A plan for moving forward - The Jewish Standard

According to most exit polls, 79 percent of Jewish voters overall chose Kamala Harris over Donald Trump (he received the remaining 21 percent). One poll, conducted by GBAO Strategies, gave slightly different totals — 71 percent voted for Harris and 26 percent for Trump.

Whichever numbers are more reflective of the actual Jewish vote, however, one thing is certain: A great many Jews voted for Harris because they viewed Trump as a threat to the republican democracy we so cherish here. Judging by conversations and messages I have received, it is fair to say that most Jewish voters for Harris are in mourning, fearful of the future and wondering how they can get beyond their mourning and their fears.

Before we can get beyond any fears we may have because of Trump’s victory, however, we must first get through the mourning, so that we can approach the problem with clearer minds.

These fears of ours are not unfounded, even if the paltry number of Jewish Trump supporters believe they are. One source close to Trump told CNN that the president-elect “is talking about how Americans want his policies and what he needs to do to get that done.” I, for one, doubt that most Americans “want his policies,” however. I believe they voted for Trump because they did not want to vote for Harris. That, however, is for another discussion.

Trump characterized his victory as “an unprecedented and powerful mandate” to do all of what he pledged to do during the just-ended campaign. As many Jewish voters and others would put it, that means all the hateful, autocratic things he pledged to do.

Adding to these fears is the belief that the U.S. Supreme Court gave Trump the green light to do whatever he chooses in the ruling it handed down in June in Trump v. U.S. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU’s School of Law, that ruling undid “the restrictions on presidential abuse of power put in place by officials and jurists of both parties since the 1970s” by in essence creating an imperial presidency.

Clear heads are required to deal effectively with these fears — life, after all, must go on. Judaism’s structured approach to mourning is deliberately designed to overcome grief and gradually begin the process of healing.

This approach begins with perhaps the most important element of all — shiva. In a vicarious sense, many of us are sitting shiva today. What makes shiva so important is that it provides mourners with a support mechanism to begin overcoming the grief they feel. That support comes from the visitors the mourners receive, from the meals some provide so the mourners can concentrate on their grief and their need for healing, and from the messages from those who cannot visit in person.

During shiva, the visitors allow the mourners the opportunity to give voice to their grief, while providing them with comfort and encouragement.

Actual shiva lasts only seven days, which is a way of saying to the mourners that it is time to move on. The “shiva” many of us are going through now is likely to take much longer, because each Cabinet appointment is likely to add to our grief, and some already have. Because we are not actually sitting shiva, we also will not be receiving visitors coming to comfort us. The support group is there, nevertheless, but it is of a different sort: All its members are sitting shiva. They — we — all share the same grief. Knowing that we are not alone in our grief can be very comforting.

During this time, let us consider engaging like-minded friends to discuss their feelings and share ours with them, something we would do at an actual shiva, something that is necessary whenever a person feels despair. The late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of blessed memory explained this in commenting on an incident in the lives of Moses and Israel that is recounted in Numbers 11. First, Britain’s onetime chief rabbi noted something about Judaism that lies at the root of our current despair:

Judaism, he wrote, “is a faith for those who seek to change the world…. Judaism is a protest against the world that is in the name of the world that ought to be. To be a Jew is to seek to make a difference, to change lives for the better, to heal some of the scars of our fractured world….” In our case, we voted for that kind of change this year, but we fell short. Change will come under Trump, but not the change we sought.

Sacks noted that Moses was not tasked simply with taking Israel out of Egypt, but “to help the Israelites create a society that…would liberate instead of oppress — dignify, not enslave.” That was always the Jewish mission, and it continues to be so.

Moses spent the last 40 years of his life trying to change Israel from a nation of slaves into a nation of priests to the world, yet in the recounted incident, the Israelites demonstrated to him that they were just as “recalcitrant, ungrateful, [and] small-minded” as their parents were 40 years earlier. Moses “was staring at his own defeat. There was no point in carrying on.”

As Moses fell into deep despair, though, “God…comforted him.”

This story, Sacks wrote, is “a remarkable account of the psychodynamics of emotional crisis…[I]t is telling us is that it is important, in the midst of despair, not to be alone…. [W]e all need] someone to lift [us] from depression. That is why Judaism is so insistent on not leaving people alone at times of maximum vulnerability…. [S]imply being there…[is] part of the cure.” (See outorah.org/p/30385/ for the full commentary.)

In our case, there is no shiva house to visit, so “being there” is not that simple. All of us who feel despair live in our own shiva houses. Nevertheless, we can gather to discuss our feelings, share our fears, and try to comfort each other.

In Judaism’s structured approach to mourning, shiva also begins the period known as sh’loshim. The word sh’loshim means 30, and it is so named because this period is meant to last for 30 days, which includes the seven days of shiva. Once shiva ends, mourners begin to re-emerge into the world outside. At some point — I suggest this coming January 3, when the new Republican-led Congress is seated for the first time — this sh’loshim should begin to wind down. Because it is a Friday, however, I suggest gathering with some like-minded friends on Sunday, January 5.

What follows is my suggested course of action for how to deal with the next four years, but groups of like-minded people must decide what works best for them.

To begin: Because this must not be a one-shot affair, schedule future meetings and stick to that schedule as much as possible. The purpose of these meetings would be to move from despair to action and should involve a twofold approach: First by allowing people to get their angst off their chests, and then by making concrete plans to speak truth to power, letting Washington and everyone else know how we feel when official actions run contrary to what we believe this country stands for.

The first and most important item on the planning portion of that first meeting must be educating ourselves about the issues that most concern us. Only then should the planning begin. There are so many possible actions to be taken. Here are a few:

We can decide on letter-writing campaigns to our legislators and to newspapers whenever an un-democratic action is taken.

We can organize our little groups into committees responsible for arranging and running community-wide meetings of protest whenever such are called for.

We can decide on voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives, when to have them, and how to run them.

We can get involved in local political organizations, because they are more likely to be influenced by the people’s voice than Congress or the president.

We can attend and speak at every community-wide meeting our towns and villages hold.

In my opinion, the actual sh’loshim, in this case, should last at least until President Trump delivers his first State of the Union message to Congress, whenever in January that will be. It is in that speech that he will outline his actual plans for the nation. (His inaugural address, as is the case with so many others that have been delivered since 1789, will be more campaign rhetoric than policy-based — bluster over substance.)

It is after that speech that we turn our plans into actions. Those plans will not change anything, at least not in the near term. What is important, though, is that we do something positive, rather than wallow in despair. If what we do we do wisely, others will join, and the midterm elections in two years may begin to turn things around.

We are all in this together, and Judaism’s approach is the vehicle for us to support each other and to give us all the feeling that we are doing something positive.

We could just sit on our hands, of course, and do nothing, but then we will share with Trump and the GOP the blame for what happens over the next four years.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is www.shammai.org.

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