The Emperor Still Has No Clothes

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

How is everyone doing? I have to confess that I’m struggling a lot in the wake of Trump’s re-election. It feels like deja vu on so many levels.

After October 7th, I could barely drag myself around. For at least two months after the massacre, as the rest of the world rose up against us in response to it, there was a dark pall over everything. Going through the motions of daily life was very hard. Waking up in the morning was hard. I found myself sitting very still at many different times during the day, and moving slowly, as if trying not to jar my heart.

Every weekend of those two months, I went to the local Farmers Market. There was some nameless comfort in just looking at all the bounty that had literally been pulled out of the dirt. The deep colors of fruits and vegetables gave me something. Maybe just a reminder that there was still beauty in the world.

I feel the same way now. Overwhelmed by the awful. Hijacked by a runaway train and being forced to watch as it plows over absolutely everything, with no rails, no brakes, no end in sight.

The worst part is the resignation emanating from every angle. After he was elected the first time, people were so committed to resistance. And to not allowing Trump to be normalized.

Now everyone’s so tired and defeated that when he unveils his list of over-the-top outrageous cabinet picks, no one even blinks. Of course he’s putting an anti-vax conspiracy nutter in charge of public health. Of course he’s putting a snake oil salesman in charge of Medicare and Medicaid.

The other day, on my own Facebook page, I cracked that I was bracing for Hulk Hogan to be our next Surgeon General. Except it was barely a joke.

But the worst part for me, as I touched on the other day, is the way even the left-leaning media outlets are kissing the ring.

And the way seemingly everyone — absolutely everyone — is projecting their own personal reasons for hating the left onto the U.S. electorate, and urging us to listen to the other side.

Sometimes I’m dumbfounded by the way everyone says the same thing at the same time. As if the hive mind is actually a thing. Everyone seems to have agreed that Trump voters have some shining wisdom that the left needs to listen to with humility.

Even when, say, the foremost reason given by Trump supporters for their vote was the economy, and by all objective factual measures, Joe Biden gave us the strongest economy in the world. Or even when the answer was inflation, and all Trump’s planned measures have been guaranteed to raise prices rather than lower them.

Or even when buyer’s remorse set in within the very first week for so many, including Latinos who realized their relatives are slated for deportation and Dearborn residents who are horrified by the prospect of Mike Huckabee as U.S. Ambassador to the region.

If we have anything to learn from these voters, I bluntly submit that it’s how to get f***ed in every hole.

So as left-leaning Israel-loving Jews, what can we do?

The first thing we can do is refuse to be gaslit. By either side.

By the cosplaying Ivy League kids paying $90,000 a year to an institution they feign a commitment to dismantling.

By white Americans calling Israelis colonizers.

By American authors whose country just crowned Trump king of the world signing petitions to bar Jews from international conferences.

Or by Trump voters who tell us the man who hosted Nick Fuentes and Kanye West at Mar-A-Lago is a friend of the Jews.

Who tell us a man who has no loyalty to anything or anyone will be a steadfast ally of Israel.

Who tell us opposing a man who tried to murder half of Congress is a symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

The next thing we can do is re-commit to resistance. As our tradition tells us, we are not obligated to complete the work, but nor are we free to desist from it. There are sane people left in the government who lean left and are clear-eyed about both jihadism and Trump. I deeply believe we have no better friends in the world than, say, Ritchie Torres and John Fetterman. We need to double down on supporting the people we trust and standing by our values.

And against all odds, we must keep working for the future we want, for ourselves and the next generation.

One very strange thing for me is that the worse things have gotten for me externally, the more gratifying my professional life has been. Striving so hard to support our community this past year has been the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done. It has connected me with some of the people I admire most in the world and allowed me to serve in a way that feels deeply rewarding and restorative.

The local JCC is on the other side of town from me, and it’s a schlep to get there, but every time I do, the same thing seems to happen.

I arrive for a meeting I’ve scheduled, and I see three other Jews at three other tables whom I’ve been dying to connect with, or with whom I want to share an idea. I attend the scheduled meeting, and then I go from table to table, engaging in several spontaneous ones.

This is what happened on Tuesday. I met with three men — an American Jew, an Israeli Jew and an Israeli Bedouin — to talk about how I can assist with an incredibly beautiful project they’ve undertaken, to support the Bedouin community’s sustainable agriculture initiatives in the Negev. The Bedouin man told me that in his first career, he was a shepherd; in his second, he was a chemist; in his third, he was the three-time mayor of a Bedouin town; and now he’s helming this groundbreaking effort. He identified as a proud Israeli. I will be bringing you many more details of their very exciting work in the near future.

But after having lunch with them, I also joined a rabbi at a different table to discuss bringing Rudy Rochman to talk to the teens in our community, and several other people to talk about ways we might collaborate on adding features to JUDITH Magazine.

And what this has shown me, yet again, is that action is the best antidote to despair.

If there’s something you want to do, or dream of doing, for our community, be assured that we need all hands on deck and there’s a welcome place for it. Ping me if you’d like to talk about any form of Jewish activism.

Fam, on that note, I am so excited about the Jews Of The Universe column I have planned for tomorrow. I don’t know when I’ve been more moved by an interview. Please have a look at that when it drops, because I promise this individual’s gifts for us all are many and profound.

Till then, I’m sending all my love.

Chazak, chazak.

Am Yisrael Chai.