Yet again, I write in response to unfolding developments in one of the most eventful months in electoral politics in modern American history, with reverberations for the Jewish community, for Israel, and for the world.
Never in modern history has a sitting president, eligible for another term of office, decided not to run for re-election this close to Election Day. (Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson each ultimately declined to seek re-election while they were eligible to do so, but both announced their decisions in March of the election year.) On Sunday, July 21, with less than four months remaining until the election, the incumbent president announced that he would be stepping aside.
When I think about what Judaism and Jewish history has to say about this moment, the first item that comes to mind is character. There is a strong current in Jewish tradition whose primary focus is on the cultivation of character in the heart of a person. Most strongly emphasized in the Jewish tradition of mussar, a word which literally means correction or instruction, mussar refers to the cultivation of elements of one’s character that fulfill the vibrancy of one’s neshama, one’s soul. It refers to the cultivation of such traits as anavah, humility; nedivut, generosity; achrayut, responsibility. Mussar recognizes that being a human being is hard; living an ethical life is hard: we experience suffering, and as a result we don’t always make choices of which we are proud. Mussar calls for the contemplative cultivation of character in order to fulfill our best selves.
I say this in this context to note that stepping away from the most powerful office in the world is hard. Stepping away from what had been a lifelong dream must be devastating. The incumbent president first ran for the White House, and lost, in 1988, 36 years ago. He ran again and lost in 2008, was achingly close to the office as vice president from 2009-2017, and was discouraged from running in 2016. After finally reaching his dream perch in 2020, he had the chance to do what almost all presidents do—run for a second term—when, yielding to the pressure as a result of a decline in the polls, he announced he would not seek re-election.
It wasn’t immediate. As I wrote last week, Aaron’s response to his own mortality, and to the need to pass his priestly vestments off to his son, was not one immediately grounded in equanimity. At first he shrunk from the moment, decrying his situation. But over time he was able to accept what we all must: it’s not our turn forever. Eventually we all pass it off to someone else to enter the Promised Land.
Regardless of where you stand politically, and which candidate most aligns with your values, it’s worth stepping back for a moment to take stock of the human-ness of our elected officials; what made them who they are, for better or for worse. This is a man who has buried two of his four children, along with his first wife; she and their one-year-old daughter died in a car crash in which their two sons were injured but survived, all when President Biden was a mere 30 years old. His eldest son Beau died of brain cancer at the age of 46. Few of us have known such tragedy. Still he has devoted his life to public service, stepping away only when it became clear his service was no longer in the public’s best interest.
Judaism asks us to forge our character in the crucible of life. It’s worth looking at the examples around us to examine how that it is done in the most public of settings.
The New Nominee’s Jewish Connection
The new presumptive nominee, who has generated a lot of excitement in her party, is not without ties to the Jewish community. Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff (informally known as the “Second Gentleman,” a title I had to google) is Jewish, the first Jewish spouse of an American president or vice president, whose portfolio in that role has included efforts to combat antisemitism (Ivanka Trump, the previous president’s daughter, was the first Jewish member of the “first family,” the family of the president, having converted before marrying her husband Jared Kushner).
(Full disclosure: as a third-year law student at the University of California, Berkeley, I interned for the San Francisco District Attorney, who was none other than, yes, Kamala Harris. It was a large office and I was probably not in a room with her more than once or twice. I have little related analysis to provide other than that the attorneys in that office that I encountered were professional and hard-working.)
The Ongoing Conflict in Israel and Its Global Implications
All of this occurs during a week when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, DC to address a joint session of Congress as 120 hostages remain in Gaza, 44 of whom are declared dead. The war in Gaza continues, and Israel remains under attack from all directions, after a drone launched by the Houthis in Yemen struck Tel Aviv this week, killing an Israeli man. As I write this, Prime Minister Netanyahu has not yet spoken; by the time you read this, he will have.
The relationship between the two countries, home to the two biggest Jewish communities in the world, remains strong but fraught. For example, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish, earlier called for a new election in Israel to make way for new leadership, but also joined the bipartisan request to have Prime Minister Netanyahu address the joint session of Congress to, as the formal request put it, “share the Israeli government’s vision for defending their democracy, combating terror, and establishing just and lasting peace in the region” because, as Schumer said, “America’s relationship with Israel is ironclad and transcends one person or prime minister.”
I pray that the relationship remains strong. We know there is a lot of disagreement — within this community and within the broader community — over the developments of the war. Still, I pray for Israel’s continued strength and security as the world’s sole Jewish democracy, and I pray that the United States, even while it has its own interests to pursue and will inevitably encounter disagreements with Israel, disagreements it is well within its rights to express and navigate, will continue to to see that Israel’s fundamental values as a liberal democracy and as a state concerned with justice are aligned with its own, and that the two states’ destinies are intertwined. Nation-states are imperfect, governed as they are by fallible human beings, and will inevitably fall short of their ideals. That doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of our devotion and support as the institutions that enable us to act collectively to advance the causes of freedom, justice and community. I pray that the United States and Israel continue their mutually beneficial partnership for generations to come.
Challenges for the Jewish Community in Philadelphia Schools
The reverberations of the war in Israel continue in our communities and in our schools. On Tuesday, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization which fights antisemitism and other forms of discrimination, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against the School District of Philadelphia (SDP), on behalf of the ADL itself, the complaint states, as well as “the many parents at SDP schools whose children have been subjected to severe and persistent harassment and discrimination on the basis of their Jewish ethnicity, shared ancestry, and national origin.” The complaint, which is available in full online, supplements and updates an earlier complaint grounded in allegations of antisemitism at Masterman (where I went to middle school).
It’s heartbreaking to me to read how challenging it can be to be Jewish in our school district.
Once again, we can recognize that not all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. Invocation of the rights of Palestinians is of course not inherently antisemitic.
The challenge comes with the assumption on the part of some—including teachers—espousing these views that there is no merit in the Israeli narrative: that of course Israel is carrying out a genocide; that of course Israel is colonialist; of course it is the oppressor, and that pushing back on Israel is a straightforward call for justice about which every objective observer would agree.
The problem is they don’t. Many understand that Jews have long-standing, indigenous ties to the land, and have been yearning for a return there as part of their daily prayers for millenia; that Hamas wants to see Israel destroyed and and to see Jews perish; that there is a legitimate case for a war of self-defense, even if we don’t agree with every action of the Israeli military.
It’s one thing to make space for multiple narratives; it’s another for some teachers and administrators to foster an atmosphere where it’s clear to students which narrative is preferred, and that if you come from a (Jewish) family whose history led you to sympathize with the Israeli narrative, that you are an outcast.
I pray this is resolved in a way that allows all students — Israeli, Jewish, Arab, Palestinian — to feel safe and secure in identities that are at the core of their being. I’m grateful to the courageous families, some of whom are members of this community, who helped raise these issues with the city.
