| Dear Readers, Let me introduce you to a 49-year-old publication that continues to speak to the current Jewish moment. Each month, Sh’ma Now, published as an insert in the Forward and hosted on its website, curates a distilled dive into a big universal question. If you would like to receive a monthly alert when each new issue is published, please sign up for our monthly eblast. We email only once each month to announce publication of a new issue. Sh’ma Now essays can be read individually, or you can download and print, free of charge, our Digital PDF of the issue, which also includes “Consider and Converse,” our study guide with prompts for conversations with friends, colleagues, and family. This month, we explore what it means to live in a fragile democracy. Several of this month’s Sh’ma essays speak clearly to what’s at stake at the heart of the upcoming Israeli election. Jonah Hassenfeld, who teaches Jewish high school students about democracy and Israel, charts the different origin stories — and legacies — of democracies in Israel and the United States. It’s a superb examination of how liberalism is understood in different countries and contexts, and will be an important read if you want to follow Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign strategy.
Initially, I chose the theme of “bekhira”/choices within a democracy because I was concerned about the fragility of our own American democracy. I’ve been watching as democracies around the globe elected authoritarian demagogues — in Hungary, Poland, and Brazil. And I couldn’t but worry that these are the anointed friends of President Trump. I became curious about how we talk — especially in such a polarized environment — about this fragility, especially among liberal democracies. In a recent New York Times column, Thomas Friedman wrote about a democracy “recession,” and quoted Stanford Professor Larry Diamond saying, “Liberal democracies are becoming more intolerant. Illiberal democracies are electing authoritarian personalities…” Would a more robust civic education, where we learn about the nature of democracy — and the Jewish values associated with it — be warranted?
To answer some of those questions, I asked Tamara Mann Tweel to write the introductory essay. She’s the director and co-founder of Civic Spirit, a program that aims to educate, inspire, and empower schools to enhance civic belonging and responsibility. She shares a powerful story about her father — a man with enormous gratitude for his public education and citizenship in the United States. Drawing on her father’s legacy of civic engagement, Tamara writes, “Democracy requires education. It is not enough to know American history or political philosophy; our students must also feel that political freedom is a gift worth striving for and protecting. How we teach this truth is one of the major challenges of our time. This is both a Jewish and American challenge. And it is a challenge our people can be at the forefront of efforts to address.” Read more.
I know that we can certainly look to Jewish sources to support political claims on the right or left. Jewish history is not one only of progressive politics. So, I asked one of the most trusted and thoughtful rabbis I know, Jill Jacobs, a progressive who is executive director of T’ruah: The Rabbinical Call for Human Rights, to remind us of the breadth of Jewish thinking. She writes that while the Torah provides models of monarchies and top-down leadership — as well as the voices of prophets and priests — the rabbinic tradition “models one key value of democracy: the celebration of a multiplicity of voices.” Jill goes on to write that “democracy has not always made Jews safer, as the rule of the people sometimes opens the door to so-called populism, and to the rise of far-right groups and autocratic rule — a situation that virtually always puts Jews in danger.” Read more.
Abby Michelson Porth, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, warns against the decay of democracy. She writes that for Jews — and others, of course — a robust democracy is essential. “History has taught us harshly that we are secure only when we live in a robust democracy and where there is cohesion in civil society. We know well the ramifications of the decay of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism, the consequences of strains in the social fabric, with neighbors betraying one another.” She goes on to say that “Authoritarianism and demagoguery are on the rise globally. In America, where an estimated 40 percent of Jews live today, the past two years have seen a dramatic uptick in antisemitic incidents, rhetoric, and imagery in political races and neo-Nazis marching in daylight.” Read more.
In NiSh’ma, our simulated Talmud page, three commentators — two of whom are first-time voters — examine a verse from the book of Deuteronomy warning against becoming apathetic and indifferent: “You must not remain indifferent.” (22:3) Rabbi Sid Schwarz, a senior fellow at Hazon and the director of Kenissa: Communities of Meaning Network, quotes the 18th-century conservative Irish statesman Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Sid goes on to write that the Torah had the same idea: “We cannot afford indifference.” Ben Rosenn, a first-year student at Emory University, writes that we “can combat indifference by helping young people understand why they should have a stake in the democratic process — that their voices and actions can help shape the policy of the America that they will inherit.” He suggests that we invite young Americans to “explore the core values and issues that are most important to us — such as relieving student debt or making affordable healthcare available to a sick relative.” And Josie Krieger, a freshman at Pennsylvania State University, writes about combatting apathy on her college campus. The “collective student effort to decrease the indifference on campus was inspiring.” Read more.
We have many choices as citizens of a democracy — so please take a look at the “Call to Action” in the Digital PDF of the issue. It offers suggestions for meaningful ways to become involved in making more knowledgeable choices as citizens in a democracy.
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Please click here to share it Sh’ma Now with your friends and family. B’vracha, Susan Berrin Sh'ma Now Editor-in-Chief |
