In This Moment: If "The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending" Can We Find Happiness This Adar?

 

In This Moment The front page that Israelis woke up to, and the pain that just doesn't subside. The headline says, "After five months, the UN finally recognizes the atrocities committed by Hamas." Quoting from the report: "Rape. Sexual Torture. Gang Rape. Inhuman Cruel and Degrading Treatment." On the lower left, the columnists write of "The Unheard Voice" and "The Buds of Justice." Perhaps it is the beginning of a long path to justice for the sexually abused victims of October 7. But it is no less painful to confront it. This, I must remind you, is what Israelis are facing each and every day. It does not justify other acts of cruelty, but it helps us to understand where Israel is at right now. And that brings us to today's quandary for American Jews: How Can We Find Happiness This Adar? Especially When Our "Golden Age" is Ending... Be Happy! It's Adar! Yeah. Right. How is that even possible now? Things are as bad as ever. As if things couldn't get worse, I was greeted yesterday by an email announcing that the cover story for the April edition of the Atlantic is Franklin Foer's longform essay, "The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending." It is an excellent and politically-balanced summary of the trends that led to this "Golden Age," as well as its supposed demise. I'm not sure I agree that there ever was such a halcyon era, but I'm pretty darn sure that whatever it was, it's not over, despite all the evidence presented to us over the past five months. Yes, it's been five months since October 7. I also agree that things aren't looking up for Jews in America right now, but I'm not about to pack my bags (he said, while literally packing his bags), because things can turn on a dime. Still, I liked the essay, despite its sensationalist, clickbait title, and it's destined to become a landmark in chronicling the American Jewish story - and I would love to discuss it in greater depth over the coming weeks, if enough of you read it. I've shared some key excerpts at the bottom of this email. For the fact is that in the past, even when things have been great, Jews have always found something to complain about. I recall when the historian Jonathan Sarna visited us in 2005 as a scholar in residence and he proclaimed that there was no real crisis of Jewish continuity, at a time when that's all we were kvetching about. Sarna's main point, as spelled out in a 1994 article of his in Commentary, was that prophecies of gloom and doom have always been with us, but: Previous predictions of American Jewish decline and demise have proved utterly wrong—just as wrong as their opposites, the glowing prophecies of a new “Zion in America” dispensed by uncritical optimists. He notes that Look magazine dedicated a widely-discussed 1964 cover story to “The Vanishing American Jew." "Today," Sarna adds, "Look itself has vanished—not just once but twice—while the Jewish people lives on." That classic article in Look has often been the subject of derision in Jewish academic circles, for instance this piece in eJewishphilanthropy, written last year, which reminded us that both Purim and Passover celebrate the ability of the Jewish people to survive against insurmountable odds. It turned out to be just plain wrong. So if we survived Pharaoh and Haman, and even Look Magazine, should we really be so afraid of Elon Musk and a few misguided Ivy League presidents? I understand that Foer is not proclaiming the end of the Jewish people on these Golden Shores, just the end of our Golden Age. Both Look's article and the 1990's continuity crisis were far more foreboding. And both prophecies of doom could not have turned out to be more laughable. Assimilation did not lead to our disappearance then. But will antisemitism now? No doubt we have lots to worry about, but we worry even when things aren't so bad. The past half century may have been a Golden Age for American Jewry, but not for a moment did we stop worrying. Perhaps only now can we understand how good we had it. And maybe the more salient message of Foer's piece is that we may not be noticing that golden things are still happening right now, right under our - ahem - non prosthetic noses, Bradley Cooper.. As bad as things seem, we should still look for ways to be happy, especially in this our happiest month. In the words of Psalm 34:12: Who is the one who seeks life, embraces every day and sees the good? That person, the one whose outlook is imbued with hope - who sees the glass as half full - who pursues life and seeks peace. That is the person who is truly happy. How could such a glass-half-full religion be gifted to such a glass-half-empty people, one that refuses to take "Yes!" for an answer, one that refuses to "see the good?" Yes, things are less than optimal right now for American Jews. But I've seen enough to know two things: 1) The embers of antisemitism will never be completely snuffed out. They always emerge, on the right and on the left. Just as the "idea" of Hamas can never be truly destroyed in Gaza. With support, however, hate can be held at bay - that's what happened in Germany after the Holocaust. But we can't quell hate alone. Still, we've managed to thrive in uncertain times before, and we can again. 2) Elections matter. A fortuitous change of government in Israel could make all the difference. Not that lions will suddenly lie down with lambs, but we've seen before - just a couple of years ago - that the Bennett-Lapid government was able to frame the conversations about Israel in much more positive directions than the current Knesset crew. Benny Gantz came to Washington today and the usual histrionics were kept to a minimum. Taking the temperature down a few degrees won't solve the problem completely, but it certainly helps. I pray for a new Israeli government, and when that happens, I personally would not object to a high government position for Noa Tishby. She spoke to 4,000 Jewish teens a few weeks ago - remarks you can see excerpted below. I'd like Israel to invest in cloning her and placing a Noa Tishby on every campus in the country. But my point is that elections can change attitudes overnight, empowering forces for stability, reason and tolerance that can help to bend that arc toward justice. Better, more coherent and well-explained policies can make a difference. It's Adar, so we should be happy, despite the threats and the hate. But how? One of my favorite sermons of the past 37 years, delivered on Yom Kippur Day 2014, was about happiness. In that sermon, I shared ten keys to a life of happiness: Here are a few of them. I hope they will help all of us, including maybe Franklin Foer, to navigate these hard times with a little more hope. ----------------- Nachman of Bratzlav said, “If you are not happy, pretend to be.  Even if you are totally depressed, act happy.  Genuine joy will follow.” This one might leave you skeptical, but Reb Nachman believed that when we activate joy, it ignites a spark inside us, it opens up our aliveness and lets us see the world from a God’s eye view.  As Rabbi Mark Novak put it, “Putting on a smile is not intended to cover over anything, but to make room for what is here – the divine presence – in each breathing, sacred moment.  The smile, which leads us to joy, which leads us to wonder, calls upon the child within us to live with curiosity and creativity.”  Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav understood, way before Freud, that sadness can lead to sickness. Nachman himself struggled deeply with depression.  Aristotle called happiness "the chief good," the end towards which all other things aim. And in full agreement, Moses Chayim Luzzato, who in the 18th century wrote “The Path of the Just,” begins the first chapter saying, “The human is created to take pleasure.”  For him, there was no greater pleasure than seeking closeness with God.  Laugh your way through the tears. Henny Youngman put it in the form of a joke: says "I go to the doctor and the doctor says I have six months to live.  I told him I can’t pay him.  So he gave me six months more." That is the quintessential Jewish joke.  We all have six months. We’re all up against literally a dead-line.  But if we can laugh at it and stand up to it, it will give us a reprieve from the sadness – and that’s like bargaining for six months more. What else can we do in the face of death but laugh at it? Cultivate He-sed-ic Communities. Not Hasidic – but Hesed-ic.  Communities filled with Hesed (lovingkindness).  Rabbi Israel Salanter, the 19th century founder of the Mussar movement, saw a scholar with a forlorn look on his face during the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  The scholar said he was worried because these are the days when God is judging us. To which Salanter replied, “But other people won’t realize that that’s what’s bothering you. They might think that you are upset with them. In order to be truly happy, we’ve truly got to care about the happiness of others. Not long ago, PBS aired a film called “Happy,” tracking the phenomenon all over the world.  The producer spoke about how he had heard that happy people tend to be healthier, get sick less often and live longer than unhappy people – and that for some reason, the oldest people in the world came from Okinawa in Japan. He went there on a whim and found that it was a resounding YES, they were happy.  The key is was how different generations come together on a regular basis.   One day, he noticed a group of elderly women visiting a preschool as the kids were having a footrace.  The grandmothers convened at finish line. They hugged all the kids as they finished. The producer went to congratulate a grandmother about having such a grandkid. She said, ‘That’s not my grandchild. None of these are my grandkids.’ She was asked, ‘Is this your friend’s?’ She said, ‘None of the women here are related to any of these children.’ In a big square in Copenhagen, there is an enormous interactive wooden pixel screen called the Happy Wall.  When I first saw it, I said to myself: Perfect: We’ve got the Wailing Wall and the Scandinavians have the Happy Wall.   That’s just the way it is.   But as I drew closer to the Happy Wall, it drew me in.  There are 2000 wooden boards of all different colors, and people are invited to write messages or create patterns, animals, words or statements grouping many of the boards.  I looked at some of the messages close up.  “Happy marriage for 30 years: Andrea and Gunnar.”   “My family is my everything: Isabel.”   “M.L: The answer is yes.” Now I’ve never read the messages that people put into the Kotel, but the messages I saw on the Happy Wall were probably very similar – only happier.  At the Happy Wall we might see, “I love my great aunt Sylvia’s potato blintzes more than life itself.  I’ll love her forever.” At the Kotel we might see, “My great aunt Sylvia was bitten by a mosquito in the back yard.  Please keep her from dying of malaria.”  The messages at both walls are about caring about something beyond ourselves.  And that’s what make us happy. It’s Hesed. It’s unconditional love, the kind of love that makes not only makes forgiveness possible – it makes it inevitable.  It’s warm puppy happiness.                     I realized that, in the end, we’re just a bunch of boys and girls (and nonbinary folks too), standing in front of the world, asking it to love us.   Embracing our brokenness, focusing on the here and now, laughing through our tears, accepting our flaws, removing the masks, cultivating kindness, letting anger go, smiling even when we don’t feel it, coming together to celebrate and cry with community.  That's what makes us happy. Live your Second Life. I’m not talking about “Second Life,” the online virtual world followed by a million people.  I’m talking about something that was said by Steven Sotloff, the American Jew (and Israeli citizen too,) whose experience was all too real.  Before he was so brutally murdered by ISIS, he was able to smuggle home a few correspondences when former cellmates were freed.  He wrote this letter that was read by his aunt at his funeral, before a hushed congregation: “Please know I’m OK.”  He said.  “Live your life to the fullest and fight to be happy. Everyone has two lives. The second one begins when you realize you only have one.” If Steven Sotloff could fight to be happy where he was, we have no reason to give in to despair back here.  He was the embodiment of that rabbinic dictum that we must repent on the last day of our lives.  And since we don’t know when that will be, so must we repent each and every day. When you realize that you have only one life, you will fight to be happy.   For those of us created in the divine image, i.e. all of us, we must do nothing less.  We must fight to be happy by marshaling the forces of steadfast kindness to prevail inside of us.  We must find a way to let go and forgive.  We must find a way to hug someone else’s child.  We must find a way to laugh through the tears.   So our American Golden Age might indeed be ending, but the real point Foer is making is that we need to look beyond the mirror for just one second and recognize that our struggle is part of a much larger battle. This fight is bigger than us. As he writes, "...if America persists on its current course, it would be the end of the Golden Age not just for the Jews, but for the country that nurtured them." An America that is no longer a safe and suitable home for its Jews is an America that has succumbed to the worst instincts of the far right and the far left. We need to fight hard to save, not ourselves from America, but America from itself. And there will be nothing more satisfying, more conducive to overall well-being, than fighting this good fight. And that's how we can find happiness this Adar. Recommended Reading Vice President Harris's speech proves the importance of Gantz's visit (Jpost editorial) - Israel “must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses. They must open new border crossings. They must not impose any unnecessary restrictions on the delivery of aid. The Free Press in Israel: A Special Limited Series Jewish student group calls on Southern CT State University to cancel evening talk on Gaza with commentator (New Haven Register). The speaker? Peter Beinart, who has spoken at TBE before. Beinart is neither an antisemite nor an arsonist. He is a serious thinker, progressive and committed Jew, and this incident wholly compromises concerns of those students who are really feeling threatened and it discredits the Jewish community of our state. We are better than this. Here is what the article stated: A letter from President of SCSU Hillel Nathaniel Gross calls on the administration to rescind its invitation to Beinart, saying Beinart “adds fuel to this fire” of antisemitism that has been on the rise on college campuses since before the conflict. The letter, sent Friday evening, was also signed by members of the Judaic Studies department....Beinart said the call to cancel his talk “deeply saddens” him. He said he argues for the right to speak on campuses of people whose views he strongly opposes, per Jewish tradition of respectful debate between people of different views. He said he hopes the signatories of the letter attend the talk and ask hard questions so they can learn from each other. "This is the moment of truth for Israeli society," says Yair Lapid about the Haredi draft. Is Israel about to change a long-immoral policy? (Daniel Gordis) With Israel desperate for more military manpower, the notion that 13% of the country will continue to refuse to serve seems outrageous and immoral; Gantz and Gallant have refused to push forward legislation that the army needs to keep more manpower mobilized unless the Haredi men are now included. It’s all more complicated than this, but those are the basics. If Bibi sides with the army, the Haredim will leave the coalition and (as they did earlier this week) riot in the streets. His government will end. And if he sides with the Haredim, Israelis will take to the streets out of sheer rage and exasperation. This could blow. Gaza war has regional implications; Israel must act wisely as key moment arrives (Meir Ben Shabbat - Israel Hayom) - Regional and international players – enemies, friends, and neutral actors – are keeping a watchful eye on developments. Their stance and conduct towards Israel will be affected by Gaza's results. While not the sole reason, this makes it all the more evident that Israel has no alternative but to pursue the war's goals until they are fully met.  Tomorrow's Front Pages If Wednesday's front pages haven't been uploaded yet, try clicking the same link later this evening. Haaretz The Jerusalem Post Yediot Achronot Excerpts from Franklin Foer's Atlantic cover story: “As anti-Semitism faded, American Jewish civilization exploded in a rush of creativity. For a time, the great Jewish novel—books by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, and Bernard Malamud, inflected with Yiddish and references to pickled herring—was the great American novel. Under the influence of Lenny Bruce, Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks, Elaine May, Gilda Radner, Woody Allen, and many others, American comedy appropriated the Jewish joke, and the ironic sensibility contained within, as its own.”  By the mid-’90s, experts had declared the end of anti-Semitism. It persisted, of course, in the dark corners of American political culture—in the wacky cosmology of the Nation of Islam and in the malevolent rantings of David Duke, the ubiquitous ex-Klansman—but that proved the point. The only Jew haters to be found were hopelessly fringe; anti-Semitism disappeared from polite conversation. Leonard Dinnerstein, a historian who devoted his life’s work to studying anti-Semitism, concluded his magnum opus, published in 1994, with the admission that his scholarly obsession was becoming a relic: “It has declined in potency and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.” Like the end of history, the end of anti-Semitism was a post–Cold War reverie, a naive declaration of a golden age without end. American Jews now worried that they might become too accepted. The great anxiety of the fin de siècle was intermarriage. This all ended on September 11, 2001, Foer argues: “It didn’t seem that way at the time. But the terror attacks opened an era of perpetual crisis, which became fertile soil where the hatred of Jews took root.” Foer continues, “In the era of perpetual crisis, a version of this narrative kept recurring: a small elite—sometimes bankers, sometimes lobbyists—­maliciously exploiting the people. Such narratives helped propel Occupy Wall Street on the left and the Tea Party on the right. This brand of populist revolt had long been the stuff of Jewish nightmares.” America’s ascendant political movements—MAGA on one side, the illiberal left on the other—would demolish the last pillars of the consensus that Jews helped establish. They regard concepts such as tolerance, fairness, meritocracy, and cosmopolitanism as pernicious shams. The Golden Age of American Jewry has given way to a golden age of conspiracy, reckless hyperbole, and political violence, all tendencies inimical to the democratic temperament. Extremist thought and mob behavior have never been good for Jews. And what’s bad for Jews, it can be argued, is bad for America. After 1967, the previous moment of profound political abandonment, the American Jewish community began to entertain thoughts of its own radical reinvention. A coterie of disillusioned intellectuals, clustered around a handful of small-circulation journals and think tanks, turned sharply rightward, creating the neoconservative movement. Among activists, the energy that had once been directed toward Freedom Rides was plowed into the cause of Soviet Jewry, which became a defining political obsession of many synagogues in the 1970s and ’80s. Meanwhile, Jewish hippies turned inward, creating new spiritual movements centered on prayer and ritual. Although not all of these movements proved equally fruitful, this history, in a way, is cause for optimism, an example of how conflict might provide the path to religious renewal and a fresh sense of solidarity. It’s also a reminder that the Golden Age was not an uninterrupted rise. The case for pessimism, however, is more convincing. The forces arrayed against Jews, on the right and the left, are far more powerful than they were 50 years ago. The surge of anti-Semitism is a symptom of the decay of democratic habits, a leading indicator of rising authoritarianism. When anti-Semitism takes hold, conspiracy theory hardens into conventional wisdom, embedding violence in thought and then in deadly action. A society that holds its Jews at arm’s length is likely to be more intent on hunting down scapegoats than addressing underlying defects. Although it is hardly an iron law of history, such societies are prone to decline. England entered a long dark age after expelling its Jews in 1290. Czarist Russia limped toward revolution after the pogroms of the 1880s. If America persists on its current course, it would be the end of the Golden Age not just for the Jews, but for the country that nurtured them. Temple Beth El 350 Roxbury Road Stamford, Connecticut 06902 203-322-6901 | www.tbe.org    A Conservative, Inclusive, Spiritual Community

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In This Moment: Pittsburgh Verdict: Is the Death Penalty Warranted? The Broken Covenant and Shattered Democracies

 

In This Moment Shabbat Shalom As I return from my summer hiatus, my pending ascent to emeritus status has increased my attentiveness to the passage of time and the fragility of life. That was brought home with the tragic passing last week of my clergy colleague and friend, Rev Tommie Jackson. Rev Jackson had been a vivid presence in Stamford since 1997. I last saw him at an MLK program this past winter and as always, he was the first to greet everyone with a smile and a good word. When several years ago I was wrongly accused of bigotry, it was Jackson who rose to my defense in the Advocate, saying, "He does not have a vicious or bigoted bone in his body." He and a number of other clergy signed a letter attesting to those words - proving to me once again that true friendship transcends all religious boundaries. The circumstances of his death are too tragic to contemplate here, challenging the notion of a merciful God. I can only echo the line from Archibald MacLeish's play J.B., based on the Book of Job. J.B. and Sarah, his wife, are struggling to understand their suffering and go on living. Sarah says to J.B.: Blow on the coal of the heart. The candles in churches are out. The stars have gone out in the sky. Blow on the coal of the heart And we’ll see by and by. ------------------------------------- The Pittsburgh Verdict: Is the Death Penalty Warranted? (Click for pdf of this front page) The perpetrator of the Tree of Life massacre was sentenced to death yesterday. I've never felt it an authentic Jewish option to offer forgiveness to a mass murderer, but in my 2018 article, Should Jews Turn the Other Cheek, I wrote that revenge is a dish best served warm - with warmth directed toward the community. For the Jews of Pittsburgh, the best revenge against the particular hatred espoused by white supremacists has not been to turn the other cheek, but to build stronger bridges to other targeted communities, like African Americans and Muslims, who have shown such love in the wake of the attack. I've never been a fan of capital punishment. My overall take on the death penalty reflects traditional Jewish views, which I summarize below: The Torah mandates the death penalty for 36 offenses, ranging from murder to kidnapping, adultery to incest, certain forms of rape, idolatrous worship and public incitement to apostasy, from disrespecting parents to desecrating the Sabbath. But the rabbinic sages effectively abolished the death penalty centuries later. Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 stresses the importance of presenting completely accurate testimony in capital cases, for any mistakes or falsehoods could result in the shedding of innocent blood. If any perjury were to cause an execution, "the blood of the accused and his unborn offspring stain the perjurer forever." In Talmudic times, capital cases required a 23-judge court, while only three judges sat for non-capital cases. Two or more eyewitnesses were required to testify to the defendant's guilt, and their hands would, "be the first against him to put him to death" (Deuteronomy 17:6-7). In a capital case, a one-vote majority could acquit a defendant, but could not convict. Furthermore, if there was a mere one-vote majority or if any judge was undecided, additional judges were added in pairs until the majority ruled against conviction, or until one judge in favor of conviction was persuaded to err on the side of innocence (Mishnah Sanhedrin 5:5). In practice, the death penalty became almost impossible to implement, though over the centuries there has been a diversity of opinion on the matter. Maimonides claims that murderers should not be executed if there was a question about how the trial was conducted. But if the trial was conducted properly there is no restriction, even if it means that one thousand murderers are executed in a single day. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein counters that the purpose of assigning the death penalty to so many crimes in the Torah is to educate people about the severity of the offenses, rather than to end the lives of the offenders. That practice has continued to this day in modern Israel, where not even terrorists with blood on their hands are executed. Only those convicted of crimes against humanity (i.e. Adolf Eichmann) have been executed. The question before us is this: While one can never compare any individual attack to the Holocaust and any single killer to Eichmann, the Tree of Life massacre was the deadliest act of antisemitism ever seen on these shores. If ever the death penalty were warranted, this would be the time. But Israel has seen far more deadly terror attacks and has nonetheless clung to the traditional Jewish view that human beings, who are all fallible, should never put themselves in the position of playing God. We cherish life so much that we are loathe to take one, even one that deserves to be taken, unless it is absolutely necessary, such as in self defense or wartime. But, on the other hand, is this in fact a war that we are fighting right now, against radical Christian nationalism? My gut says that capital punishment is not the best outcome here - and with all the appeals to come, it may not be the ultimate outcome. But if this verdict can give a small bit of comfort to the families of the victims, which it has, it may not be the worst one either. And if in the end the perpetrator is given a lease on life by Pennsylvania's Jewish governor, there will be some poetic justice to it. But the main goal here is not to be poetic. It is justice, minus the poetry, that we pursue. One thing is certain. Hate can never be an insanity defense. If there is insanity at play here, antisemitism is an ideological insanity of the far right and left (and much more lethal from the right at present), a religious insanity of radical (and non normative) Christians, Muslims and others who claim to be religious but really aren't, and a social insanity of those who employ stereotypic antisemitic tropes OR TOLERATE THEIR USE BY OTHERS, even in casual conversation. Antisemitism is perhaps the world's first social disease. It is insanity. But someone who murders with such abandon can never be allowed to get off with that plea. Antisemitism is insane...but it has, to our infinite dismay, also become normal. --------- So, What'd I Miss??? It's been a pretty crazy month, with tens of thousands of Israelis marching 40 miles from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in protest, with thousands of fish washing up dead on the scalding shores of the Gulf Coast during the world's hottest month ever, and with unprecedented challenges to democracy, here and in Israel. On the day after the Knesset passed its first slice of the Judicial Coup, the Hebrew newspapers featured an all-black front page with the caption, "A Dark Day for Democracy in Israel." Then, on Tisha B'Av, Yediot ran a photo of thousands mourning at the Kotel with the headline, "No Way Out," and indeed, the path back from the precipice of illiberal democracy is a tortuous and treacherous one. It's a path Israel must now take. I believe they can succeed, as we have here (to this point). But we American Jews need to help them do that. And that means uniting behind a strong and unequivocal message. The lies will not work anymore. The Broken Covenant Healing Shattered Democracies In this week's portion of Ekev, Moses reviews the misadventures of the Israelites in the wilderness, including the unfortunate shattering of the tablets of the Law as result of the Golden Calf incident. He notes (Deut. 10:2) that the tablets eventually find their way into the Ark of the Covenant, but it's not clear whether it's just the new, refashioned tablets that are put there, or whether the broken ones are included too. The Talmudic sages weigh in (Bava Batra 14b): The verses state: “At that time the Lord said to me: Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first…and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke, and you shall put them in the Ark” (Deuteronomy 10:1–2).  This teaches that both the second set of tablets and the broken pieces of the first set of tablets were placed in the Ark. That image of the broken tablets standing alongside the new ones is a helpful visualization for these traumatic times. The Ten Commandments are our people's Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence, all rolled into one. And yet they were smashed, by Moses, no less, when the people went off the rails, which nearly led to their destruction. One might ask whether it was intended from the start for the ark to include these two sets of tablets: one expressing the Heavenly Law, perfect and pure, and the other representing the sullied, shattered hopes and promises of what happens when perfect, abstract law collides with real life, with an easily misled humanity, and with Israel's flawed, beloved leader, Moses. Things break and sometimes broken things should not be left behind. If ever Judaism had a visual to remind us that no one is above the law, not even Moses, it is this image of the shattered tablets that Moses himself broke, alongside the perfect set that was copied from the first. Not even Moses is above the law. The message around the world this week is that no leader should be allowed to go unchecked and unbalanced. Checks and balances are the key to any functional form of democratic governance. The best reaction to the most recent indictment against Donald Trump (have there been two or three since I was away?) was provided by none other than Mike Pence, who tweeted: Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States… Our country is more important than one man. Our constitution is more important than any one man’s career… Perhaps those gallows built for Pence should be reconstructed outside the Capitol as a permanent memorial, much as the shattered mementos of ancient Israel's greatest transgression remained for all to see (at least if you were a high priest or Indiana Jones) in the ark. Seriously, there needs to be a January 6 museum, asap, just as it needs to become a national day of mourning and reflection. But for now, the gallows will do. And in Israel as Bibl Netanyahu aims to destroy Israeli democracy slice by slice, placing himself above the judiciary, above the media, even above the military - whose leadership he refused to see when they came to warn him prior to the vote - and above the entire nation, we need to meet his lies head-on. We have to understand why it is that Israel stands on such a precipice right now. See below an instructive, real-time rebuttal to one of Netanyahu's desperate interviews on American TV by Israeli politician Stav Shaffir. And here's another well-done primer on the current situation, a video by actress and good will ambassador Noa Tishbi. And below you will find the Top Ten Reasons why President Biden should not invite PM Netanyahu to the White House anytime soon. Heed these words from Daniel Gordis, who is hardly a flaming progressive. He is one of the most noteworthy conservative Zionist voices, who has often supported Netanyahu and his party. His recent Substack posting is entitled: Many American Jews desperately want to help. What can they do? Please read the whole post. But here's what I most want you to see. This is a broken, hurting, frightened country. Does that not sit well with some American Jews? I don’t know, but that doesn’t make it less true. Is that what one simply has to tell Congress for them to support us? There, too, I’m no expert, and I don’t know. But here’s what I do know. Israel is changing right in front of our eyes, and though we have always “sold” Israel to Congress by stressing our shared values, those shared values are disappearing, slipping through our fingers like water in the cups of our hands. What legislation is being proposed just this week? Splitting the role of the Attorney General, so she will not be able to prevent the charges against Netanyahu from essentially being dismissed A law permanently exempting Haredi men from military service A law that would make it legal for the public to contribute to Bibi’s defense fund A law that would allow Aryeh Deri, twice convicted of fraud and who has served jail time in the past, to fill any position in the government, which the court has blocked in the past Death penalty for terrorists (as of now, it has been applied only to Eichmann) A law that would permit exiling the families of terrorists A law that would stipulate jail time for inappropriate dress at the Kotel A law mandating extended jail sentence for those who block roads A law breaking up the Bar Association (which elected a leader whom Netanyahu opposed) There’s lots more, but you get the idea. Shared values? For those of us who make our lives here, what’s happening here is not a PR challenge, it’s a deep fracture in the center of our souls. We’re not thinking about anything else. We’re not sleeping. And if we do fall asleep, we dream about everything falling apart. Ask people here. Especially now, it would be nice not to be alone. The first step towards that would be to have those who love us and who want to support us let us know that they know exactly how fragile and how dangerous things have become. Anything else is simply not true—and perhaps even worse, leaves us feeling abandoned when what we need is precisely the opposite. Gordis neglected to include pending legislation that will subvert the independent media. Bibi is obediently following the formula of Hungary, Poland and Turkey before him. It's too kind to call it "illiberal." It's like calling murder a "splash of blood." Timothy Snyder laid it all out in his now-classic book, "On Tyranny." Read the 20 lessons on how to fight "illiberal" autocracy. Israel's brave citizens, a majority of whom oppose judicial reform, have provided a masterclass this year. Someday, God willing, the world will thank them for creating a Waze-like roadmap to freedom. But only if we from the diaspora heed their cry for help. Israel is a "broken country." Since I last wrote to you, an enormous breach has occurred. Disregard the yea-sayers. This is a legitimate crisis, which will likely get worse. I heard a podcast last week where Thomas Friedman cried. That doesn't happen too often. And even Michael Oren, the right wing former ambassador (and like Friedman and Gordis, a former Harold Hoffman speaker) fears civil war - especially after being disgusted by this selfie taken just after the reasonableness vote. Oren writes: My sole consolation lay in the belief that, at the end of the day, we are all still Israelis, still part of one people with a shared destiny and a memory of our painful past. We all remembered Tisha B’Av. Then came that selfie. Instead of displaying humility, instead of addressing the demonstrators and saying, “Though we fervidly disagree, we both acted out of love for our country, and that love must always bind us,” the coalition members rejoiced. Rather than recalling the Jews who killed Jews inside Jerusalem while the Romans surrounded it — and the déjà vu of Israelis battling Israelis while Iran encircles us with missiles and nuclear arms — the government exulted in victory. Gordis analyzed the evolving coup in this mid-July posting: In April, Justice Minister Yariv Levin admitted that elements of his plan would have “ended democracy” because it would essentially give the coalition unfettered power. What Levin never explained was how a proposal that he worked on for decades could have been launched with such a fundamental flaw. He was either lying, and knew the dangers of his proposal, or didn’t care to check. Either way, Levin’s admission, with the country already seething, confirmed the suspicions of many that this had never been about fine-tuning the judiciary. It was, many were convinced, a project much more nefarious. ...Why does Netanyahu’s weakness matter? Because the void has been filled by petty agents of resentment and contempt. Whatever animates Levin and Rothman, it is not the preservation of the fragile weave that Israel has always been. If it were, they would have softened long ago. Whether their hatred of Israel’s system of government stems from what some see as the Supreme Court’s failures during the 2005 Disengagement from Gaza (a period when Rothman, Levin, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir all came of political age) or something else, it is hard to say. But their determination to rip Israel’s democracy apart was on plain display this week. Everyone knew that pushing ahead with changes to the “reasonability clause” would unleash mass protests, but they proceeded anyway. They have no interest in a proposal by group of leading thinkers to create a new Constituent Assembly, like that mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. The Assembly would tackle the judicial issue outside the toxic setting that the Knesset has become, but the government is ignoring the idea, for toxicity has become their calling card. They wanted the protests—and perhaps blood in the streets as well, to prove that the protesters are “anarchists.” Rothman et al. subjected Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to scandalous, vicious abuse in the Knesset this week. She weathered it with class and spine, as she has all the scorn heaped on her in recent months, but it was clear—the government may be getting ready to fire her. Unlike Gallant’s firing, axing the attorney-general would be an unmasked assault on democracy, and they know it. ...Israeli army reservists’ refusal to serve is the ultimate indication that Israel’s social contract is in tatters. First it was reserve pilots who refused to train or fly missions. Then it was Flotilla 13 reservists, Israel’s “Navy Seals.” Then, earlier this week, 300 IDF cyberwarfare reservists declared that they would not volunteer for duty if the overhaul advanced, forcing Defense Minister Gallant to warn fellow ministers that the army would “not be able to withstand” key reserve members quitting service. Those who critique the reservists’ refusal to serve argue that they made a commitment, that duty demands that they fulfill it. The soldiers, in turn, say that they made a commitment to a democracy. If it is not Jewish or not democratic, then Israel is not the country to which they pledged their loyalty, for which many said they would risk their lives. Think about those shattered tablets in the ark, that dangling noose at the Capitol and let's add this image of the Israeli flag that appeared in The Jewish Chronicle, Britain's largest Jewish newspaper. Netanyahu has broken Israel. The stock market is falling, the economy is spiraling and nearly a third of Israelis have thought about leaving. Fortunately, the Supreme Court still has a say in the matter and all 15 justices will be hearing the "reasonable" case just before Rosh Hashanah. What happens on the streets after that may not be so reasonable, but for the Jewish people, the New Year will bring a reckoning befitting the season of soul searching. Moses would not have blown up his country for the sake of his ego, He did not risk blood on the streets or an unthinkable brain drain to remain out of jail . He accepted his lot and the nation's collective sin, and had to bear witness to the fruits of his anger every time he saw those shattered tablets inside the ark. As for Trump, just read the indictment. Reasonable people will understand the danger that he continues to present to our democracy. As Tom Nichols wrote in the Atlantic "To support Trump is to support sedition and violence, and we must be willing to speak this truth not only to power but to our fellow citizen." There are times when "bothsidesism" and "whataboutism" might be tolerated. Not now. There are times when rabbis and other Jewish leaders should be expected to stay silent. Not now. These are not normal times, in Israel, in America and everywhere where people cherish freedom. It is a time to take a cold, hard look at those shattered tablets, that hangman's noose and that broken Star of David and speak the truth. Today's Israeli Front Pages Yediot Achronot Ha'aretz (English) Jerusalem Post Temple Beth El 350 Roxbury Road Stamford, Connecticut 06902 203-322-6901 | www.tbe.org    A Conservative, Inclusive, Spiritual Community

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