Building the Center with You (Yom Kippur 5785)

Building the Center With You
Rabbi Ari Lorge, Yom Kippur 5785

Leon Trotsky is quoted as saying, “anyone desiring a quiet life has done badly to be born in the twentieth century.”¹ I know it isn’t a contest…but even Trotsky would have to agree that the 21st century is showing up to compete. For the Jewish people, 5784 will be written and sealed as one of the most sustained periods of upheaval in recent memory.

For Jewish Americans, the past year shook us to our core. There has been an unease in our community the likes of which we have not felt in our lifetimes. These feelings are grounded in a profound experience captured vividly by Psalm 22:

“My foes surround me…They encircle us from all sides…like a lion…lurking in ambush.”

A modern text said it differently:

Trying to make some sense of it all,
But I can see it makes no sense at all.
Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor?
'Cause I don't think that I can take anymore.

Anyone know what comes next?

Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right,
Here I am stuck in the middle with you.²

For us the lyrics need updating:

Antisemites to the left of me,
Antisemites to the right,
Here I am stuck in the middle with Jews.

After decades of knowing in our bones we were accepted here, suddenly, in the course of a year, it feels like the foundation upon which we stood tall and proud in America has crumbled. It isn’t that we didn’t know antisemitism was on the rise. We did. The ADL has been sounding that alarm with real-world documentation and Rabbi Buchdahl highlighted the problem on Rosh Hashanah in 2018. But this year was different. This year, antisemitism went from a news story to our story.

I’ve heard it from so many of you: marginalization in the workplace, fear of wearing Jewish symbols in public, children subjected to overt and implicit prejudice by morally confused teachers, university students forced from campuses, one-time friends suddenly distant or even hostile. And so many moments that sent chills down our spines: Synagogues threatened, Christian Nationalists imposing their religion in the public sphere, Jews assaulted on the street, targeted on subways, homes and businesses vandalized.

Where once we felt part of America, we now feel like the space where we are welcome has dwindled to a knife’s edge. We are being squeezed into a shrinking middle.

How has this happened? What we are realizing is that antisemitism is being fueled by something larger. Extremism. And it poses a danger, not only to Jews, but to the entire American project.

From the fringes of the left and right, extremist ideas and ideologies are borrowing from each other creating fanatical feedback loops. Who knew we would ever live in a moment where Iran’s Ayatollah would stand in solidarity with progressive Columbia students?³ The right- and left-wing fringes are capturing more and more of mainstream America because today’s extremism has been packaged in reasonable language and given credentialed mouthpieces. Brett Stephens was spot on when he recently wrote, “few people are more dangerous than educated bigots.”⁴ That is who we face - educated extremists: professors, school teachers, politicians, judges, justices, lawyers, journalists, and people in think tanks whispering policy proposals. This year has been like a shofar calling us to open our eyes and act.

The Jewish community needs to push back against extremism and antisemitism no matter the mouthpiece. But first we have to take a look at where it lives in our own heads and hearts.

The famed Israeli author Amos Oz believed that contending with extremism was the pressing work of our time, but first required us to, “handle the little fanatic who hides inside each of our souls.”⁵

Luckily, Judaism was designed for this task. The Judaism we practice was forged by the ancient rabbinic sages. They were highly suspicious of extremism, having lived when fanatical Jewish sectarians were willing to die and kill for dominance. These sages taught that the destruction of Jerusalem was caused by political and religious extremism. In reaction, Rabbinic Judaism built in these guardrails against zealotry:

• Judaism demands nuance and critical thought, while extremists demand black-and-white thinking.

• Judaism acknowledges more than one righteous path, extremists acknowledge no path but their own.

• Judaism recognizes the need to compromise since we are not yet living in a perfected world, extremists believe to get to the perfected world there can be no compromising.

• Judaism is suspicious of power, extremists grab power.

• Jews believe that societal improvement is the gradual work of generations. Extremists believe that societal improvement requires burning this world down to reshape it by any means necessary.

Despite the fact that Judaism was built to withstand fanatical impulses, there are nevertheless some American Jewish extremists. But that is a reflection of living in American society, not a reflection of Judaism. If we are honest, each of us has permitted some space in our hearts for extremism. I’m not saying most of us ARE extremists. But I am saying it would be impossible to live in America in 2024 without some extremist tendencies rubbing off on us.

Because this is the season of inner-accounting or cheshbon hanefesh, I have created a shortened version of an extremist self-evaluation.

We can ask ourselves:

Do we get our news primarily from one source, and is that source social media?
Do we mostly socialize with people who agree with our viewpoints?
Have we questioned someone's commitment to a cause because they called for compromise?
Have we felt there were no common values with the “other side”?
Have we, at some point in the past year, joked about, excused or justified political violence in the U.S.?

Checking our inner-fanatic and curbing its influence over our heart and mind will require inner-vigilance. American society is pulling us toward extremes. But we can lean on our tradition and each other to do this work.

We’ve said it before, and it remains true now, Central is stronger because we do not all think alike. When we respectfully disagree with one another, when we risk the hard conversations, when we challenge our own convictions, we lean on Jewish traditions that have preserved our people for centuries.

You should know that your clergy do this. This year we’ve had passionate and healthy disagreements about how to keep the Jewish community resilient, safe, and big hearted. We’ve experienced how working through our disagreements, finding common ground, compromising, and challenging each other naturally curbs self-righteousness and stridency.

There is another piece of internal Jewish work that this moment calls us to take on.

We have to stop excusing our own side. The fault line in the Jewish community cannot be from left to right. The Israeli foreign policy expert, Yair Zivan, points out that the most salient political spectrum of this moment is the spectrum from centrist to extremist.⁶ If history has shown us anything, it is that when fanatics take control, there is no home for the Jew. Left-wing Stalinists and Right-wing Fascists butchered Jews en-masse in the 20th century, and they didn’t ask the Jews about party affiliations before pulling a trigger. Once we accept that our enemy is fanaticism found within any political position, we can turn to the external extremism that threatens Jews and America.

The major work of this moment is twofold: pushing fanatics back to the fringes of society. Then putting our energy into rebuilding the alliance of the moral middle in America.

Here is the good news. We’ve done this before.

Isn’t that so Jewish. The good news is that we’ve faced virulent antisemitism in the past.

But, it is good news. We know what to do. We have a playbook.

In the first decades of the 20th century America experienced a confluence of ideological extremism and religious fanaticism that created a tidal wave of antisemitism.⁷ That extremism posed a similar threat to American democracy.⁸

In response, Jewish leaders recognized that the threat couldn’t be met by individual communities or balkanized streams of Judaism. These visionaries conceived and created national organizations that encompassed all American Jews. They had focused missions devoted to combating antisemitism while simultaneously forming deep and enduring relationships with our neighbors. You’ve heard of some of them. American Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Community Relations Councils, among others.

If history has a lesson for us, it is this (and it is a controversial one for our congregation): Central Synagogue can’t do this alone. Don’t worry, neither can KJ or Park Ave.

If we are going to face the menace of this moment, it will only be through a unified American Jewry. We will need to leave our religious differences in shul and our political differences at the ballot box.

This path isn’t easy. Organizations will need to align on how best to deploy limited resources. But if we can unite behind organizations, if they truly speak for most of us, if we can synchronize their work, then we can combat the extremism and antisemitism we see in school rooms and newsrooms, in judicial opinions and communities of faith, in lecture halls and the halls of government.

If we feel stuck in the dwindling middle, then the other project of the American Jewish community is to reestablish the “vital center”⁹ of the United States. I recognize centrism isn’t 2024’s hottest slogan. Centrism has not historically created the kind of “battle-cry that inspires us to do heroic feats.” But it may, as one inspired Jew wrote after World War II, “preserve the world.”¹⁰ Therefore, our appeal for a moral center and the values that gird American Democracy must be clarion and captivating. For Jews, rebuilding a centrist America is not an intellectual exercise.¹¹ It is an existential task.

Centrism isn’t the middle ground and it isn’t neutrality. It isn’t as Zivan said, “a compromise between wherever the extremes happen to be dragging society.” Centrism has core convictions. It stands for needed and necessary values. Centrists champion decency and civility. Centrists leave room for doubt which means we embrace nuance and complexity. Centrists believe you can compromise without being compromised. Centrists respect factual discourse and intellectual freedom. We value pragmatism. Rabbi Rubinstein expressed this by saying, “I would rather be effective than right.

Centrists believe democracy and the institutions that bolster it are the greatest tools ever created to help diverse peoples live together and all flourish. Vitally, Centrists know that there is such a thing as the common good, and it is worth more than “our side” winning at all costs. We must foster a new generation of prophets and poets, disciples of assertive centrism. These are the values around which we can build a strong vibrant moral middle in America.¹²

In addition to aligning our American Jewish Institutions, there are secular organizations devoted to these tasks. I’ll post a list of them in the text of this sermon so you can get involved whether you’re here in the congregation, or streaming at home. While our Jewish communal institutions work nationally, these organizations are already making a difference neighborhood by neighborhood. Citizenship demands something of us every day, not just on election day. We will live in the kind of society we demand.

Jews, at our best, think beyond the scope of news cycles and election cycles. If we wish to preserve the greatest Diaspora community in our people’s long march through time, the work of weaving American society back together must be our focus for the next decade. Illiberalism and fanaticism may be in vogue,¹³ but they are not where American hearts lie.¹⁴

The extremists want to forget, but we remember the promise and possibility of this land. It was summed up beautifully by President Lyndon B. Johnson, “Working shoulder to shoulder…we can increase the bounty of all…the day and the time are here to achieve progress without strife, to achieve change without hatred; not without difference of opinion but without the deep and abiding divisions which scar the union for generations.”¹⁵ That American promise is still alive. We are not as alone as we feel. This year we begin reestablishing the moral middle of America.

Put another way, let’s sing this tune instead:

Extremists to the left of me.
Extremists to the right.
Here I am building the center with you.

¹ Leon Trotsky, ‘Hitler’s Victory’, Manchester Guardian, 22 March 1933, pp. 11-12 at p. 11, reprinted in Writings of Leon Trotsky (1932-1933), ed. George Breitman and Sarah Lovell (New York, 1972), pp. 133-6 at p. 134 as adapted by Isaiah Berlin.
²Stealers Wheel. (1973). Stuck in the Middle with You. A&M (recorded 1972).
³Iran Supreme Leader praises US college students for protests (usatoday.com)
⁴Opinion | The Year American Jews Woke Up - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
⁵Amos Oz - Dear Zealots
⁶Yair Zivan - The Center Must Hold: Why Centrism is the Answer to Extremism and Polarization
⁷Naomi W. Cohen - Jews in Christian America.
Leo P. Ribuffo - Henry Ford and the International Jew in The American Jewish Experience.
Steven Windmueller - “Defenders”: National Jewish Community Relations Agencies in Jewish Polity and American Civil Society.
⁸https://www.newyorker.com/maga...
⁹Arthur Schlessinger Jr. - The Vital Center
¹⁰Isaiah Berlin - The Crooked Timber of Humanity
¹¹Martha Nussbaum - Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice
¹²The Center Must Hold - The Atlantic
¹³Aurelian Craiutu - The “Vital Center” As a Face of Moderation in The Center Must Hold.
¹⁴Kathryn Murdoch - Centrism in a World of Extremes in The Center Must Hold.
¹⁵The President’s Inaugural Address, January 20, 1965 (lbjlibrary.org)

Bibliography

Books:

The Crooked Timber of Humanity - Isaiah Berlin
Freedom and Its Betrayal - Isaiah Berlin
Liberty - Isaiah Berlin
Jews in Christian America: The Pursuit of Religious Equality - Naomi W. Cohen
Liberalism and Its Discontents - Francis Fukuyama
The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy - Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry
Democracy and Solidarity - James Davison Hunter
The Identity Trap - Yascha Mounk
Dear Zealots - Amos Oz
Political Emotions - Martha Nussbaum
The Vital Center : Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
The Center Must Hold: Why Centrism is the Answer to Extremism and Polarization - edited Yair Zivan

Articles and Podcasts:

Democracyprinciples.org
“Defenders”: National Jewish Community Relations Agencies, in Jewish Polity and American Civil Society - Steven
Windmueller
The Center Must Hold - The Atlantic - Yair Zivan
A More Perfect Union (hartman.org.il) - Yehuda Kurtzer and Aaron Dorfman
Our Golden Age (hartman.org.il) - Yehuda Kurtzer
October 7 Created a Permission Structure for Anti-Semitism - The Atlantic - Dara Horn
The Anti-Semitic Revolution on the American Right - The Atlantic - Yair Rosenberg
Even Time at Harvard Hasn’t Led Me to Give Up on America - WSJ - Rabbi David Wolpe
My Year at Harvard (jewishjournal.com) - Rabbi David Wolpe
Trump Is Suddenly Worried About Anti-Semitism - The Atlantic - Yair Rosenberg
Opinion | The Year American Jews Woke Up - The New York Times (nytimes.com) - Bret Stephens
U.S. Supreme Court reform requires learning from other countries (slate.com) - Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella
How the Constitution Can Bring Us Together (with Yuval Levin) | EconTalk - Yuval Levin and Russ Roberts
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/03/the-last-time-democracy-almost-died

The list of organizations below is not comprehensive. It comes from James Davison Hunter PhD, with the exception of the first organization added by Rabbi Lorge.

A More Perfect Union
Weave: The Social Fabric Project
AllSides
Better Arguments Project
Braver Angels
Bridge Alliance
Bridging Divides Initiative
In This Together
American Public Square
More in Common
Center for Deliberative Democracy
Living Room Conversations
National Institute for Civil Discourse