Pontificating on Gaza, Michael Lerner still married to Oslo

[Jack's Update #9 is here.]

As the war in Gaza continues, England's TimesOnline has a column here by Rabbi Michael Lerner, insisting on the Lerner peace plan - everyone recognize everyone else, open all borders, release all terrorists, and promise not to shoot at each other. The UN will monitor the deal. Then everyone will be fine.

This is sheer foolishness, of course; Hamas didn't start this in order to permit Israel to live in peace. They have already established that they will attack every time they get the chance, with or without pretext. The prisoners are not in jail for jaywalking, folks. And the UN is not an honest broker.

But this is old news. Like the entire Peace Now movement, Michael Lerner is too committed to Oslo - his major lifetime achievement - to move on. Here is relevant material from a column I ran in the Allentown Morning Call on another occasion when Lerner made his peace proposal, back in 2002:

Rabbi Michael Lerner finds himself in an awkward position. Once a feted advisor to Hillary Clinton, who paid tribute to his “Politics of Meaning” movement in a 1993 speech on healthcare, he now finds himself a man without a movement. The result is a man who embraces Oslo instead of turning toward the future.

A staunch proponent of the 1993 Oslo Accords – indeed, an honored attendee of the White House signing – he is now alone in embracing those poisonous documents. The Palestinians rejected the Oslo Accords just days later, when Chairman Arafat entered Rafah Terminal in Gaza smuggling in Mamduh Nofal, head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Kalashnikov rifles. The Israelis took eight years to reject the Accords, re-entering the territories in response to months of terrorism. The Americans left the table in June of 2002, when President Bush denounced Chairman Arafat before the world. That leaves a lonely Michael Lerner holding the Oslo pen.

Lerner was also a key advisor to President Clinton, whose team offered Chairman Arafat the world in 2000, only to be rebuffed. When Clinton offered 97% of the land, the Palestinians protested that there was no attached map to guarantee contiguousness, even as they demanded an East-West corridor which would split Israel in half to connect Gaza and the West Bank. Chairman Arafat walked away, President Clinton walked away, negotiator Dennis Ross walked away – and, again, Michael Lerner was left holding the pen. Michael Lerner refuses to admit the errors of Oslo; instead, he is using that pen to resuscitate Oslo.

On July 11, 2002, The Allentown Morning Call published Rabbi Lerner’s naive prescription of “Tough Love” for the Israelis. He excoriated the Israelis for defending themselves against terrorism, and he recommended three Oslo-like steps toward peace:
(1) A United Nations force to protect the Israelis and Palestinians from each other,
(2) A pact of mutual defense to guarantee US defense of Israelis and Palestinians, and
(3) An international conference to impose a solution.
Like the Oslo Accords, which collapsed due to lack of trust and irresponsible international support for the Palestinian Authority, so Rabbi Lerner’s approach will fail. Let’s look at each element of his plan:

1) Establishment of a UN force – This could never be tolerated by any Israeli government. How could they forget that Egypt’s Gamel Abdel Nasser evicted the “protective” UN troops in 1967, as a preface to his closing of the Straits of Tiran and, ultimately, the 1967 war?
In 2000, UN “peacekeepers” along the Lebanon border videotaped Hezbollah terrorists as they kidnapped Israelis and made their getaway; the UN even refused to turn over the videotape to the Israeli government. The UN cannot be trusted to protect Israel’s interests.

2) A mutual defense pact with the US – A lack of trust undermines this. Palestinians regularly use mortars to attack Israeli cities and farms, Hizbollah fires Katyusha rockets from Lebanon, and the Syrians and Iraqis arm missiles with chemical warheads. What will a mutual defense pact accomplish once Israel has been decimated in an initial assault from all sides? Further, will the United States send warplanes halfway around the world every time a terrorist shoots into a school, blows up a bus, or performs one of the innumerable other acts which have now become commonplace?

3) International conference – Michael Lerner’s approach smacks of racist Rudyard Kipling paternalism. Does he think the Palestinians and Israelis are desert children, ignorant natives who need to be led by his esteemed leadership? There are real issues involved between the parties, real grievances and real claims, and the suggestion that everyone simply follow an imposed view is arrogant beyond belief.

There is an ancient Talmudic adage: “Do not bow to your own words.” Rabbi Lerner should finally understand that it is all right for him to let go of the Oslo pen. The history of the past fifteen years has shown that those agreements were misguided. Israel ended its presence in the West Bank and Gaza years ago, came back in order to defend themselves, and then expressed a sincere desire to work with Palestinian leadership; let the violence end, and then let diplomacy begin anew.

Here are some relevant links:
Michael Lerner and Hillary Clinton in 1993

Michael Lerner at Oslo

Yasser Arafat smuggling in a terrorist and weapons after Oslo

The Palestinian charge of contiguity at Camp David

UN peacekeepers' withdrawal from the Sinai in 1967

United Nations peacekeepers videotape kidnapping of Israeli soldiers

Another casualty of Bernard Madoff: The definition of “Jew”

[Jack's Gaza Update 7.5 is here.]

This is a dated topic, but the column I submitted to the Allentown Morning Call on the topic just ran today. Below is the text:

As a child, I didn’t know that the word “jew” could be used as a verb, that millions of people the world over believed that my family and I were, by dint of our ancestry, avaricious, unethical scoundrels. Instead, I was always taught that Judaism was a religion of ethics and honesty.

In school and synagogue and home, rabbis and parents inculcated in my peers and in me the biblical lesson (Deuteronomy 16:20), “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” The Talmud (Shabbat 31a) warned us that the first question a Jew will be asked in the afterworld is, “Did you engage in commerce honestly.” Jewish law (Tosefta, Chullin 2:24) demanded of us, “Distance yourself from ugly behavior, and from anything that might resemble ugly behavior.” Ethical behavior was inseparable from the laws of kosher, Shabbat and family purity.

As I entered adolescence, though, I saw people throw pennies at Jews to insult their supposed greed. I studied the Merchant of Venice and heard the Christian tale of the betrayal of Jesus, read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and saw copies of vicious Nazi and Muslim propaganda cartoons. I was accosted by a group of teens in a Long Island Rail Road car; they informed me that “Jews buy Sprite because it’s cheap.” Even some Jews displayed this malignant view of their own ethnicity and religion; seven years ago, then-Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Ed Rendell, a Jew, quoted his father’s observation that “the guys who spend the longest time in synagogues on Saturdays are the biggest crooks Monday through Friday.” And so I learned that, indeed, much of the world didn’t translate “Jew” as I did.

Many Jews fight this malicious rendering of “Jew” by promoting the Torah’s ethical instructions. From The Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem to the Center for Ethics at Yeshiva University in New York to Bais haVaad l’Inyonei Mishpat in Lakewood, New Jersey, to many similar efforts, Jews devote significant time, effort and, yes, money, to sustaining righteous behavior among Jews. Particular Jewish individuals stand out for their achievements in this area as well; from philanthropists to political leaders to jurists to unheralded businessmen, there are many positive ethical role models within in the Jewish community.

But despite these efforts, every new Jew-related scandal reinforces the negative stereotype and negates the positive work of all of those institutions and individuals. Whether a Michael Milken or an Ivan Boesky, a Sholom Rubashkin or a Bernard Madoff, it seems that, every year, one or two Jews gain notoriety for their criminality and thereby reinforce in the mind of many the old message that the Jew is unethical, the Jew is self-serving, the Jew is greedy. Never mind that the behavior of one man or even a handful of people cannot possibly be brought as proof of the character of millions. Never mind that Madoff has single-handedly destroyed many, many charities which served Jewish causes. The image that remains in the eyes of the world is that this Jew bilked people out of billions of dollars.

This wound is, to me, Bernard Madoff’s deepest crime and most lasting legacy. I fear that years after the people who lost their money are gone, generations after the charitable foundations and the people they served are gone, this scandalous rendering of “Jew” will remain in the popular lexicon - and Bernard Madoff will be cited as proof.

By nature and training, I try to look for some positive result even in the midst of devastation. It’s hard to find any upbeat note in this cacophany of destruction.. but, perhaps, there will be one, small, positive result: I and others will feel all the more compelled to preach to our communities, and to teach to our children, that most basic of Jewish lessons (Leviticus 20:7): “You shall sanctify yourselves, and you shall be sanctified, for I am the Lord your God.”

You can see the column itself here; the anti-Jewish comments on it are remarkable, and underscore the damage done by Madoff.

Why didn't Disengagement from Gaza work?

As the war in Gaza moves to the conclusion of its fifth day... as thousands of Kassam rockets, as well as Katyusha and Grad rockets, have rained down on Israel since the 2005 disengagement... as the government of Gaza continues to refuse to recognize Israel (as anything other than a target)... I think it's fair to say that Ariel Sharon's Disengagement plan failed.

Why did it fail? Here's a column I published in the Allentown Morning Call in 2005, when Disengagement was just a plan on the drawing board.

In the column I tried to be very balanced:
I didn't assume that anyone's intentions were evil.
I didn't talk about the horror of evicting thousands of families from their homes.
I credited the Palestinians for everything they claimed to be doing, whether I could verify that it was true or not.
In short, I tried to judge the Disengagement plan not from the perspective of a Jew, but from an independent perspective, as though I were the mythical creature known as the unbiased European.

I concluded that any successful peace plan would require:
1) Cooperative governments;
2) Democratic approval by the populations involved;
3) Impartial international support.

Disengagement went 0 for 3, and we can see the results for ourselves.

Here's the column:


Middle East peace process repeats Oslo's failures
Albert Einstein is reputed to have defined Insanity as doing the same thing multiple times but expecting different results. So, I must ask: Does the current round of the Israel-Arab peace process, as a repeat of 1990s' Oslo peace process, fit Einstein's criterion?

Experience teaches that a viable peace process must be supported by three components:
1. Cooperative governments;
2. Democratic approval by all affected populations; and
3. Impartial international support.

None of these components was present for Oslo. Yasser Arafat frequently declared that peace would only be a stepping-stone to a Greater Palestine. There was no democratic approval; Israeli citizens were never permitted to vote on any of their government's offers of land and money, and Palestinian Arabs never voted to approve any changes in their national approach toward Israel. The international community certainly was not impartial; European governments, left-wing Americans and the United Nations perennially insisted that the entire fault for the crisis lay with Israel. The result was seven years of falsely raised hopes, and the past four years of bloody war in Israel. Thousands have been killed, the price of a sloppily arranged ''peace coup.'' Have things changed, or are we madly pursuing the path of ruin again?

There is evidence to support a sunny view. There are signs of a cooperative government on the Palestinian Arab side. Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has made concrete moves in the right direction, such as reducing the anti-Israel venom on Palestinian airwaves, and cutting back financial support of terrorist groups.

Israel's government also seems bent on proceeding. It has committed to withdraw from land it viewed in the past as needed for security, and it is refraining from responding to terrorist attacks with military force.

We are a long away from democratic approval on either side, though. True, the process has been more open and transparent than Oslo — which was negotatiated out of the public eye by Shimon Peres and Palestinian Arabs — but neither population has been democratically consulted.

Polls continue to show that the majority of Palestinian Arabs are not committed to any process unless they receive certain demands that Israel has already declared to be off the table — such as resettlement of the extended families of every Arab who ever lived in Israel before 1948.

On the Israeli side, the government has refused to allow a national referendum on whether to transfer Israeli families out of their homes in Gaza. The implications of this move are enormous. Israelis do not have the option of remaining in their homes, so that Gaza will be the only place in the world that is fully judenrein, Jew-free. We wouldn't tolerate that in America, we would file angry protests if it were in Europe, we would rage at it in Saudi Arabia, but Israel is about to engineer this situation itself, willingly, without allowing its population to vote; the needed democratic element isn't there yet.

For the third pillar, the international community, led by the United Nations, is still not involved in an unbiased way. Just last week, the U.N. Security Council took the nearly unprecedented step of condemning the murder of five Israelis — but refused to include the name of the Arab group that carried out the attack, even though the group, Islamic Jihad, actually took credit for the bloody murder.

Similarly, England was host to a March 1 conference, ''The London Meeting on Supporting the Palestinian Authority,'' and even before the conference began the British had decided that the convention's final statement would not mention any obligation by a Palestinian government to prevent attacks on Israelis.

The media are equally to blame, for they sketch an unbalanced portrait of events. One of the catalysts of the war carried on against Israel these past four years was the shooting of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura during a firefight between terrorists and Israeli soldiers in September of 2000. A French cameraman had shot video purporting to show that Israelis shot the boy in cold blood; the pictures were published worldwide, including in The Morning Call. The boy's death became a cause celebré. Both the French paper Le Figaro and The Atlantic Monthly belatedly concluded that the boy was shot by Arab terrorists, but other news outlets, including The Morning Call, have not reported the corrected story.

To term this round of the Israeli-Arab peace process ''insane'' would be premature; there is time, yet, for improvement. But until we see a process between cooperative governments, with democratically involved populations, supported by an unbiased world, we are doomed to a repeat of Oslo's bloody disaster.

And so, here we are...

[For the record: I was hotly criticized by another rabbi, in a Letter to the Editor, for using the term judenrein. But if the shoe fits!]

Rabbinic Economics (Allentown Morning Call, September 13 08)

I ran the following column in the Allentown Morning Call. It's a truncated version of a drasha I delivered in August.

Judaism demands that the community look out for the individual

Unemployment spiraled. Prices for food and fuel skyrocketed. A federal authority struggled to keep businesses and individuals afloat. And leaders arose who declared that we could solve all of our problems if only we would accept mutual responsibility, who harnessed the power of government to protect the common citizen.

It may sound like 21st century America and a modern political platform, but it’s not - the scene was actually 2200 years ago, in Judea, as Jews struggled under Roman oppression and grave economic strain. Enter the Jewish Sages, who were political as well as scholastic leaders; they took key economic steps to protect the common citizen.

According to biblical law, loans are a mechanism of charity for the needy: Lenders may not collect interest (Exodus 22:24), and so the borrowers receive capital at no cost, and the lender absorbs all of the risk. The downside is that in times when cash is tight, this charitable form of lending dries up. Therefore, the Jewish sages legislated protections for lenders - ensuring that loans would be re-paid with solid currency and simplifying the collections process - so that the flow of charitable loans for the needy would continue.

Those sages enacted consumer protections, too. When dove merchants hiked the price of Temple offerings, Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel responded to this price-gouging with a legal ruling limiting the need for those offerings - and the price plummetted. (In fact, rabbis in 17th century Moravia and 18th century Algeria imitated this action; when fish merchants raised their prices to take advantage of the Jewish community’s preference for fish at the Sabbath meal, the rabbis banned purchasing fish until the prices dropped.)

The Jewish leadership did this because they believed, based on biblical language regarding the commandment of tzedakah (charity), that Judaism requires communities, and not only individuals, to look out for people in need.

It is well known that the Bible requires individuals to look out for those in need, with instructions like “Love your neighbor” and role models like Abraham and Sarah who took in guests. But here the Bible taught a new and more robust lesson: That communities must also harness their power to help those in need. In this regard the Bible argued against the economics of Milton Friedman, who declared that a corporation owes a debt only to its funders. Jewish tradition teaches that corporations must have a selfless conscience as well, and must seek to meet the needs of society’s members.

This leads to some interesting, progressive, policy decisions. In one example, Israeli economist Dr. Meir Tamari has concluded that, “In our day this would seem to apply to the pollution of the atmosphere or water through industrial wastes.” Indeed, there is precedent for precisely this conclusion in the millenia-old Talmudic requirement that certain businesses, like threshing floors, tanneries and kilns, locate beyond city limits.

Along the same lines, Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Weinreb, current executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, delivered the following strong reading of the biblical “Love thy neighbor” requirement in a talk at the Democratic National Convention:
Our neighbor is not merely the person who lives next door to us or across the street or even down the lane. Our neighbor may be very distant from us. Distant geographically. Our neighbor may be a victim of a tsunami halfway across the world. Our neighbors may be the suffering people of Darfur. Our neighbors may be those that are victims of the cruel war now going on in the country of Georgia… Our neighbors may be distant from us culturally. They may be different from us ideologically …
Sometimes our neighbor is poor, and then we must feed and clothe him. Sometimes our neighbor, she is ill, and then we must cure her and heal her. Sometimes our neighbor, he is bereaved, and he requires us to console and to comfort him. And sometimes our neighbor has been traumatized, and then we must render her whole… We must fashion a culture which is defined by loving kindness and by compassion.
These are not small words, this is a significant mission - and it traces back to that biblical commandment of tzedakah and the basic sense that community is responsible for more than its members.

Judaism is not inherently Republican or Democrat, but the message of biblical text and rabbinic application on this topic is clear: Living biblically means more than giving of our own wealth to aid others. It also means harnessing the power of communities to do the same.

Israel celebrates 60... but remember Zecharyah's message

Sixty!

Sixty, in the Torah, is a measure of completion:

• The sages refer to the number of Jews who left Egypt as "60 myriads" (Talmud, Megilah 29a)
• Large gatherings in general are defined as gatherings of "60 myriads" (Talmud, Berachot 58a).
• The Temple in Jerusalem was 60 cubits long (Kings I 6:2).
• Sixty warriors surround the bed of King Solomon, a full complement of defenders (Song of Songs 3:7).
• Sixty myriads of angels crowned the Jews at Mount Sinai when we accepted the Torah (Talmud, Shabbat 88a).

There is an element of completion, then, in reaching the age of 60, however battered and broken we may feel at times; mazal tov!

I submitted the following column to the Allentown Morning Call's Religion section, in honor of the occasion:

A Lesson from Zechariah, on Israel's 60th Birthday

Some 2400 years ago, as the Jews were slowly building the Second Temple in Jerusalem, they asked the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 7), “Shall we continue to fast for the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple? Or has our period of mourning ended?”

Commentators explain that this question was born of frustration with the slow pace of Jewish redemption from their exile to Babylon. Persian King Cyrus had permitted the Jews to return to Israel and build their Temple anew, but the process had been hampered by Samaritan antagonism as well as Jewish poverty. Those who remembered the glory of the First Temple were unimpressed by the diminished beauty of the second. Only a small percentage of the nation had even returned from exile at this stage of the building process. And so the nation wanted to know: Is this what redemption looks like? Is our suffering truly over, or are we simply in another phase of our exile?

Fast-forward to our own day, and May 2008, as Israel celebrates its sixtieth anniversary of modern statehood. When this new incarnation of a Jewish country was first established, just a few years after the Holocaust, many Jews looked upon its birth as a Divine nod of approval, the first sproutings of Messianic redemption. A holiday, Yom ha’Atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) was established, complete with special prayers of thanks and great celebrations.

Over the past sixty years, Israel has succeeded in fulfilling much of that messianic promise. Millions of Jews have been saved from persecution in other countries, such as France, Argentina, Yemen, Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union. The Torah is studied there in dozens if not hundreds of institutions. Sites barred to Jews by generations of Arab rulers are now open for all to access. A thriving economy, great universities, a society with civil rights for all of its citizens, a democratically elected government and a free press, all of these have been introduced for the first time in many centuries into a land which had been governed by one despot or another for almost two thousand years, since the eviction of the Jews by the Roman empire. In many ways, the past sixty years have seen a great, even messianic, Jewish renaissance in Israel.

But, at the same time, the question of Zechariah’s era resonates with Jews of today’s generation. For thousands of years, Jewish sages have taught that a messianic time would mean peace with the nations around us, a return to Jewish religion by all Jews, and a Temple on the Temple Mount. It is for this that Jews have prayed, “And may our eyes behold Your merciful return to Zion,” three times each day, for millenia. And so Jews today look at constant warfare, internecine squabbles, political corruption and significant poverty among children and the elderly, and ask the question of their ancestors: “Shall we continue to fast for the destruction of the First Temple? Or has our period of mourning ended?”

To this question, Zechariah’s answer is as relevant today as it was in his day. The prophet reminded the populace of the sins which had preceded the First Temple’s destruction, as well as the exhortations of his predecessors: “Judge truthfully, and act with generosity and mercy toward each other. Do not cheat the widow, the orphan and the stranger, and do not plot evil against your brother in your hearts.”

In other words: Dithering about whether deliverance has arrived, or not, is a waste of time. Better to focus on righting wrongs and building a proper society, and ensuring that we earn whatever redemption God has in store.

This is a timeless message, for Jews and for all humanity’s eschatology-oriented religions: Divine Redemption will come, whatever its form, when it is Divinely decreed. Our responsibility is not to attach a label to this salvation, but to work to make it a reality.

You might also see my derashah here.

Column: Is there a place for The Compassion Forum in the political process?

This is a column I submitted to The Allentown Morning Call after Sunday night's The Compassion Forum at Messiah College. They ran it here with a few edits.

Note: If this had not been a general readership newspaper, I would have used the term צניעות Tzniut, privacy, to describe the third point below, toward the end of the article. Public discussion of deeply personal beliefs seems to defy that צניעות we are taught to hold dear.

Is there a place for The Compassion Forum in the political process?

Is it hypocritical to wish for spirituality in our political representatives, but to wish equally that they not discuss it in public?

I found myself pondering that question as I sat in the audience at The Compassion Forum at Messiah College on Sunday night, April 13th, watching Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama answer faith-oriented questions both personal and political. As a guest of the Orthodox Union I felt honored to have been invited, but as a Jewish American I felt more than a little uncomfortable.

Certainly, I find nothing inappropriate in a politician incorporating religious beliefs into decisions; just as they rely upon education, upbringing, friends and advisors, so our elected officials may draw on religious beliefs. More, their application of religious beliefs to practical policy displays an encouraging sophistication of faith and depth of thought. Nonetheless, this sort of forum does trigger deep discomfort in many Americans - myself included.

In my view, one problem is that these discussions unnecessarily spotlighted disagreements for voters of different religious persuasions. Many Americans vote based on practical policy and track record and overlook differences in religious philosophy, and many of those voters don’t want to have the underlying religious disagreement waved in their faces.

As a member of a Jewish minority, and as a member of an Orthodox minority within even that Jewish population, I have disagreed with basic religious beliefs held by every political candidate for whom I have voted in the past eighteen years. My own sensibilities have survived that conflict - but I do appreciate the candidates who don’t emphasize those differences.

A second issue is that these interviews flew in the face of our American freedom of religion. As a nation, we have valued that freedom since the colonial period. As a Jew, I particularly appreciate the fact that my right of worship is honored in our great country. No American should ever be made to justify, or even explain, his own religious ideals - but that was exactly what happened on Sunday night.

There was an awkward resemblance between Sunday’s public dialogue and the savage religious persecutions of the past millenium. Placing a political leader - or anyone - on a stage to answer questions like, “Do you believe God punishes nations in realtime,” and “Do you believe God created the world in six days,” white leather chairs and glasses of water notwithstanding, calls forth images of the Catholic Inquisition in the late Middle Ages and the Mutazilite Muslim Inquisition of the 9th century.

And to this I would add a third piece of the problem: The role of public display in religion, altogether.

Certainly, the Bible itself is mixed regarding public declamation of religious belief. At no time in the Pentateuch are the Israelites instructed to spread their Sinaitic tradition to other nations. On the other hand, Canaanites who opt to adopt Judaism are accepted into that early Jewish nation.

As a viewer whose tradition is ambiguous regarding evangelism, and whose personal beliefs include the words of the prophet Micah (6:8), “and walk modestly with thy God,” I mistrust a forum in which a politician is called upon to publicly answer the question, “When did you experience the Spirit?”

I attended the Forum out of curiosity, and my curiosity was duly satisfied. More, the Compassion Forum did highlight elements in both candidates’ beliefs with which I could agree, and which likely resonated with people of many faiths. Senator Obama spoke about the way his bible-based faith had inspired his work with impoverished people in the south side of Chicago. Senator Clinton voiced a very Jewish belief when she said that her response to suffering is not to ask why God permits it, but rather to ask how she can help. And yet, for all three of the reasons outlined above - spotlighting religious differences, the resemblance to an Inquisition and the public display of personal beliefs - I was less than comfortable with The Compassion Forum.

May our political representatives always remain strong in their beliefs, but - so far as I am concerned - may they keep those beliefs to themselves.

Column: Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright and Spiritual Politicans

I submitted the following column to the Allentown Morning Call on Friday Feb. 29, and it ran today. (They changed the headline in the version they printed here, and that does slant the column's meaning, but they seem to have left the actual text intact.)


The Political Candidate and his Spiritual Advisor
At the February 26th Democratic debate between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Mr. Obama was questioned regarding the political views of his pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr. As Tom Raum described it in an Associated Press analysis,[1] the moment was awkward.

This type of questioning is certainly not new to American politics; it is reminiscent of religious challenges put to recent presidential candidates like Orthodox Jew Joseph Lieberman (regarding Israel) and Roman Catholic John Kerry (regarding abortion). There is a long historical pedigree behind these questions, too - think of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Al Smith in 1928. Nonetheless, the approach remains troubling: In a country so solidly committed to separating Church and State, why is a candidate’s religious guide entertained as a factor?

I suspect the electorate is skeptical because of the way Americans view spirituality. Today’s churchgoers tend to view their lives as an integrated whole, merging spiritual life with day-to-day existence - the two arms of the Cross, as Reverend Wright himself put it in a recent interview[2] - and so it is hard to imagine any citizen or candidate separating the two.

The mix of religion and practical life affects every citizen, beyond the realm of the ballot box; witness the religion-oriented marketing of today’s major issues. Controversies on issues as varied as abortion, the welfare state, environmentalism, healthcare, war, right to die and gender discrimination are argued not only for secular ideals but also for the religious doctrines on each side.

Religion plays the same role at the executive level of government, and has done so for millenia. Students of the history of Christian monarchs recognize that Church-affiliated monarchs have long been mightily influenced by their spiritual advisors. Constantine, Justinian, Ferdinand and Isabella and many other European kings acted in the perceived interests of their Church. There have been rebels, too, like King James I of Aragon - who defied the Church in an attempt to defend Spanish Jewry from expulsion - but they have been the exception rather than the rule.

Jewish history, too, positions clergy as key counselors to political leaders. The prophet Samuel rebuked King Saul, and ultimately removed him from the throne. King David was chastised by prophets Nathan and Gad, King Solomon was guided by his mentor, scholar Shimi ben Geira. In the Gaonic era of the 7th to 10th centuries, the Jews of Northern Africa and Europe were led by a political Exilarch and a religious Gaon, who were supposed to work in tandem to guide the nation. In modern Israel, religious legislators tend to approach their spiritual advisors for political guidance.

The upshot of this analysis is that today’s Americans, heirs to a long tradition of combining spiritual and practical considerations, are unlikely to accept any candidate’s distinction between religious pastor and political master. Until a candidate builds up a track record to the contrary, religious Americans will assume that he weighs seriously the beliefs of his religious affiliation when determining policy.

Is a candidate’s merger of religion and political philosophy harmful? Not necessarily. Candidates whose spirituality affects their public policies are more likely to have a stable religious worldview than those whose spirituality is divorced from reality.

Religion which dwells entirely in the untroubled realm of theory develops as a cloistered, naïve, even shallow philosophy which can offer little to edify its adherents. An abortion philosophy which is unfamiliar with the reality of teen pregnancy and the population explosion, or an environmental philosophy which is uneducated in the hard facts of business, employment and climate change, can have little to say to a citizen of the 21st century. However, religion which plays a robust role in daily life gains a savvy which forces its followers to face hard questions and develop a sophisticated worldview.

Therefore, I’m not sure I would not want a chief executive whose religious faith was divorced from the real world; perhaps it might be better to have a candidate who has a foot in both worlds, and is forced to mediate between the two.


[1] http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/politics/sns-ap-democrats-analysis,0,781296.story
[2] http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week1028/interview.html