February 20, 2016

Politics is one of the hardest topics for clergy to talk about. Legally, we cannot tell our communities how to vote. If it were legal, we would face the even tougher issue of backlash within our community from those who disagree. Beyond preaching the importance of participation, there is one thin line we can speak on — values.

Religion, faith, and spirituality determine our value systems, values that cross party lines and movements. During election seasons, I speak about the way Jewish tradition offers guidance through the wisdom of its values.

While it’s never easy to limit my public statements to the values approach, this year it is extraordinarily hard. This year, I am burning with desire to speak my mind about particular candidates and campaigns. This year, I find myself fuming over the way supporters of a candidate talk about their candidate’s rival(s). This year, I am incensed by the way supporters of candidates speak to supporters of rival candidates. With months to go in each primary, I agonize about my ability to persevere in sticking to values.

I recently found a remedy of sorts in an example of clergy perseverance I first encountered my senior year in high school. I owe much of my Jewish faith commitment to St. John’s School in Houston, Texas. There was something about being rooted in that Episcopal school environment that pushed me to appreciate my own tradition and its wisdom more. Looking back, then, it is little surprise that I was so taken my senior year with the chaplain in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, especially after writing six English papers about the book.

Amidst the absurdity of Yossarian’s experience of World War II, the clarity of the chaplain’s charge to run away while he, the chaplain, stays and perseveres has stayed with me. After all, early in the book, this same chaplain faced the inexplicability of what he saw and famously said:

It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue,
slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder
into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into
patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it requires no brains at
all. It merely required no character. (Joseph Heller, Catch 22)

The vitriol, calumny, slander; the bluster, tautology, obfuscation; and, perhaps most frustrating, the condescension, bigotry, and misogyny that we are seeing in this primary demonstrates not only lack of character, but also the loss of character. Is there a road to the chaplain’s perseverance for us?

Between now and November’s election, it is not faith alone that will get us through. Democracy is much messier than ideologies, platforms, and social media posts. Democracy is the place where competing ideas meet, and democracy depends on not only what is said but also what is heard. The ancient rabbis praise deed over word with Shimon ben Gamliel going so far as saying that he has “never found anything better for a person than silence.”

To compensate for the loss of character among candidates, campaigns, and supporters, we must learn to listen again. Rather than advancing positions as if the enunciation is enough to compel someone else to give up their own position or indecision, we need to listen more. There is real suffering in our society, real fear, and real investment in possible solutions. We are not going to make any progress by yelling at each other.

Instead, by listening, we might just hear something we are missing ourselves, we might just hear a part of ourselves we have drowned out, and we might just hear the courage of character it takes to participate actively in society. Let us persevere through this stage by trying to listen first.

About Rabbi Jeremy Winaker

Rabbi Jeremy Winaker is the executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hillel Network, responsible for West Chester University, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and other area colleges. He is the former head of school at the Albert Einstein Academy in Wilmington and was the senior Jewish educator at the Kristol Hillel Center at the University of Delaware for four years. Rabbi Winaker lives in Delaware with his wife and three children.

• Mail
|
• More Posts(107)