Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

As I write this, I’m hearing the announcement from the U.S. Supreme Court that, unlike everyone else in our country, the president of the United States is above the law. This ends a term of the court in which they have abrogated the long-held Chevron Doctrine — finding that federal judges, rather than administrators who are the top experts in their fields, are better positioned to make decisions about our dangerously climate-challenged environment, the food we eat, the drugs made available to keep us healthy, and rules to keep consumers protected from corporate price gouging and other forms of economic inequality. This is without even mentioning the calamity and uncertainty to the health of women caused by the Dobbs decision last term.

We can differ as to various policy decisions. However, when the bedrock foundational pillars of our democracy are under threat, we must come together to fight the threat. The majority of the Supreme Court, in their recent decisions, have denied the will of the majority of our citizenry, all to facilitate the dictatorial aspirations of one man and to establish a white Christian nation, our Constitution be damned. In our long history, Jews have never done well under authoritarian rule.  

I know (because people have told me) that they are scared after last week’s debate. It’s funny that, while there are ongoing discussions and disagreement as to whether President Biden should stay in the race, no one is having the discussion whether the other candidate — someone who lied at least 30 times during the debate (asking us to not believe what our eyes have seen and our ears have heard), who really is a convicted felon, who notwithstanding losing over 60 court cases still asserts the boldfaced lie that he won the 2020 election, who has been found guilty of sexual assault, who champions the cause of our worst dictatorial antisemitic enemies such as Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban and Kim Jung Un — should drop out of the race.

What is clear from the debate, if it has not already become clear, is that only we can save ourselves and our very fragile democracy. Neither our media nor our courts are going to save us. This may be a time of fear, but let us not turn our fear into paralysis.  

Let us reconnect to the highest ideals of our country during this week’s Fourth of July celebration, and then next week let’s go to work. We have never been a perfect democracy, far from it. However, this is the first time in my lifetime in which we have our most powerful leaders losing sight of what we as a nation aspire to be.  

For ourselves as Jews and for all those people we care about who are under threat from this impending disaster — queer, Black, Latinx, Asian, Muslim, women — we must not let our fear paralyze us from action. We must vote, and we must do all we can to get others to the polls. We need to exercise all the democratic tools at our disposal to change the tide of history. Our survival lies in the balance.