What a summer! - The Jewish Standard

The summer is supposed to be slow. Lazy. Languid. It’s supposed to smell only of barbecue and sunscreen.

But this year the smell is of hair on fire.

We’ve always been told that even presidential elections don’t really start to affect those of us who are not political junkies (whoever those benighted souls might be. Oh wait. What? Almost everyone? Well, never mind then) until the summer ends. Campaigns used to start in earnest on Labor Day.

This year, though, has been the kind of year that historians will study.

The Jewish world has been on edge and on guard since October 7. We’ve all known that large-scale horror can happen — the Holocaust is within living memory, although every year makes that less true. But although we all know that people can do evil things to each other, that’s been only abstract knowledge for most of us until October 7. By far most of us still have not experienced this evil even at second hand, but still it’s far closer to living reality than it had been at this time last year.

It was just about five weeks ago that President Biden’s mortifying debate performance changed the American political landscape; it should make all of us think not only about politics but also about aging, about what facing that inevitable truth should mean for all of us. It’s rare to be brought face to face with it as starkly as we were that evening, when we faced the King Lear-ness of it all.

But since then, much has changed.

The assassination attempt against former President Trump made us think about the availability of guns, the wisdom of allowing 20-year-olds access to assault rifles, and the inscrutability of dead killers who leave little social media spoor behind them.

President Biden’s decision not to run, just a week or so before the Torah portion about how Moshe learns that he will not make it to the Promised Land, and how he deals with it, make us think about the nature of leadership, and the courage and grace it takes to give it up.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, his fourth, an unprecedented fact, makes us think about both the strength and the fragility of the bonds that tie Israel to the United States, and make us hope that politicians will find the wisdom to strengthen rather than fray them.

And Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy has led us to think about the possibility of a Jewish vice presidential candidate — it could be Pennsylvania’s Governor Josh Shapiro — and has led some of us to worry, some of us to cheer, and probably most of us to do both, at the same time. (The sound that makes is interesting.) If she is elected, not only will she be the first woman, and the first Indian-American woman, and the first Black woman, to be president, she also will give us the first Jewish First Gentleman. (And of course the first First Gentleman.)

Tisha B’Av starts on the evening of August 12 this year. That’s exactly a week before the Democratic National Convention.

This is likely to continue to be a fascinating summer; we truly are both cursed and blessed to live in an interesting time.

—JP