Ideas and Impressions: Trump’s claims of disloyalty are an outrage

Jason Moscovitch

By Jason Moscovitch

The recent rising intensity in tone and content from the president of the United States about the State of Israel can’t possibly go to a good place – even if the words are supportive. The divisiveness of the president in using Israel for his own domestic political reasons is why nothing good will come of it.

When President Donald Trump takes the few visceral anti-Israel voices in the Democratic Party to say American Jews can’t vote Democratic without being “disloyal,” as so many commentators have noted, those words conjure up old and ugly antisemitic boogiemen and women from the past. It proves, how, when it comes to antisemitism, the past and the present can so easily blend into one. Most thinking Jews never forget that.

But when the proven pro-Israel president, the president who moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, launched a loyalty grenade into the American election cycle, it was the act of a crass and politically unsophisticated despot.

Despots don’t measure their words. Despots dispose of subtlety as if it were poison. Despots laugh at political compromise, and sometimes at necessary political nuance and ambiguity. The problem is, if there ever was a country that needs subtlety, compromise, nuance and ambiguity, it is the State of Israel. So, thank you President Trump for your help.

In this High Holy Day period you can imagine the renewed tension that will exist in U.S. synagogues when the subject of Israel comes up, if it comes up. Can you imagine the reluctance of rabbis to mention the state of affairs in the Holy Land? Tension is running high in all Jewish communities across the U.S. Bluntly put, not all American Jews support Israel’s perceived hardline views as their president does.

Traditionally, most American Jews support the Democratic Party although there has always been a good number of Jews who support the Republican Party. The stereotype that all Jews support the Democratic Party in the United States is as misguided as the long-held view in Canada that Jews vote Liberal. Increasingly, not all Jews think the same, pray the same, or vote the same.

And on both sides of the border, support for Israel is not the only consideration when Jews cast their ballots. If that were the case, every Jewish vote would have gone to former prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party, which we know didn’t happen.

What Trump has done fits the pattern of his taking down long held ways of doing politics. This time Israel and Jewish voters are made targets as the president wings his way through another outrage to get attention and, he thinks, political advantage.

Talking about Jewish voters being disloyal to Israel, to America, or to both, is such a disgusting outrage that you have to wonder if it is just a bad dream. But it’s not – not when Trump is the most powerful leader in the world.

Trump’s support of Israel is good to have – but it is necessary to note there is not another world leader who supports what he is doing or saying about Israel. Israel is so alone in the world, and when the United States has a president who is often over the top on Israeli matters, the question for the medium and long term is whether Trump is causing more harm than good.

Since the birth of the State of Israel in 1948, every Rosh Hashanah has seen Israel in a state of war with most of its neighbours, and this year, 71 years later, there is not a glitter of hope that peace is anywhere on the horizon. The difference this year is the unworthy spectacle of Trump stirring the pot so ferociously.

There are those who think Trump says what needs to be said. The problem is that so much time has passed without resolution and, rightly or wrongly, the fires of frustration with Israel burn around the world.

The reality is how there is so much difficulty for Israel in the world and while Trump may think he is helping, there is no evidence of that.

Perhaps, on this Rosh Hashanah, we need to face the sad reality that our loud and powerful friend is not making anyone feel any better.

A View from the Bleachers: What is meant when speaking of dual loyalty?

Rabbu Steven Garten

By Rabbi Steven Garten

On August 20, the Republican president of the United States stated that Jews who support Democrats are “disloyal.”

The response was predictable. Those who support the president noted that what he was doing was calling out Jews who vote Democratic as disloyal to their own people. Not to the United States. Those who are less enamored with the 45th U.S. president charged that this was a classic antisemitic canard.

It is never simple to unpack the musings of the president. He is not given to precision, even when speaking from a prepared text. If, as some suggested, he was calling upon Jews to be loyal to Israel, it is not really the point. We Jews have an obligation to protect and defend Israel because it is the ingathering of the exiles after two millennia. We Jews are not disloyal when we offer alternative opinions about the political path chosen by Israeli political leaders. We are not disloyal if we disagree with those who call themselves friends of Israel, but whose politics do not jibe with our personal values.

Yet, we have always been anxious about the charge of disloyalty. In 1806, when Napoleon convened an assembly of Jewish notables to respond to 11 questions designed to clarify the Jewish community’s relationship to France, he specifically asked if “Jews acknowledge France as their country.”

In 1841, when Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina dedicated its first permanent home (it was founded in 1749), the president of the congregation proclaimed, “This city is our Jerusalem. This country is our Palestine.” There was to be no ambiguity about loyalty.

In 1917, when Lord Balfour was struggling to craft a document that would appease both Zionists in the British cabinet and those opposed to agitating Arab leaders who might support British war efforts, a third voice was noticeable. Anglo Jews pressured Balfour and Churchill to write nothing that could be construed as hinting at dual loyalty among British Jewry.

That is why the phrase, “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country,” became part of the Balfour Declaration.

We are a people whose loyalty is often challenged and somewhat tenuous at times. But, in spite of our history and our discomfort when the issue is raised, few serious political leaders in the post-Second World War era have given us much cause for concern.

What should be more concerning to us is where our loyalties lie within the Jewish community. There was a time when we galvanized around the slogan “We are one.” However, some thought the slogan was too narrow and not reflective of our growing diversity. There was a time when our loyalties were to religious institutions: synagogues and temples. Individuals not only prayed within the four walls, they found community and friendship.

Alas, synagogues and temples no longer are the focus of our individual loyalties. We see fewer and fewer seats filled on Shabbat and chagim. Friendship groups are easily formed outside the synagogues.

While some direct their loyalties to individual institutions and Jewish charities, it is interesting that many who do so are responding to the perceived needs that the institutions fulfil in their personal lives, such as supporting an old age home because a parent needs a secure, warm, friendly, kosher venue, or fundraising for a program that supports emotionally and educationally challenged adults because their own child fits the profile.

These are all worthy causes deserving of our commitment, but there can never be enough individuals with direct needs to support these places eternally.

Loyalty is more than just an acknowledgement of individual needs. Loyalty sees beyond the immediate. Loyalty is faithfulness in the face of adversity. Loyalty requires honesty about thoughts and emotions. Loyalty demands an everlasting commitment to something and or someone beyond ourselves. Loyalty demands strong feelings of support and allegiance.

The loyalty which supersedes our personal proclivities and opinions is loyalty to the Jewish community. It is through that loyalty that many of our personal causes and interests are made real. As individuals, we cannot insure the survival of our people, community and institutions. As a united community we can.

This year divide your loyalties if you must, but commit to your community, who will preserve all our divided loyalties.