email #37 — I am a wannabe rav kook and I'm scared of zohran mamdani
9 views
Skip to first unread message
Leon Kraiem
Jul 11, 2025, 1:45:16 PM7/11/25
to Leon’s List
Hi friends,
The little war with the big Iran is over. The big war with the little Iran grinds on.
My workday is still dead soldiers and hostage families.
Bus stops are still covered in stickers of the fallen and posters of the captive.
There is infinitely more to say about Gaza, and nothing new to say about it. The unfolding nightmare rolls on, just out of sight but never out of mind, completely inaccessible to someone like me who has never stepped foot in a war zone, but is expected to have intelligent things to say about what goes on in one, like a priest giving marriage counseling, a virgin with a sex advice column.
—
I wrote half of a longish essay about America last week. It was last Thursday night — not yesterday, but a week earlier — that I hosted my annual American Independence Day seder, hosting some seven or eight friends of mine to read the US Declaration of Independence together, like a page of Gemarra or a weekly Haftarah.
The thrust of the essay — which I'd love to circle back to and finish, as entirely unprecedented as that would be — was the following: first, that the United States is an exceptional intervention into history by what can only be called, in a nonsectarian and humble way, God; that people in general, but Jews in particular, cannot deny the gravity of the US's contribution to the world, nor can we afford to deny the need for it going forward.
And, second: that my confidence in America's future is ever-dimming, that from my vantage point things look very bad, and that 250 years was a good run, but damn do I wish we'd make it to 300.
I look at the American political landscape, and it seems hardly anyone believes in the project, or is willing to actually participate in it. The left — who have elected a mayor-in-waiting of the most important city in the world — say "America" is just code for the ruthless, amoral pursuit of the interests of Christian white people. The right — with overwhelming control of the federal government — say "sounds good to me."
—
For many years of my life, my YouTube algorithm consisted — to a cringeworthy degree — of videos in which rabbis debated atheists; in which Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris would tear Brad Artson or David Wolpe a new one. I watched these video, late into the night, and always rooted for the atheist. Then I'd wake up, a little sleep-deprived, and go to yeshiva for shacharit.
Intellectually, I want to say that all religion is narishkeit, that I may have inherited a relatively benign, even profound and beautiful strain of it, but that if I expect other peoples to give up their sacred cows — no marrying your cousin just because Muhammad did it, no murdering people for drawing a cartoon — I have to be willing to slaughter my own: no cuts to babies' genitals without their consent, no ignoring your veganism to wrap yourself in dead cow for morning prayer, no facing the Temple Mount three times a day asking God to restore burnt offerings, and then morally grandstanding when fanatics try to blow up the Dome of the Rock.
But here's what I believe in my kishkes: something happened at Sinai, whether we like it or not. Jews have for thousands of years drawn the concentrated ire of every totalitarian and nihilistic movement, and that's probably not an accident. Take a look at history — the explosion of Christianity, the conquests of Islam, the reconquista and the Holocaust — and tell me the Jewish people aren't some stitch through which the rest of the world is sewn together. Every previous generation of Jews who tried to wash off that special role in history failed; if I try, I'll fail too.
Or, here's another way to look at it: Billions of people worship the God of Abraham. He probably shouldn't get hung up on by the people who talked to him first. Christians know God, but they're so puzzled by His particularism, Hs insistence on funny rituals and appetite for burnt offerings, they abrogate the entire "Old Testament." Muslims are so uncomfortable with the humanity of the patriarchs and matriarchs that they flatten all our ancestors into moralizing prophets who never did anything wrong. I Am That I Am is a global superstar now, with legions of adoring fans wherever he goes — but we knew Him before He got famous, and I think He still wants us around to talk to backstage — I think we still get Him, in ways the superfans don't.
—
This email, in case you couldn't tell, has basically been written in two bursts, with a long break in between; I've definitely lost my original train of thought, and started swirling down a whirlpool of associations, with the substance falling down the drain.
But here's what I think I was trying to get at.
The entire world has been made in America's image, and that image will last, even if America doesn't — democracy won't die if the US goes autocratic; there will still be human rights, and the rule of law, in other places, there will still be civic nationalisms and moonshot projects and other promised lands to give refuge to the huddled masses. But you can't replace America, any more than you can replace the Jews.
I love the State of Israel — it will never have a First Amendment. No country has a First Amendment, except the US. Just as Moses arguing with God, and winning the argument, is just too counterintuitive for Judaism's sibling-religions to ever really internalize, actual freedom of speech — the type that covers neo-Nazis marching down the street in Skokie, and edgy modern artists pissing on statuettes of Jesus, and the Westboro Baptist Church picketing soldiers' funerals, and burning the American flag — is just too against the inner temptation of censorship for any other people to adopt it.
Other countries accept immigrants, and inculcate patriotism in people whose parents hail from elsewhere. But no nation will ever be inclusive the way America is inclusive — a real, bona fide nation, but one that anyone, from anywhere, can join. Canadian and Australian nationalism will always be basically meaningless, and Old World nationalisms will always be at least faintly blood-and-soil.
No other country — including Israel — will ever be as accepting of the Jews.
—
What happened at the end of the 12-day war — a name that Trump successfully gave that conflict, which has been adopted near-universally, though it's still kept in the lowercase for now (call it 'proper noun plausible deniability') — was borderline messianic, as far as I'm concerned. No other country could do it, and no other country would do it. The Jewish people should be grateful to the US — and to Trump himself — forevermore.
So maybe I shouldn't be so bearish on America's future. But I am.
I hold my little seder every year in the spirit of Pesach — a people is liberated from an earthly tyrant, and thus becomes a nation ready to receive its purpose; I just hope that next year, as the American nation's 250th birthday comes around, my annual patriotic gathering won't feel more like a newfound Tisha b'Av.
As always, I am alive, and I am well, thanks to others, not all of whom are.
The little war with the big Iran is over. The big war with the little Iran grinds on.
My workday is still dead soldiers and hostage families.
Bus stops are still covered in stickers of the fallen and posters of the captive.
There is infinitely more to say about Gaza, and nothing new to say about it. The unfolding nightmare rolls on, just out of sight but never out of mind, completely inaccessible to someone like me who has never stepped foot in a war zone, but is expected to have intelligent things to say about what goes on in one, like a priest giving marriage counseling, a virgin with a sex advice column.
—
I wrote half of a longish essay about America last week. It was last Thursday night — not yesterday, but a week earlier — that I hosted my annual American Independence Day seder, hosting some seven or eight friends of mine to read the US Declaration of Independence together, like a page of Gemarra or a weekly Haftarah.
The thrust of the essay — which I'd love to circle back to and finish, as entirely unprecedented as that would be — was the following: first, that the United States is an exceptional intervention into history by what can only be called, in a nonsectarian and humble way, God; that people in general, but Jews in particular, cannot deny the gravity of the US's contribution to the world, nor can we afford to deny the need for it going forward.
And, second: that my confidence in America's future is ever-dimming, that from my vantage point things look very bad, and that 250 years was a good run, but damn do I wish we'd make it to 300.
I look at the American political landscape, and it seems hardly anyone believes in the project, or is willing to actually participate in it. The left — who have elected a mayor-in-waiting of the most important city in the world — say "America" is just code for the ruthless, amoral pursuit of the interests of Christian white people. The right — with overwhelming control of the federal government — say "sounds good to me."
—
For many years of my life, my YouTube algorithm consisted — to a cringeworthy degree — of videos in which rabbis debated atheists; in which Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris would tear Brad Artson or David Wolpe a new one. I watched these video, late into the night, and always rooted for the atheist. Then I'd wake up, a little sleep-deprived, and go to yeshiva for shacharit.
Intellectually, I want to say that all religion is narishkeit, that I may have inherited a relatively benign, even profound and beautiful strain of it, but that if I expect other peoples to give up their sacred cows — no marrying your cousin just because Muhammad did it, no murdering people for drawing a cartoon — I have to be willing to slaughter my own: no cuts to babies' genitals without their consent, no ignoring your veganism to wrap yourself in dead cow for morning prayer, no facing the Temple Mount three times a day asking God to restore burnt offerings, and then morally grandstanding when fanatics try to blow up the Dome of the Rock.
But here's what I believe in my kishkes: something happened at Sinai, whether we like it or not. Jews have for thousands of years drawn the concentrated ire of every totalitarian and nihilistic movement, and that's probably not an accident. Take a look at history — the explosion of Christianity, the conquests of Islam, the reconquista and the Holocaust — and tell me the Jewish people aren't some stitch through which the rest of the world is sewn together. Every previous generation of Jews who tried to wash off that special role in history failed; if I try, I'll fail too.
Or, here's another way to look at it: Billions of people worship the God of Abraham. He probably shouldn't get hung up on by the people who talked to him first. Christians know God, but they're so puzzled by His particularism, Hs insistence on funny rituals and appetite for burnt offerings, they abrogate the entire "Old Testament." Muslims are so uncomfortable with the humanity of the patriarchs and matriarchs that they flatten all our ancestors into moralizing prophets who never did anything wrong. I Am That I Am is a global superstar now, with legions of adoring fans wherever he goes — but we knew Him before He got famous, and I think He still wants us around to talk to backstage — I think we still get Him, in ways the superfans don't.
—
This email, in case you couldn't tell, has basically been written in two bursts, with a long break in between; I've definitely lost my original train of thought, and started swirling down a whirlpool of associations, with the substance falling down the drain.
But here's what I think I was trying to get at.
The entire world has been made in America's image, and that image will last, even if America doesn't — democracy won't die if the US goes autocratic; there will still be human rights, and the rule of law, in other places, there will still be civic nationalisms and moonshot projects and other promised lands to give refuge to the huddled masses. But you can't replace America, any more than you can replace the Jews.
I love the State of Israel — it will never have a First Amendment. No country has a First Amendment, except the US. Just as Moses arguing with God, and winning the argument, is just too counterintuitive for Judaism's sibling-religions to ever really internalize, actual freedom of speech — the type that covers neo-Nazis marching down the street in Skokie, and edgy modern artists pissing on statuettes of Jesus, and the Westboro Baptist Church picketing soldiers' funerals, and burning the American flag — is just too against the inner temptation of censorship for any other people to adopt it.
Other countries accept immigrants, and inculcate patriotism in people whose parents hail from elsewhere. But no nation will ever be inclusive the way America is inclusive — a real, bona fide nation, but one that anyone, from anywhere, can join. Canadian and Australian nationalism will always be basically meaningless, and Old World nationalisms will always be at least faintly blood-and-soil.
No other country — including Israel — will ever be as accepting of the Jews.
—
What happened at the end of the 12-day war — a name that Trump successfully gave that conflict, which has been adopted near-universally, though it's still kept in the lowercase for now (call it 'proper noun plausible deniability') — was borderline messianic, as far as I'm concerned. No other country could do it, and no other country would do it. The Jewish people should be grateful to the US — and to Trump himself — forevermore.
So maybe I shouldn't be so bearish on America's future. But I am.
I hold my little seder every year in the spirit of Pesach — a people is liberated from an earthly tyrant, and thus becomes a nation ready to receive its purpose; I just hope that next year, as the American nation's 250th birthday comes around, my annual patriotic gathering won't feel more like a newfound Tisha b'Av.
As always, I am alive, and I am well, thanks to others, not all of whom are.
I will continue to keep you posted,
Leon
Leon
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages