I’ve known U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) since he was STATE Senator Blumenthal, back when I arrived in Connecticut in the late ‘80s, which is when this photo (below) of the two of us was taken.
I thought that at a time where there is such unease, in particular for a Jewish community approaching the new year, this would be a propitious time to have, not a formal interview but an informal conversation, one incorporating elements of our multifaceted relationship: senator-constituent and congregant-rabbi. And just two friends.
Two Jews and a Schmooze.
To all my friends, recent and old - may the new year 5786 bring sweetness, good health, safety, liberty and peace to the world.
My questions:
As we go into the new year 5786, what is your frame of mind?
Do you feel safe in Jewish settings? Do you think Jews will be avoiding synagogues next week because of security concerns?
In The Atlantic, Franklin Foer wrote recently that the American Jewish “Golden Age” is over.1 Do you agree? (Did not have time to ask this question)
When a refugee or recent immigrant contacts you - or even a full citizen who happens to have a foreign accent - and they are afraid of being picked up at thier workplace or even their church, how is your office able to help them?
How can you get up and go to work every day that you are in Washington? How do you deal with the frustrations of seeing dangerous policies enacted - or shocking announcements like the shutting down of the Revolution Wind project off the New England coast - when it’s nearly done? or the setbacks to cancer research or vaccines? How do you deal with all that?
As we speak, Israel is engaged in the conquest of Gaza City - dozens of hostages are still in captivity and the war shows no signs of ending. As one who has always supported Israel and has seen Israel’s stature sinking on the Hill in both parties, how do you approach that? And how do you speak with a Jewish community that is growing more polarized in its feelings about Israel?
According to the ADL, 78 percent of Jewish students on campus world wide hide their religious identity. What can we say to those students?
What can we do to ensure that there will be free and fair elections in the US next year?
When you travel abroad and represent this country, do you find that people of other nations hate America now? Can the damage to our international relations be repaired?
How can we help Ukraine right now, given the president’s tilt toward Putin?
Is there anything that we can do to lower the temperature that has stoked such animosity in this country?
This is the season of forgiveness. If in the the Capitol one morning everyone were asked by a chaplain to stand up and ask forgiveness of the person next to them, would people do it? The problem of course is that the people next to you are from your party. So a randomly chosen person from the other party….
What fuels your faith, as a Jew? What fuels your faith, as a Jew? Do any prayers or moments in the High Holiday services particularly inspire you or ground you?
What are you looking forward to most as you head into the new year?
See my latest column for RNS: Hey, ICE, stop misusing the Bible to recruit agents
From Foer’s article:
Over the course of the 20th century, Jews invested their faith in a distinct strain of liberalism that combined robust civil liberties, the protection of minority rights, and an ethos of cultural pluralism. They embraced this brand of liberalism because it was good for America—and good for the Jews. It was their fervent hope that liberalism would inoculate America against the world’s oldest hatred.
For several generations, it worked. Liberalism helped unleash a Golden Age of American Jewry, an unprecedented period of safety, prosperity, and political influence. Jews, who had once been excluded from the American establishment, became full-fledged members of it. And remarkably, they achieved power by and large without having to abandon their identity. In faculty lounges and television writers’ rooms, in small magazines and big publishing houses, they infused the wider culture with that identity. Their anxieties became American anxieties. Their dreams became American dreams.
But that era is drawing to a close. America’s ascendant political movements—MAGA on one side, the illiberal left on the other—would demolish the last pillars of the consensus that Jews helped establish. They regard concepts such as tolerance, fairness, meritocracy, and cosmopolitanism as pernicious shams. The Golden Age of American Jewry has given way to a golden age of conspiracy, reckless hyperbole, and political violence, all tendencies inimical to the democratic temperament. Extremist thought and mob behavior have never been good for Jews. And what’s bad for Jews, it can be argued, is bad for America.
