The New Resistance

Last updated on: January 2, 2017 at 3:53 pm by Jeffrey L. Falick

The New Resistance 2017-01-02T15:53:04-05:00 Jeffrey L. Falick

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It was back in August that I blogged here for the last time. I wrote about the Jewish community’s reaction to the Movement for Black Lives after publication of a platform critical of Israel.

Then the campaign ramped up and I just gave up on blogging. What more could I add to the national discourse? What did I have to say that thousands hadn’t said already?

This is the frustration of blogging. It provides evidence of Kohelet’s (Ecclesiastes’) proverb that there is nothing new under the sun.

Except there is. And in a few weeks we will witness proof of this as we inaugurate an ill-prepared, thin-skinned, petulant narcissist as president of the United States. That’s not happened before under a U.S. sun.

I’m very proud that the American Jewish community opposed his election by such large numbers. But I’m also ashamed of those in my community who have vocally supported him. On the other hand, they do provide some pretty good substantiation for my assertion that there is no such thing as a uniquely Jewish value system. You can’t support a man with Trump’s values and say that you share a set of values with me and the 71% of Jews who opposed him.

Humanists and Humanistic Jews opposed him in much larger numbers. It would be unprofessional for me to comment on any specific member(s) of my own congregation who may have supported him, but I can pretty confidently assert that it amounted to less than one percent. That’s probably because Humanists and Humanistic Jews actually do share a set of values.

We have less than three weeks to go until the new reality descends on us, or more accurately, until it falls on us like twenty tons of bricks.

Last week I attended an event of Detroit Jews for Justice at which the group’s leader, Rabbi Alana Alpert, noted that if we were a protest movement before, we must become a resistance movement now.

I’ll try to blog here more often. I’m still not sure whether my lone voice makes any difference. But I hope (I have to continue to hope) that when many of us join our voices in true resistance, it really can make a difference.

I hope you will join me in the resistance.

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