This mind can blow us all away - The Jewish Standard

Things happen to us as we age. The wear and tear on our bodies begins to assert itself in so many annoying ways. The people in our innermost circles may be inconvenienced by our increasingly limited range of motion (or not), but the world will not come to an end because we no longer can walk comfortably down to the basement to fetch something from the freezer.

It is a different story when the wear and tear involves our minds. We have spent our entire lives forming and then maintaining our beliefs, habits, and assumptions, much of it informed by the knowledge we have amassed over the years. There comes a point when our minds begin to lose the flexibility they once had to adapt, rethink, and learn new things. It is hard enough for us to remember what is already stored there, much less find room for new data or try to reconcile conflicts that result.

Again, the people most affected by this are the people in our innermost circles. Just ask my wife, on whom I depend for so many things (including editing whatever I write for clarity and readability, and even suggesting topics at times). Not only must our families watch us deteriorate mentally, but they also have to contend with the increased stubbornness that comes with it.

Aging, physically and mentally, is a private matter, or at least it should be. My being 80 years old is of no consequence to anyone outside my immediate family, my closest friends, and at least some of the other people I interact with during a given day.

I do hope, of course, that whatever I do, or say, or write will influence others to help make this a better world, but my reach is quite limited. My desk, after all, is in a small, square-shaped office in an unimposing northern New Jersey home. Things would be very different if it were in an oval-shaped office situated within an imposing white building on the western end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Whatever I might say or do in that office would have the potential not only to influence but to destabilize.

That is true of anyone who occupies that office, regardless of age, of course, but when the current occupant is just two months away from his 80th birthday, demonstrates a lack of any cognitive flexibility, is prone to changing his mind at the drop of a poll number and then denying that he has done so, and routinely says whatever comes to mind without considering the consequences, we are at the intersection of aging, absolute power, and psychological volatility.

We all have the basic human right to change our minds, and that is a good thing in most cases, as discussed below, but when a 79-year-old leader whose cognitive abilities are being doubted even by some among his most avid supporters has the power to set off a global conflagration by a single ill-chosen word, the standard human right to change your mind ceases to be a personal prerogative and becomes a matter of international security.

Words — ill-chosen ones and deliberately chosen ones — have led to wars. The 10-month-long Franco-Prussian War began in July 1870 because of words that were carefully chosen by the German chancellor at the time, Otto von Bismarck, to push France into starting that war

In effect, it took four words used by President George W. Bush to get Congress to declare war against Iraq in 2002. Those four words were “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs). It was a lie — Iraq had no WMDs — but it was why Congress went the extra mile by giving Bush the power to resort to further military action unilaterally, without further congressional approval.

Words can kill, according to our Bible, the Tanach, and according to Chazal, our Sages of Blessed Memory, and the many halachic authorities who came after them.

In the Tanach, for example, Proverbs 18:21 teaches: “Death and life are in the tongue’s power; and those who love it will eat its fruit.”

If well-chosen words can start a war, ill-chosen words surely can, especially when spoken by someone who speaks whatever comes to mind without stopping to consider what the consequences may be. Freedom of speech is a right we cherish, but it does not include falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater.

Changing your mind is not only a right under normal circumstances, but it is also a virtue. It shows that we have the ability to absorb new information and then use that information to re-evaluate a previously held opinion or position. It shows that we have the ability to learn and the willingness to do so.

President Abraham Lincoln entered office determined to keep the nation united and decided to reject emancipation for that reason. Once the Civil War broke out, he was still looking for a way to reunite North and South. By mid-1862, however, he concluded that he was wrong; emancipation was the proper course after all.

Changing your mind is a good thing, unless it is not. This is where context matters. I woke up Sunday morning hoping to have French toast for breakfast despite all the matzah still available, but when I went into my office and saw all the bottles of SlimFast waiting for me and remembering that I still had lots of covid fat to shed, I chose the SlimFast. That is an 80-year-old exercising positive flexibility.

A 79-year-old commander-in-chief who threatens to annihilate a civilization on Sunday, agrees to a ceasefire on Tuesday, orders his vice president to start peace talks on Thursday, and then on Friday orders the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz beginning two days later is something else entirely, because he controls the most powerful military on earth. That is a sign of mental instability, not flexibility. And instability coming out of that specific office poses a threat to global stability.

Yes, the nuclear threat Iran poses needs to be ended — permanently, but also sensibly. Consider the words used and the day chosen by Trump to make his threat. It came on Easter Sunday, one of Christianity’s two holiest days. Trump, good Christian though he claims to be, desecrated that day by unleashing a profanity-laced Easter tirade against Iran, threatening to destroy the country’s power plants and bridges, warning that Iran would be “living in Hell,” and boasting that “There will be nothing like it,” meaning the devastation he was about to unleash.

It would be bad enough if this was an aberration, but it is not. Mind-changing and the words often used to describe it have been standard operating procedure ever since Trump took office on January 20, 2025.

Understand this: The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most strategically dangerous waterways on earth. Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes through it. A single miscalculation there — a threat issued too quickly, a decision made impulsively, a sentence spoken without restraint — can send global markets into panic and push nations toward war.

The same danger exists in another Trumpian tendency — issuing deadlines and then ignoring them. Wall Street gave this one a name: TACO. It stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” It emerged from what is referred to as “the Liberation Day debacle” and the financial area of governance, but as the Iranian deadline fiasco shows, it has spread into the foreign policy area.

There is so much more that I could add, but let me turn to his penchant for making dangerous off-the-cuff remarks. The remarks he has made on Middle East issues, for example, have managed at times to escalate tensions there and have made achieving regional peace even more difficult. Such remarks include suggesting that Palestinians would be better off if they were moved to “a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.” Regarding Gaza, he actually said that the U.S. should “own” Gaza and clear out its people. Once they are relocated, the U.S. should “level the site,” and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Supposedly, with age comes wisdom. Our sages did not quite see things that way. To them, advanced age did not guarantee wisdom of any kind.

For example, as the Babylonian Talmud tractate Kiddushin 32b tells us, age is regarded merely as a vessel in which we store the wisdom we acquire over time, assuming that we store it properly. How we store what we acquire is critical, as the great sage Hillel said, albeit in his own enigmatic way. A person must never assume that the older one gets, the wiser that person becomes, he said, because age is not a synonym for wisdom. (See Mishnah Avot 2:4.)

I have acquired a great deal of knowledge over my 80 years, but I am not sure about how much wisdom I have acquired along the way.

The Torah insists that leadership is conditional on three things: “da-at,” sound judgment; total adherence to the law; and exercising authority for the safety and the betterment of the people the leader serves (see Deut. 17:20). Donald Trump fails on all three counts.

There are calls for Vice President JD Vance and the Cabinet to invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove Trump as president because he is mentally unfit to continue. Jewish law would agree that this amendment must be invoked before Trump goes one step too far.

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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