ABORT THE COURT! In Honor of Tikvah Trumpscum Sephardi-hater Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Your Catholic Fascist Vision of America is Being Realized by Your Friends Pornographer Thomas, Rapist Kavanaugh, Whore of Trump Coney Barrett, and the Rest of the Trumpscum SCOTUS
David Shasha
Roe Overturned
By: R. R. Reno
Today the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The first thing to say is “Praise the Lord.” We should be grateful for his providential governance, which will not abandon us to evil.
The second thing to say is “Thanks.” We owe a debt of gratitude to Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, who were fierce in their dissents in Casey and unflagging in their insistence that the abortion license is not protected by our Constitution and is a great evil. We need to thank the founders and leaders of the Federalist Society, which provided an ongoing forum for legal scholars to debate and perfect the judicial reasoning that led to this decision. And we need to thank the many thousands, indeed, millions of Americans who refused to make a false peace with our abortion regime. They joined protests, said prayers, sent donations, voted in elections, and lobbied legislators for nearly five decades. That labor has not been in vain.
The third thing to say is that we are turning a corner. By overruling Roe, the Court has done the country a great service. We are relieved of the scandal—moral, legal, and political—that was the Roe/Casey order, under which our most fundamental law was interpreted as endorsing a right to kill the unborn. All of us are now able to affirm our constitutional regime with greater confidence in its integrity.
The Court is also pointing us toward a restoration of democracy. Roe was decided in 1973. It came in the aftermath of Richard Nixon’s landslide election in November 1972. The huge margin of Nixon’s victory reflected a stunning repudiation of liberal-elite leadership in the late 1960s. Those elites did not respond by adjusting. Rather, they did an end-run. Roe was among the many measures (which included Nixon’s impeachment) that leadership took to nullify the election and reassert control over American society—a “usurpation of democracy,” as this publication famously put it in a symposium in 1996. The “End of Democracy?” symposium looked back at more than two decades of judicial activism that sought to overthrow the moral order that had long obtained in America.
The Dobbs decision has an immediate effect. Most importantly, it saves lives in states that seek to limit or forbid abortion. Politically, it undermines elite control over social policy in the United States. In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas observes: “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” These cases have undergirded the elite-driven sexual revolution. Thomas is right. It’s past time to put an end to the capture of our Constitution by those who insist that sexual freedom is a great moral imperative.
Our society is polarized. To a significant degree, this has happened because of decisions like Roe. A relatively small minority of “progressive” elites have for far too long enjoyed privileged access to the power of law. They have used this power to achieve their ends, such as gay marriage, without entering into the political process to persuade their fellow citizens. They have also used legal power to destroy their opponents, as Colorado baker Jack Phillips can testify.
After Dobbs, those who believe that women cannot live free and full lives without a right to terminate the lives of their unborn children will have to make their case in public. Because they are so extreme, I don’t think they will succeed. In anticipation of the overturning of Roe, the Democratic-controlled legislature in California has declared the state a “legal sanctuary for reproductive choice” and proposes to pay for abortions for women who come from out of state. It will be interesting to see how voters respond to politicians who give greater priority to promoting unrestricted access to abortion than to addressing rising crime and homelessness.
For too long, progressives have been able to hide the costs of their politics from voters. They have been able to rely upon their capture of the rule of law to secure their aims. This has masked the fact that they care more about ensuring that a woman can have her child killed just before birth than about the more than 100,000 people who died last year of heroin overdose—or the inner-city kid condemned to dysfunctional schools, or the middle-class Midwesterner whose wages have stagnated for decades.
I applaud the courage of Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, who signed the opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito that overturned Roe. They have served the cause of life—and democracy. Well done.
R. R. Reno is editor of First Things.
From First Things, June 24, 2022
You may have never heard of Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, but eventually you will. Here's why
By: Kelsey Dallas
Ask Rabbi Meir Soloveichik about his congregation, and he'll tell you about 23, 17th-century Jews who can thank pirates and the French for landing in New York. Ask him about religious freedom, and he'll tell you about the Revolutionary War.
Historical references, as well as references to The Simpsons, Monty Python and the scriptures, come easily to the rabbi, who rarely comments on the world today without mentioning the past.
"We're only in 1730," he said, already 20 minutes into answering a question about his congregation's beautiful synagogue on the western border of Central Park.
Rabbi Soloveichik, 40, stands out because of his sense of history. But the decision to award him the 2018 Canterbury Medal, an honor given to someone who advances the cause of conscience rights, has more to do with his future potential, according to Bill Mumma, CEO and board chairman of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which sponsors the annual award.
"He's young and he's in a leadership role," Mumma said. "We can see him playing a stronger and stronger role outside of the Jewish community in the fight for religious liberty."
Already, Rabbi Soloveichik has testified before Congress on behalf of religious employers opposed to providing contraceptive coverage for their employees. He's spoken with the Trump administration about their policies on Israel. He offered the opening prayer at the 2012 Republican National Convention.
In spite of this impressive resume, many colleagues and friends say his best work is yet to come.
Rabbi Soloveichik has little interest in discussing why his star is on the rise. When asked about his Canterbury Medal, he focuses on the work of Becket, rather than himself.
"It is one of the great honors of my life to be affiliated with what Becket does," he said. Past Canterbury medalists include now-President Dallin H. Oaks, first counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mitt and Ann Romney, and Robert George, a legal scholar whom the rabbi describes as a mentor.
Rabbi Soloveichik, who comes from the most prominent family in modern Orthodox Judaism, grew up in Chicago and attended Yeshiva University in New York. He holds a Ph.D from Princeton University and has also taken several classes at Yale Divinity School, seeking to learn more about Christianity.
The rabbi has led Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in North America, for the past five years. He also directs the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, where he helps Jews connect their faith to other sources of wisdom, like philosophy and art. He and his wife, Layaliza, have six kids.
His typical week includes a mix of formal functions, congregational gatherings, worship services and lots of caffeine.
"Life is crazy. It's frenzied. But the blessing is that I love everything I do," he said.
The Deseret News met with Rabbi Soloveichik this week to discuss his busy life, the recent U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem and his approach to religious freedom. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Deseret News: Why are you passionate about religious freedom?
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: I feel that the Jewish story in America is a unique tale of the benefits of religious liberty.
And I believe — and this is the important part — that because Jews have been so blessed by religious liberty in America, we have an obligation as Jews and as Americans to fight for it on behalf of others and to ensure the perpetuation of the American idea of religious liberty.
There's a Jewish expression, a phrase, called "hakarot hatov." It means the recognition of the good. It means that when somebody does a good thing for you, you have to feel gratitude and show gratitude.
Jews show hakarot hatov to America by fighting for and preserving what makes America unique. Religious liberty is at the core of the American worldview.
To the extent that I've taken positions and fought for things, they weren't always things that impacted the Jewish community directly. I believe we have to fight for the religious liberty of everyone. That's why I love Becket: that's what they do.
DN: Is it getting harder to fight for and preserve religious freedom?
MS: In the past decade, it's become a central issue of political debate. I certainly wish that wasn't so. I wish everyone embraced religious liberty.
In the early 1990s, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed almost unanimously. That would not happen today, unfortunately. Religious liberty is caught up in public debate and disagreement.
DN: What caused this shift?
MS: We've become a more divided country around a lot of things related to faith. For example, religion's place in the public square has been the subject of massive debate.
Polls show the divisions between traditionally religious and secular Americans are growing. One of the ways that's reflected is in the area of religious liberty.
DN: Becket's most recent Supreme Court cases illustrate the various concerns that fit under the broad category of religious freedom. For example, in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., Becket argued on behalf of corporation leaders who, for religious reasons, did not want to pay for contraception coverage for their employees.
Are all religious freedom fights created equal?
MS: What I love about Becket is precisely that they fight for the religious freedom of all Americans. They fight for the rights of the Little Sisters of the Poor, of the Muslim prisoner not to have to shave his beard and of a Sikh who wants to wear his turban while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. These cases show the true mosaic of faith that is America.
Some cases are more controversial and some are less controversial. I don't see the underlying issues as being different. They become different for some when they get connected to the culture wars.
But for Becket, these are all issues of religious freedom. We need to believe and fight for religious freedom for everyone.
DN: Are you comfortable getting caught up in the more controversial cases?
MS: I don't look for controversy. I do take stands when I think it's important to enunciate certain principles.
At the times when I've done that, I'm proud of it. I'm proud because I see it as a form of Jewish gratitude to America. I'm proud because I feel that I'm giving to America what America has given to us.
At times, you get caught in the maelstrom. You can get swept up. And it's hard.
I testified in Congress regarding the (Affordable Care Act's contraception) mandate, which I thought was a threat to religious liberty because of how it was being applied at the time.
But the mandate was caught up in the election, even if, for me, it wasn't an issue relating to politics. It was an issue relating to religious liberty.
Unfortunately, religious liberty has become a political issue. I would prefer it not be. I think Becket would also prefer it not be. We'd prefer that religious liberty be a source of unity, not division.
DN: Like religious freedom battles in general, the status of Israel and control of Jerusalem are growing more contentious. Are you surprised by the tension and violence surrounding the U.S. embassy's move to Jerusalem?
MS: I’m not surprised by it because criticisms of Israel have been going on for a long time. And violence in the Middle East is something that's been going on for a long time.
But I still celebrate this moment. This is something that should not be, in my view, linked to what one thinks about domestic policy and about politics.
In my view, when the president of the United States recognizes the Jewish right to Jerusalem, that should be a source of rejoicing and of gratitude for all Jews.
DN: In general, are you pleased with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence's approach to religious freedom?
MS: Absolutely. I was certainly delighted to hear of their decision to alter the contraception mandate to obviate religious liberty concerns.
I've been delighted as well with many of the vice president's speeches. I attended his speech at the Knesset (in January) where he wasn't just speaking for himself. He was speaking for tens of millions of Christians in American who feel the same way about Israel as he does.
That's remarkable. This age in which we live is the first time in Jewish history where there are tens of millions of non-Jews who care passionately about the wellbeing of the state of Israel. I see that in the evangelical community, of which the vice president is a representative example.
I've also journeyed to Israel with LDS Church leadership and seen that with them.
To me, that's incredibly emotional.
DN: But anti-Semitism is also on the rise in the age in which we live. How does this trend affect your community?
MS: For anti-Semitism in America, I don’t know if it’s actually rising. I do know that social media allows for the expression of hate in a variety of new ways. It allows some of the most hateful things to be said with the cloak of anonymity.
In Europe, there is no question that anti-Semitism is a terrible problem. And my community and the entire Jewish community in America looks with great dismay at what’s happening. (Jews in Europe) face real religious liberty issues.
To some extent, threats to religious liberty in America recently have affected members of other faiths more than Jews. But I've spoken up because it's important to me. If we allow one faith to be threatened, that will come to threaten us, as well.
DN: One of the reasons Becket chose you as this year's Canterbury medalist is your commitment to interfaith cooperation. As you noted, you've met with LDS leaders and spoken up to defend other faiths. Why do interfaith friendships matter to you?
MS: The form of interfaith engagement that I practice, which is guided by the practices of my great uncle, Joseph Soloveitchik (whose last name is spelled differently) before me, is one that recognizes that all faiths have matters of great significance about which they disagree.
We don't relativize or do away with those differences. At the same time, we recognize that there are profound things that we share.
We live in a society in which many people reject the idea of a capital-T "Truth." So our shared belief that there's truth out there to be sought bonds us together. We can learn from each other.
DN: When you talk about why you do the work that you do, you often say "as a Jew and as an American." Why do you use that phrasing?
MS: The heart of the American idea is a recognition that, for believers, our faith is the most important thing to us. And that to ask a person of faith to shed their religious identity as a price for participating (in the public square) would be to ask them to amputate the most central part of their souls.
So for a Jew to say that his Judaism or for a Catholic to say that his Catholicism or for a Mormon to say that his Mormonism is the most central part of himself is actually a very American thing to say. The American approach to religious freedom recognizes how central faith is to believers.
So when I say '"as a Jew and as an American," I mean first that my Jewishness and my adherence to Judaism is the most central aspect of my identity. But that's not in tension with my identity as an American.
I'm also referring to the story of Jews in America, which inspires my passion for religious liberty.
DN: What are you doing to make religious freedom a source of unity again?
MS: I don’t know whether religious freedom will become less of a political issue. I would love for it to become less of one, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen anytime soon.
My role is not a political role. My role is to defend religious liberty and speak up for religious liberty. I don't see what I do in this respect as political.
For me, religious liberty is an American issue. It's not a political issue.
DN: Speaking of your role, you wear a lot of different hats. You're a congregational leader, a teacher, a father, a religious freedom advocate and, sometimes, a guest at the White House. How do you manage to do all of that?
MS: It's a real blessing to do things that you love, whether that’s teaching, communal work, building an academic center or engaging in the public square for causes that you believe in.
If you love the work, and it corresponds to your talents, that’s a great blessing.
One of my favorite movies is "Chariots of Fire," and one of my favorite lines from it is from the Christian runner, who is training for the Olympics. He's a missionary.
His sister asks why he's training for the Olympics. She thinks it's a waste of time and a
distraction from his important missionary work.
He says he believes God made him to serve a purpose through his missionary work, but that he also made him fast. He says that when he runs, he feels God's pleasure. He's not using his talents for self-glorification.
God did not make me fast. I don't have athletic ability.
But what I love about the quote is that it says the greatest blessing is to feel that you're using the talents God has given you. That's the feeling of fulfillment you get in a frenzied life.
Since 2013, Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik has been the rabbi at Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City, which is the oldest Jewish congregation in the U.S. He is the 2018 Canterbury Medalist, an honor given each year to a prominent person who has fought for religious freedoms.
From Deseret News (Utah), May 17. 2018
Tikvah Fund Values: Religious Radicals Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and Senator Mike Lee at The Hoover Institute
It has become quite clear that Rabbi Meir Soloveichik has proudly embraced Right Wing Evangelical Christian values in the larger framework of his very aggressive Conservative political advocacy.
We continue to see us how deeply entrenched he is in the world of the religious extremists:
Here is the on-line synopsis of his Hoover Institute program with Utah Senator Mike Lee, entitled "Church, Synagogue, And State" – On Religion And American Government:
Today, Americans are generally taught to think about the "separation of church and state." But this is only one part of the Nation's story. And to focus exclusively on this "separation" risks missing the crucial contributions that religious belief and religious believers - including Judaism and Jewish Americans - have made to the American founding.
Last year, in a speech criticizing those who would invoke religion as a barrier to government office, Senator Mike Lee invoked Jonas Phillips, "a penniless Jewish immigrant, an indentured servant, a hard-working businessman, and an American patriot who served in the Philadelphia Militia during the Revolutionary War," who urged George Washington and the framers not to allow religious tests for public office.
Many years after Phillips's successful plea, Phillips's grandson, Uriah Levy, purchased Monticello from Thomas Jefferson's descendants, helping to preserve this part of America's founding heritage-an account recalled recently by Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. Rabbi Soloveichik further explores these themes in "Jewish Ideas and the American Founders," a new online course presented by the Tikvah Fund.
The Hoover Institution is honored to host both Senator Lee and Rabbi Soloveichik for a discussion of the proper relationship between religion and American government, and the contributions that biblical ideas have made to American political thought.
Senator Mike Lee is a United States Senator from the State of Utah.
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik is Rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City, the oldest congregation in the United States; he is the director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University.
The discussion will be moderated by Adam White, a Hoover Institution research fellow. This is part of Hoover's DC speaker series, Opening Arguments: Conversations on American Constitutionalism.
Special thanks to the Tikvah Fund for collaborating with us on this event.
I have already presented a critical reading of Soloveichik’s WSJ article on Jonas Phillips that is at the center of the discussion:
And a follow-up – just for good measure:
Soloveichik has very deftly obscured the Sephardic element in early American Jewish history as he repeatedly seeks to promote a markedly Ashkenazi-centric agenda, reminiscent of the work of Jonathan Sarna and Rabbi Zev Eleff:
The Right Wing think-tank Claremont Institute published an article on Soloveichik’s view of America and Judaism written by Elliot Kaufman that shows us the connection between the religious radicals and the Orthodox rabbi:
https://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/your-god-is-our-god/
Here is the complete article, entitled “Your God is Our God”:
“The story of the West,” explains Meir Soloveichik, rabbi of New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel and director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, “is as much indebted to Jerusalem as it is to Athens.” In his newest online course, a series of lectures on Jewish Ideas and the American Founding produced by the Tikvah Fund, Soloveichik effectively and energetically elaborates America’s unique and exceptional relationship with the Jews.
Having taken this course online as well as in person, I can report that the online iteration is crisper, more organized, and more accessible for non-Jews. Anyone interested in the American vision of religious liberty and the impact of Hebrew scripture on the founders will find much to learn and admire.
The Tikvah Fund divided this lecture series into eight one-hour videos. In each, Soloveichik’s lecture is interspersed with one-on-one conversations with the Tikvah Fund’s Jonathan Silver, whose questions bring out Soloveichik’s edifying best. The lectures are untraditional, and better for it. Each one tells a story more than it covers a topic. Soloveichik begins by introducing us to Jonas Phillips, “the most important American Jew you’ve never heard of.” In 1787, Phillips complained to George Washington that the Pennsylvania state legislature’s mandatory Christian oath precluded Jews from serving. A patriot himself, Phillips argued that “The Jews have been true and faithful whigs…have bravely faught and bleed for liberty which they can not enjoy.” Phillips captured the essence of American exceptionalism on religious liberty: unless the Jews could participate in public life without foreswearing their faith, they had neither religious liberty nor the full privileges of American citizenship. Instead of having to check their Judaism at the door, Jews would contribute their unique ideas and practices for the benefit of their fellow Americans.
Jews were tolerated in some of Europe’s more enlightened nations, where religious minorities were allowed “freedom of worship.” They could not, however, bring their faith into the public square. America, Soloveichik explains, walked a different path. Since the Constitution banned religious tests for national officeholders, religious minorities were recognized and accepted as part of the national fabric. Writing to Newport, Rhode Island’s Jewish community in 1790, George Washington noted that “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”
America established religious freedom not as a compromise to keep the peace, or a sop to minority groups, but as a requirement of a just society. Backed by the Constitution, Washington promised Jews such as Jonas Phillips that they would find in America the freedom to be both full citizens and fully Jewish. America kept that promise, but only in part because of the Constitutional guarantees. The American people, whose basic affection for the Biblical Israelites, Hebrew scripture, and the Jews themselves has been unparalleled, did much of the heavy lifting.
Above all, the American message to the Jews has been, “Your story is our story and your God is our God.” Soloveichik’s lecture on the proposed official seals of the United States hammers this point home: Benjamin Franklin suggested a picture of Moses extending his hand as the Red Sea overwhelms Pharaoh and his army. Underneath lies his caption: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” Franklin’s seal performs a sort of “transference,” whereby a Jewish story is universalized into a teaching about the rights of man, secured under God in emancipation from tyranny.
Thomas Paine carried this further, borrowing from one stream of the Jewish rabbinic tradition to argue that serving an earthly king is idolatrous. “But where says some is the King of America?” writes Paine in Common Sense, “I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above.” For such a short course, the lecture on Paine lingered too long on the rabbinic intricacies. But the larger point emerged all the same: we are only free when God is our king, and when He guarantees our universal rights above the dictates of human governments, as He did for the Jews in Egypt.
Jefferson’s recommendation for a seal, however, offers a different teaching. His seal pictures the Israelites trekking through the wilderness, after they have defeated Pharaoh. Rather than focusing on the emancipation, this emphasizes the journey that followed: to Sinai for the Law, and to the Holy Land for self-governance. The message, Soloveichik explains, is that we need freedom not for its own sake, but to achieve a destiny. By looking to Hebrew Scripture, two eminent American Founders teach us that our freedom, established and safeguarded by placing God over man, implores us to embark upon the difficult, disciplining journey to a higher end. “Taken together,” we are told, “they give us a political theology of freedom.”
It would be interesting to have heard more here from Harvard’s Eric Nelson, whose book The Hebrew Republic is often cited in lectures but rarely explored. Viewers who wish to continue their education on this topic―and many will―may consider turning there or to the publications of the Herzl Institute, the latest of which revives John Selden, England’s great Christian Hebraist, to explore the effect of Jewish ideas on Western political thought.
More than anything, Soloveichik’s eight-hour course left me with a deep appreciation for America and what it has done for the Jews―not as a favor, but out of a conviction that gets to the heart of what America was founded to be. A different viewer might well come away with the same appreciation, but for what the Jews have done for America. Anyone who thinks the unique U.S. support for Israel can be traced to mere lobbying will be made to reconsider. After all, we learn that in 1819, over 75 years before Herzl published The Jewish State, John Adams wrote to a Jewish correspondent, “I could find it in my heart to wish that you had been at the head of a hundred thousand Israelites indeed as well discipin’d as a French Army & marching with them into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the domination of it―For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.”
As George W. Bush told the Israeli Knesset upon the Jewish State’s 60th anniversary, “The source of our friendship runs deeper than any treaty. It is grounded in the shared spirit of our people: the bonds of the Book, the ties of the soul.” For an immersion into these ties and the exceptional relationship they have produced, turn to Meir Soloveichik and his new course for the Tikvah Fund.
Rather than espouse the value of Religious Freedom as the right to be free of religion and religious tests, as was the case with Jonas Phillips and his demand to practice Judaism and not Christianity, Soloveichik and his supporters like Kaufman seem to have gotten a very different lesson which elevates religion as a requirement for Americans:
The message, Soloveichik explains, is that we need freedom not for its own sake, but to achieve a destiny. By looking to Hebrew Scripture, two eminent American Founders teach us that our freedom, established and safeguarded by placing God over man, implores us to embark upon the difficult, disciplining journey to a higher end. “Taken together,” we are told, “they give us a political theology of freedom.”
Is this form of religion identical to Christianity, or is it something different?
And what is this “destiny” that undergirds our “freedom”?
The confusion here is over whether Americans are required to be religious and if Jews are to espouse Jesus Christ as God; the very issue that Jonas Phillips was fighting against.
The idea here seems to be to promote religion and not to leave religion to individual conscience; leaving the door open to asserting the base political demands of the Evangelical Christians.
We have recently seen how this has played out with the aggressive push from Jewish Conservatives on the Hobby Lobby Bible museum:
Here again, we see the prominent role played by The Tikvah Fund and its publishing wing Mosaic magazine.
The presentation of religion in the synopsis to the Hoover program with Senator Lee puts it in the following manner:
Today, Americans are generally taught to think about the "separation of church and state." But this is only one part of the Nation's story. And to focus exclusively on this "separation" risks missing the crucial contributions that religious belief and religious believers - including Judaism and Jewish Americans - have made to the American founding.
Last year, in a speech criticizing those who would invoke religion as a barrier to government office, Senator Mike Lee invoked Jonas Phillips, "a penniless Jewish immigrant, an indentured servant, a hard-working businessman, and an American patriot who served in the Philadelphia Militia during the Revolutionary War," who urged George Washington and the framers not to allow religious tests for public office.
Lee has been brazenly peddling his fundamentalist religious values in the public square, as we can see in the text of the speech he gave in the well of the Senate:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/20822/watch-sen-mike-lee-gives-incredible-speech-against-frank-camp
Here is the full text of the speech which very cleverly sought to defend the intrusive Christian role in government and attack those who wish to separate religion from politics:
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about the fascinating men and women of America’s Founding Generation. I want to share with you one of their stories.
Jonas Phillips was a penniless Jewish immigrant, an indentured servant, a hard-working businessman, and an American patriot who served in the Philadelphia Militia during the Revolutionary War. During the British occupation of New York, he snuck messages past the censors by writing in Yiddish.
Years later, Phillips addressed a letter to George Washington and the delegates at the Constitutional Convention.
He urged them not to include a religious test in the Constitution as a requirement for public service, because no man, he wrote, should be “deprived or abridged of any Civil Right as a Citizen on account of his Religious sentiments.”
Jonas Phillips wrote this letter because Pennsylvania, the state where he lived, required officials to swear that the New Testament was inspired by God. As a faithful Jew, Jonas Phillips could not do that.
“By the above law,” he wrote, “a Jew is deprived of holding any public office or place of government.”
Thankfully, Jonas Phillips’ letter, and Jonas Phillips’ prayer ultimately would be answered. Days earlier, the convention had voted unanimously to ban religious tests for federal office.
The language the Framers inserted into the Constitution was unequivocal: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
When the Founders wrote “ever,” they meant it.
I feel the need to stress this point because of the alarming behavior of some of my colleagues.
Yesterday, Notre Dame Law Professor Amy Coney Barrett came before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She had been nominated to be a circuit court judge. Her nomination has been endorsed by prominent legal scholars from across the political spectrum, including Neal Katyal, President Obama’s acting solicitor general.
Nonetheless, at Ms. Barrett’s confirmation hearing a number of my Democratic colleagues insinuated that her Catholic faith would prevent her from applying the law freely and fairly.
“Dogma and law are two different things,” remarked one of my colleagues. “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that’s a concern.”
Another of my colleagues even asked Ms. Barrett to confess her faith under oath. “What’s an ‘orthodox Catholic?’” this Committee member asked. “Do you consider yourself an ‘orthodox Catholic’?”
If these remarks had been some sort of bizarre aberration, I might have passed over them in polite silence. But I feel compelled to speak out because I see a pattern emerging. A pattern of hostility toward people of faith who come before this body.
Just a few months ago, another eminently qualified nominee, Russell Vought, appeared before the Budget Committee to be considered for a post at the Office of Management and Budget.
One of my Senate colleagues used his time to question the nominee, not about management or budgets, but about his evangelical Christian beliefs.
“In your judgment,” asked this senator, “do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned?”
Mr. Vought explained that he was an evangelical Christian and adhered to those beliefs. But that wasn’t good enough for his questioner, who later stated he would vote against Mr. Vought’s nomination because he was not “what this country is supposed to be about.”
These strange inquisitions have nothing to do with the nominees’ competency, patriotism, or ability to serve Americans of different faiths equally. In fact, they have little to do with this life at all. Instead they have to do with the afterlife. To my knowledge, the OMB and the Seventh Circuit have no jurisdiction over that.
This country is divided enough. Millions of Americans feel that Washington, D.C. and the dominant culture despise them. And how could they not, when they see their leaders sitting here, grilling patriotic citizens about their faith like inquisitors? How could they not feel like their values are not welcome in this chamber?
Religious freedom is of deep concern to me as a Mormon. My church has weathered extraordinary religious persecution, much of it sponsored by the government. The first Latter Day Saints were exiled from home after home. In 1838, the governor of Missouri ordered that Mormons be driven from the land or “exterminated.”
Our first leader, Joseph Smith, once said, “the civil magistrate . . . should punish guilt but never suppress the freedom of the soul.” That, of course, was before he was martyred by a bigoted mob.
Our country’s ban on religious tests is a strong bulwark for religious freedom. As an original provision of the Constitution, it predates even the Bill of Rights. . . and it applies not just to some religious adherents, but to all of them, equally.
The religious tests raised against Mr. Vought and Ms. Barrett do not favor one sect of Christian over another, as was sadly common for much of our nation’s history. Rather, they favor the secular, progressive creed clung to so confidently by the nation's ruling elites. This creed has its own clerics, its own dogmas, its own orthodoxy, and, as these nominees have discovered, it has its own heresies, too.
More and more, the adherents of this creed seek to use the power of government to steamroll disfavored groups—especially dissenters from their political dogmas.
So they force evangelical caterers to bake cakes celebrating same-sex marriages, as in the case that is before the Supreme Court now. And they force nuns to purchase contraceptive coverage. And sue religious hospitals that won’t perform abortions or sex-reassignment surgeries.
Yes, the secular, progressive creed has proven that it is capable of triumphalism and intolerance, just like the creeds that have gone before it. Not because its adherents are uniquely wicked . . . to the contrary: Because they are human.
There is a way out of this vicious cycle of religious intolerance, Mr. President. And that is for all of us to treat one another with civility and respect, while jealously defending the rights of conscience—for ourselves, our neighbors, and all our fellow citizens. For Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, and all others.
This body can do its part by supporting legislation like the First Amendment Defense Act and the Marriage and Religious Freedom Act, which would protect people who have conscience objections to recent cultural changes.
But at a minimum, this body can do its part by respecting the constitutional rights of citizens who come before it. Lest we forget, we work for them, not the other way around. I trust my colleagues, Republican, Democrat, and independent, will take this to heart. Because religious freedom puts all Americans on the same footing. It helps men and women stand upright, honest before the law—and before God.
We can see how Lee duplicitously deploys the Jonas Phillips example to help promote the radical Christian agenda against the formal separation of Church and State enshrined in the Constitution.
In this manner, the radical religious faction has sought to populate our public institutions with individuals who would impose their Christian values on our government and its laws and reject legal decisions coming from our judicial system.
It is worthwhile to note that the Kaufman Claremont article presents the figure of John Selden, a British Christian Hebraist who was recently the subject of a Tablet magazine profile that called him “Rabbi John Selden,” as it ignored the actual Sephardic Jews who played an important role in British pedagogical history:
Not surprisingly, Tablet magazine is another member of The Tikvah Fund publishing wing:
We can thus see how Kaufman is closely connected to the larger Tikvah Fund world, a radical political nexus that I have discussed many times:
The Tikvah Fund has been quite active in promoting Neo-Conservatism in the Jewish world:
We have recently seen how David Brooks and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks have figured into the very dangerous Right Wing political cabal:
Soloveichik, current leader of the formerly-Sephardic Congregation Shearith Israel, has proudly displayed his loyalty and devotion to Trump and his corrupt agenda:
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words:
https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2017/12/AP17342065547859.jpg
It would be hard to find a more loyal Trump supporter in the Jewish community than Soloveichik.
Rather than working to promote the classical Sephardic tradition in his position at Shearith Israel, Soloveichik has sought to strengthen his ties with the Christian extremists and to elevate the Ashkenazi tradition at our expense.
For Sephardim, The Tikvah Fund process is both baffling and deeply distressing, as we continue to be oppressed by the Ashkenazi radical agenda that seeks to dispossess us of our history and culture. But more than this, we see the ongoing fusion of Orthodox Jewish political values and the Right Wing Christian agenda.
As Sephardic history continues to be suppressed by Ashkenazi racists like Soloveichik and his Tikvah Fund cohorts, these Neo-Conservatives push an alliance with the Christian radicals in a way that imposes a religious agenda on all Americans.
It is a truly frightening development that speaks to Trumpworld values and the union of radical Jews and Christians who wish to impose a religious system on this country.
David Shasha
From SHU 837, April 11, 2018
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and Amy Coney Barrett: Radical Catholic Love with More Trumpworld Lies and Corruption
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and the Catholics (1): Stephen Dubner and Schadenfreude
The end of the Sukkot holiday was a boon time for our dear friend.
Even though Bari Weiss is currently AWOL, her Zalman Bernstein buddy is doing very well at her former haunts.
Here is a convenient review courtesy of The Tikvah Fund:
His WSJ article on Stephen Dubner, whose Jewish parents converted to Catholicism, but who eventually returned to Judaism, is replete with a very complex schadenfreude and sense of Jewish Supremacy:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-former-catholic-dances-with-the-torah-11602198181
The complete article follows this note.
Here is the background:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/stephen-j-dubner
He manages to talk about the COVID lockdowns for the holiday, with echoes of the Jewish Election theme that was the subject of his Princeton dissertation on Michael Wyschogrod.
Here is how he describes the differences between Christians and Jews when it comes to the Bible:
What Jews celebrate on this day is not only that the Torah is completed, but that we can begin it again. While Christians often call their reading of scripture “Bible study,” Jewish parlance refers to “learning Torah.” It’s not a review, but a constant search for new insights. “One cannot compare,” the Talmudic rabbis reflected, “one who has learned one-hundred times to one who has done so for the one-hundred and first.” The biblical books contain everything we could ever know.
I am intrigued that he uses the term “new insights” when all we are now hearing from the Religious Right is “Originalism.” It is unclear what “new insights” Soloveichik is talking about, as his support for the atavistic Jewish Primitivism of Wyschogrod is deeply tied to the barbaric jurisprudence of Antonin Scalia:
https://blogs.yu.edu/news/straus-center-welcomes-christopher-scalia/
It is clear that the Neo-Con Soloveichik rejects the classical Sephardic tradition and its Jewish Humanism, preferring instead to promote an Ashkenazi Jewish “Originalism,” as we have seen in his theocratic Religious Liberty crusade:
https://tikvahfund.org/advanced-institutes/religious-freedom-in-america/
Indeed, he has published a book of readings that fit very comfortably into the Federalist Society mode:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/SvAkVwHpJUU/m/y50PJbkPBAAJ
And then we get to the COVID:
Given the social distancing mandated by the current pandemic, this will be a Simchat Torah unlike any other. In Israel, currently mired in an intense lockdown, many synagogues will be closed. Around this side of the world, whatever dancing takes place will be muted. Nevertheless, the fragility of life we’ve experienced in the past months allows us to appreciate better what the Torah means to us. The pandemic has made us understand what we often took for granted: how the ability to gather weekly in synagogue and study the Torah together is one of our greatest gifts. And we better appreciate how, in the face of life’s trials, it is the Book of Books that sustains us.
I am not sure if he is anxiously referring to Heshy Tischler and the Mask-Burners here!
The night of Simchat Torah is usually one of the most raucous of the Jewish year. Jubilant songs are sung, and dancing suffuses the sanctuary as the Torah scroll is passed from Jew to Jew.
Indeed, in the degenerate Age of Trump, of which Soloveichik is a proud partner, being Jewish has very much changed, as we have seen in Borough Park:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QE_02l1NvM
We can thank Soloveichik for his support of Trump and his wanton destruction of our Religious Freedom:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/W2F21yO7Plg
We have seen how his pal Senator Mike Lee has flouted mask-wearing after being diagnosed with COVID:
In the enchanted world of Mike Lee and Meir Soloveichik we are free to die under the sign of Lysol!
I am just wondering: What does Stephen Dubner think of all this?
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and the Catholics (2): Charles Chaput
We then move from Dubner to the Archbishop of Philadelphia going to YU:
Strikingly, this point about Jewish learning was made by one of America’s most insightful Catholic thinkers, who experienced a moment that mirrors Mr. Dubner’s revelation in a synagogue. A decade ago, Charles Chaput, then archbishop of Philadelphia, visited the study hall of New York’s Yeshiva University, where hundreds of students spend much of their day learning Torah. Archbishop Chaput returned to church to deliver a homily about what he saw. He said he realized how “the Jewish people continue to exist because their covenant . . . is the foundation and glue of their relationship with one another, with their past, and with their future. And the more faithful they are to God’s Word, the more certain they can be of their survival.”
It is definitely a First Things New Convivencia moment:
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/08/yeshiva-lessons
We will recall Soloveichik’s close ties to Father Richard Neuhaus and the radical Catholic extremists:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_fs8wonYLfhONdKPKTgFt_aoi6GPoJ2uhDFcWOfKuTk/edit
It is indeed highly ironic that the central figure of Modern Orthodox YU Judaism wrote a diatribe against having any theological exchanges with Christians:
https://www.jewishideas.org/article/modern-orthodox-approach-interfaith-dialogue
Times have indeed changed in Washington Heights!
The Archbishop is all in with the Wyschogrod Body of Faith Incarnation:
I saw in the lives of those Jewish students the incredible durability of God’s promises and God’s Word. Despite centuries of persecution, exile, dispersion, and even apostasy, the Jewish people continue to exist because their covenant with God is alive and permanent. God’s Word is the organizing principle of their identity. It’s the foundation and glue of their relationship with one another, with their past, and with their future. And the more faithful they are to God’s Word, the more certain they can be of their survival.
My point is this: What I saw at Yeshiva should also apply to every Christian believer, but especially to those of us who are priests and bishops. The source of our brotherhood, the seal of our friendship, is the person of Jesus Christ, alive in God’s Word and alive in the Eucharist we celebrate and share throughout the year.
In the Gospel of Matthew, even as Jesus contests with the Jewish teachers of his day for authority to speak God’s Word, he affirms their rabbinic role. The rabbis, he tells the crowds, “have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you.” In the Catholic tradition, we see that same rabbinic role as the duty and responsibility of priests. In our communities, God has charged his priests with taking their seat on the chair of Moses.
Those of us who are priests need to do everything we can to purify ourselves of vanity, fear, fatigue, and resentment, and to make ourselves worthy of that responsibility. Our own souls, and the souls of our people, will depend on the fire that should burn in our hearts”a fire of love for Jesus Christ, for the Word of God in Scripture, for the Church as our mother, and for the people God places in our care.
Indeed, it sounds a lot like Daniel Boyarin and Paula Fredriksen:
Or perhaps it sounds more like Dennis Prager and John Hagee:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/tcPSzq85XRI/m/1F8E5KhICgAJ
In any case, it is rich to hear how Catholics are now marveling at the Jewish ability to withstand the very persecution that their Church has doled out to us:
I saw in the lives of those Jewish students the incredible durability of God’s promises and God’s Word. Despite centuries of persecution, exile, dispersion, and even apostasy, the Jewish people continue to exist because their covenant with God is alive and permanent.
On the one hand, we see how the Neo-Con Jews stand against Christianity, but on the other, there is a burning desire to become one in the battle against American Liberal values.
It is this tension that animates the thinking of Soloveichik and his Tikvah allies.
It is thus critical to note just how the New Convivencia works in Trumpworld, and how White Jewish Supremacists like Soloveichik are cheering on the New Fascism.
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and the Catholics (3): Amy Coney Barrett, the Whore of Trump
And then, of course, we have Soloveichik’s vigorous defense of Amy Coney Barrett in the name of Religious Liberty:
The complete article also follows this note.
Indeed, it has been a very rough week watching the Whore of Trump cheat and lie, as she does her “Apprentice” audition for the Orange Pig:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/rot8QAXSvMo
Her illegitimate confirmation hearings were a new low for prevarication and PILPUL:
Her pawn-like allegiance to Trump was so absolute that she would not even confirm basic points of Constitutional Law that are obvious to an elementary school child:
Issues like voter intimidation and the peaceful transition of power are uppermost in the Lysol mind, and Barrett’s non-responses were aimed at her Audience of One, reminding us of the Banana Republic AG and Rapist Kavanaugh confirmation hearings:
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54274115\
Perhaps even more concerning in a tachles sense is the fact that Barrett, along with the current Chief Justice and Kavanaugh, was a loyal Republican foot soldier in the Bush v. Gore mess:
We already know that the Murderer-in-Chief, who has largely conceded that he will lose the election if it is conducted legitimately, is preparing litigation to battle it out in the Supreme Court:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/24/politics/supreme-court-bush-gore-trump-lawsuits/index.html
Indeed, he has said it out loud that he wants to have “his” SCOTUS there for him:
Barrett pretended as if she had no idea about any of it:
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a34374103/amy-coney-barrett-bush-v-gore/
Perhaps Whore is too kind a word for her!
But in his New York Times Op-Ed Soloveichik made it all about Religious Liberty rather than the imposition of a Trumpist Theocracy which would force Christianity on all of us:
Traditional Jews in America who read these broadsides against Judge Barrett can easily imagine similar ones about themselves. We might wonder what the reaction would now be were a member of our own religious community appointed to a position of prominence. After all, the Jewish liturgy’s expressed aspiration, in an existence filled with injustice, is “to fix the world through the kingship of God.” We believe ourselves bound by a covenant to other Jews, and many of our observances mark us as different, just as they did in Seixas’ day. Like Muslims, Sikhs, and other minority faith communities, we dream of our daughters and sons experiencing American equality without suffering for their beliefs.
In the course of the superbly-timed advocacy for the Lysol nominee, Soloveichik manages to rope in Moses Seixas and Elena Kagan in ways that would likely have dismayed them.
Reinforcing his deep love and abiding concern for Catholics and Catholicism, the article is ultimately a paean to Barrett and her First Things radicalism:
Much attention has been paid to Judge Barrett’s faith, and to “People of Praise,” a religious community of both Catholics and Protestants to which she belongs. Articles have described the oath, or “covenant,” taken by its members to act in loving service to one another. Another topic raised was a speech delivered by Barrett, describing her ultimate aspiration as serving “the kingdom of God.” These stories insinuate that her religion marks her as out of the mainstream, or unable to serve fairly as a Supreme Court justice.
It is an excellent PILPUL performance. Very Ashkenazi, very Mike Lee, very misleading, very New Convivencia.
That is indeed the way of Zalman Bernstein.
And I was struck by the craven attempt to mischaracterize the slimy judge as “mainstream,” a tactic that was also used by The Federalist Society’s Keith Wittington in his NYT Op-Ed:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/opinion/amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court-roe.html
As we have seen, the idea is to pretend that Barrett is not what she says she is:
If Judge Barrett is confirmed, she will join a small group of Supreme Court justices who are avowed originalists; they think that the meaning of the Constitution was fixed at the time of its adoption. As a former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, long the court’s most prominent originalist, Judge Barrett has often explored and refined the jurisprudential principles laid down by her former boss. When she has weighed in on points of disagreement among originalists, she has tended to push originalists toward the judicial mainstream. When evaluating the constitutionality of laws, where some originalists would argue that the courts should aggressively scrutinize every action that legislatures take, she has urged that judges adopt a more deferential posture. On stare decisis, she has urged giving precedents more weight than some originalists would prefer.
The canard was exploded in an argument made against The Federalist Society and its apparatchik Leonard Leo by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse at the hearing:
Whitehouse made clear the connection between the Barrett nomination and the years-long project of the Conservative radicals to stack the courts with their hand-picked judges who will do as they are told:
In all cases, there is big anonymous money behind various lanes of activity. One is through the conduit of the Federalist Society. It is managed by a guy named Leonard Leo and it has taken over the selection of judicial nominees. How do we know? Because Trump has said so, over and over again. His White House counsel said so. We have an anonymously funded group run by this guy named Leonard Leo. We have anonymous funders running through something called the Judicial Crisis Network, which is run by Severino, and it is doing PR and campaign ads for Republican judicial nominees.
It got a $70 million donation in the Garland-Gorsuch contest. They got another donation to support Kavanaugh. Perhaps the same person spent $35 million to influence the makeup of the United States Supreme Court. Tell me that is good. Over here, you have an array of groups funded by dark money that have a different role. They bring cases to the Court. They do not wind their way to the Court, they get shoved to the court by legal groups, many of which get quickly to the Court to get their business done there. And then they turn up in an orchestrated chorus.
Strangely, it seems that all of them do not want Americans to know what they are really up to:
It is unclear why these wingnuts are so concerned about concealing their true views.
Why should they not be proud to present their true views in clear view of the public?
And we have long seen how Soloveichik stands resolutely with them, as he has long advocated restrictive views on issues like Birth Control:
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article24724369.html
As in the case of the picture with Trump, we see Soloveichik allied there to the Christian radicals in a very warm embrace.
How touching!
In the end the confirmation hearings are a Gaslight sham, and should not be taking place as the election is going on.
If he had any ethical sense, Soloveichik would take a page from Barrett’s Notre Dame colleagues – some from the Theology Department – and ask that she hold off the hearings until after the election:
Not either Soloveichik or Barrett has any honesty or decency:
Documents are not what they used to be:
Amy Coney Barrett has failed to disclose an awful lot of documents to the Senate in her nomination to the Supreme Court. This is probably one of them: a letter from 88 of her Notre Dame colleagues, dated October 10, asking her to withdraw at least temporarily from consideration for the position.
The idea is to make sure to ram the New Theocracy down our throats and to hell with the truth.
And it is the New Theocracy that so animates Meir Soloveichik, as he continues to tear down the noble legacy of Sephardic Jewish Humanism that was once the hallmark of the oldest Synagogue in America.
If the current illegitimate nominee is confirmed to the Court, we will now have a Pornographer, a Rapist, and a Whore all serving on the most important tribunal of justice in the land.
We do not stand a chance.
David Shasha
From SHU 973, November 18, 2020
A Former Catholic Dances with the Torah
By: Meir Soloveichik
Stephen Dubner, a co-author of “Freakonomics,” is the son of Jewish parents who converted to Catholicism and raised him in their newfound faith. Mr. Dubner’s 1998 memoir, “Turbulent Souls,” recounts his later return to Judaism. His turning point came when his then-girlfriend suggested that he visit a synagogue. Mr. Dubner did so reluctantly, and on arriving instantly regretted the decision, surprised by “how little it felt like Church,” and feeling “like an intruder, perhaps an imposter.”
Then the Torah came out of the ark. Suddenly, Mr. Dubner writes, “The air itself seemed to grow lighter, easier to breathe.” As all in attendance hurried over to kiss the scroll bearing the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, he did likewise. “A resonance, a gratefulness, a relief, blistered its way inside me: It is the book they are venerating here.” Mr. Dubner today has a Jewish family. His son, Solomon, is named for Mr. Dubner’s father, who went by Paul. His rediscovery of his roots began with a synagogue experience: “The way a Jew greeted the Torah, as though it contained everything he would ever need, everything that had ever been known or could ever be known.”
The Torah scroll is the most sacred object of Jewish life and the centerpiece of its Sabbath service. Every week it is escorted from the dark. A portion is read aloud in the synagogue, and the scroll is reverently returned to its place. On the next Sabbath, we pick up the text where we left off; and this weekend, on a holiday known as Simchat Torah, or “The Joy of the Torah,” we achieve the annual completion of the scroll.
What Jews celebrate on this day is not only that the Torah is completed, but that we can begin it again. While Christians often call their reading of scripture “Bible study,” Jewish parlance refers to “learning Torah.” It’s not a review, but a constant search for new insights. “One cannot compare,” the Talmudic rabbis reflected, “one who has learned one-hundred times to one who has done so for the one-hundred and first.” The biblical books contain everything we could ever know.
The night of Simchat Torah is usually one of the most raucous of the Jewish year. Jubilant songs are sung, and dancing suffuses the sanctuary as the Torah scroll is passed from Jew to Jew.
It can surprise outsiders that Jews would dance with their law and that a book of revelation could inspire such seemingly irreverent joy. In the 17th century, the London socialite Samuel Pepys came across a Simchat Torah celebration and wrote: “I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this.” Centuries later Harvard theologian Harvey Cox was more appreciative, describing it as a “gamboling with God.”
That we dance with our scrolls indicates that, for the people of the book, sacred text is more than law; it is our friend. When we finish reading the scroll, we ensconce our beloved Torah in what may seem to be a “last dance”—but then suddenly, unable to tear ourselves away, we begin reading again.
Given the social distancing mandated by the current pandemic, this will be a Simchat Torah unlike any other. In Israel, currently mired in an intense lockdown, many synagogues will be closed. Around this side of the world, whatever dancing takes place will be muted. Nevertheless, the fragility of life we’ve experienced in the past months allows us to appreciate better what the Torah means to us. The pandemic has made us understand what we often took for granted: how the ability to gather weekly in synagogue and study the Torah together is one of our greatest gifts. And we better appreciate how, in the face of life’s trials, it is the Book of Books that sustains us.
Strikingly, this point about Jewish learning was made by one of America’s most insightful Catholic thinkers, who experienced a moment that mirrors Mr. Dubner’s revelation in a synagogue. A decade ago, Charles Chaput, then archbishop of Philadelphia, visited the study hall of New York’s Yeshiva University, where hundreds of students spend much of their day learning Torah. Archbishop Chaput returned to church to deliver a homily about what he saw. He said he realized how “the Jewish people continue to exist because their covenant . . . is the foundation and glue of their relationship with one another, with their past, and with their future. And the more faithful they are to God’s Word, the more certain they can be of their survival.”
Mr. Dubner and Archbishop Chaput, former and current Catholic alike, discovered the heart of our faith. When all else fails, it is the Torah that sustains us. We know that now more than ever. This year, what is usually a jubilant song on our lips will become a clarion call in our hearts.
Rabbi Soloveichik is director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York.
From The Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2020
Leave Judge Barrett’s Faith Out of This
By: Meir Soloveichik
One of the most enduring descriptions of American pluralism was composed by a religious Jew. In 1790, Moses Seixas led the dwindling Jewish community of the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I. He had struggled to sustain the religious observances that endowed Jews with a distinct identity: public readings of the Torah, circumcisions of baby boys, and the keeping of kosher dietary laws. Soon Newport’s remaining Jews would depart for other communities as opportunity there dwindled, and Seixas could have easily been forgotten in the annals of American history.
One letter would ensure his immortality. Newport was visited by George Washington, and Seixas welcomed the president with a paean to the Constitution’s ban on religious tests for public office. Jews, Seixas wrote, beheld in America “a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance — but generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship.” In his response, Washington echoed Seixas’ words, agreeing that “happily” the government of the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction.” He then added a reflection of his own. “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of,” Washington emphasized; all faiths would be granted equal “immunities of citizenship.”
Speaking centuries later at the same Touro synagogue, today the oldest Jewish house of worship in the country, Justice Elena Kagan of the Supreme Court noted the “astonishing” import of Washington’s words. In embracing a tiny religious minority, Justice Kagan reflected, Washington extended the “promise of opportunity to everyone, regardless of belief,” and was “self-consciously constructing the country by his words and his deeds about what it meant to be an American.” Justice Kagan movingly explained what the president’s letter meant to Jews like her own grandparents, who arrived as immigrants in America. The legacy of his letter, she reflected, was that “their Jewishness, strange as it may seem to some, would prove no barrier to their accomplishments.”
Justice Kagan’s reflections remain relevant now that Judge Amy Coney Barrett has been nominated to serve as her colleague on the court. Much attention has been paid to Judge Barrett’s faith, and to “People of Praise,” a religious community of both Catholics and Protestants to which she belongs. Articles have described the oath, or “covenant,” taken by its members to act in loving service to one another. Another topic raised was a speech delivered by Barrett, describing her ultimate aspiration as serving “the kingdom of God.” These stories insinuate that her religion marks her as out of the mainstream, or unable to serve fairly as a Supreme Court justice.
Traditional Jews in America who read these broadsides against Judge Barrett can easily imagine similar ones about themselves. We might wonder what the reaction would now be were a member of our own religious community appointed to a position of prominence. After all, the Jewish liturgy’s expressed aspiration, in an existence filled with injustice, is “to fix the world through the kingship of God.” We believe ourselves bound by a covenant to other Jews, and many of our observances mark us as different, just as they did in Seixas’ day. Like Muslims, Sikhs, and other minority faith communities, we dream of our daughters and sons experiencing American equality without suffering for their beliefs. We continue to celebrate Seixas’ legacy, and work for an America where what Justice Kagan said about her grandparents will be true about our grandchildren: that their Jewishness, “strange as it may seem to some, would prove no barrier to their accomplishments.”
None of this precludes tough questions about Judge Barrett’s worldview. At times, discussions of her religion seems to serve as a proxy for her views on abortion and other moral questions, and many apparently look to her religious practices as a guide to how she will rule on these matters. Yet as a widely published academic, Barrett has been more open than most nominees about her beliefs, which are those of a traditional Catholic, and has signed an ad supporting “the right to life from fertilization to natural death.” Judge Barrett has also been open about her jurisprudence, which is that of an originalist. She has described Justice Scalia as her mentor, and asserted that her Constitutional interpretation is guided not by her own faith but by the meaning of the document at the time it was written. Senators can, and should, ask her how a self-proclaimed originalist can objectively separate one’s own opinions from an understanding of the text. A judge’s jurisprudence — as well as the propriety of such a nomination so close to an election — are worthy matters of debate, and they are appropriate reasons to oppose or support Judge Barrett’s nomination. But her faith is not.
A century after Moses Seixas, his great-great-niece, Emma Lazarus, would also eloquently describe the American idea in a poem that now appears on the Statue of Liberty. It depicts an America that made room for difference, which, as Kagan perfectly put it, extends the “promise of opportunity to all, regardless of belief.” Supreme Court nominations are often heated, but we cannot forget the lessons of Seixas’ story. The legacy of Washington’s letter, of religious pluralism, is a promise too precious to lose.
Meir Soloveichik, the rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, is the director of the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University.
From The New York Times, October 11, 2020