared just a whit about someone beyond themselves, like, say, an American pilot flying over Yemen, the whole ignorance vs. arrogance conversation would be purely theoretical.

The ultimate victory will come as we integrate more compassion into our conversations, using words Trump - and others with Empathy Derangement Syndrome - might soon want to ban.

Here are a few phrases to get you started:3

It must be hard be for you.
This is a really challenging time for you.
I am sorry for your loss.
It’s understandable that you would feel
disappointed by this.
The sadness you must feel isn’t easy to put into
words.
From what you have said, it is clear why you’d
be angry about that.
I’m sorry for the suffering I caused you.
I apologize for my actions.

I strengthen my empathy muscle by looking at the comments and Substack profiles of those of my subscribers who choose to tell a little about themselves. And you give me so much strength. Here’s a sampling:

I am a very liberal older adult who wants to leave this planet a better place for the next generation. I enjoy the outdoors and spending my time at the ocean.
Chicagoan. Desperately hoping America returns to sanity and truth / our rule of law can again dominate our thinking and directions of government.
I’m a senior hippie (is that redundant?) who still believes in peace and love and rock’n’roll. We must bring back peace and love and kindness for all humans. NOW!

Nothing gives me a greater sense of connection than the caring I find in this community. We’re all in this together.

If you want to assess your own degree of empathy, take this simple test from Psychology Today. It’s a little cheesy, but worth a look. Here are a few of the questions. Rate yourself 1-5 on how much you agree with these statements:

I am joyful when other people feel joyful.
I feel bad for others when they struggle to meet their own goals.
I want to hear my friend's problems.
I feel compassionate toward people who haven't had many good breaks in life.
I feel sorry for people who experience misfortune.
I feel embarrassed when other people feel embarrassed.
I feel distress when I see someone being bullied.
I try to think about the other person's feelings before giving them feedback

I believe that is where we will end up when the correction hopefully occurs and Trumpism is neutralized. For as I’ve written in my recent book about the aftermath of the Holocaust, we've reached a different place in the evolution of human civilization. I believe we have entered a world of connection rather than separation and distinction. Right now we are living in the birth pangs of this interconnected world.

When young Jews ask me why they should remain Jewish, I point to the special role of the Jewish people in forging such a world. Conspiracy theorists bemoan interdependence as “globalism” and try to paint it as evil, but that’s because they are petrified of it. Meanwhile, some Jews, including those on the far right in Israel and America, prefer that Jews separate, insulate and - in some cases - dominate, and that is also not the answer.

Because Jews are meant to build bridges between peoples. We connect the dots of humanity.

We are the glue in the mosaic. We are the strand, the thread that holds together the tapestry, the ligament that will reassemble Ezekiel’s dry bones. That has always been our role, but never more than now. Which is why it is so important to be demonstrating love, compassion and hope at this crucial moment.4

It's like the way I instruct mourners not to thank those who come to visit them during shiva. Of course gratitude is natural. But when I visit your shiva, I’m not doing it out of pity or professional obligation. Neither is your neighbor. When we come to comfort you, we’re binding our own wounds, because we are all woven into the same human tapestry. If you scrape, I bleed. If you mourn, we all mourn.

We need to pepper them with empathy for one additional reason:

Elie Wiesel often told a parable about the man who stood at the entrance of Sodom, crying out against the injustice and evil in that city. A passerby said to him, “For years you have been urging the people to repent, and yet no one has changed. Why do you continue?” He responded: “When I first came, I protested because I hoped to change the people of Sodom. Now I continue to cry out, because if I don’t, they will have changed me.”

We can’t let ourselves be infected by the disease that afflicts those who would let a fighter pilot die in vain because they simply don’t care.

Please share your suggestions on how we can flood the zone with empathy. Each demonstration will be a small victory for humanity.

These victories will add up.

And before you go, a bonus for the weekend. Some headlines from today’s papers reminding us of our deeper connections to the world around us and the enduring cycles of nature and time. Time to reconnect and put ourselves in other’s shoes.