(RNS) — When Donald Trump was first running for president in 2016, I appeared on CNN to discuss the possibility of his election. I did not have kind things to say about him.
One of my congregants was upset about my position, and I invited him to have a discussion with me about it.
I asked him, “You know our congregant who had a stroke and who now walks with a limited gait and speaks in a distorted way? When he enters the sanctuary, am I allowed to make fun of him from the pulpit?”
“Absolutely not,” my critic responded. “In fact, if you ever did that, the board should fire you on the spot.”
“And yet,” I said, “you support a man who did precisely that,” referring to Trump mocking a disabled reporter on the campaign trail.
“Oh, but that’s different,” he said. “You’re a rabbi.”
“True, I am a rabbi. But, shouldn’t the president of the United States embody public virtue (though it has not always been the case)? Not only that — would it be OK for a 13-year-old boy to declare from the pulpit that, ‘Now that I am a man, I will grab …’ After all, he would only be imitating the president.”
The man grew silent.
I find myself back at that moment after Trump’s vile social media “eulogy” of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, after their brutal, tragic slaying and reflecting on Jewish wisdom for when someone dies.
While some might note the Reiners were notorious Hollywood lefties, do their politics merit an act of public scorn from the president of the United States? Is that all the president could say about a man who indelibly shaped our culture, and who was by all accounts a mensch?
Saying the role of president requires dignity is not a political statement. My regular readers know that I have praised Trump when I believed that his actions merited such praise. Moreover, I incurred the wrath and disappointment of many of my friends to my political left who were aghast that I could offer such praise to a man whom they reviled.
But, equally so, one right-wing friend called me this past week to say he regretted ever having supported the man — that the statement about the Reiners was just beyond the pale. He might have said the same thing about the newly revealed plaques in the White House about past presidents, complete with childish, vulgar Trumpian analyses of their presidencies.
You might be wondering what any of this has to do with Judaism.
First, I believe that Jewish wisdom is and must be exportable. I look at how it instructs us to comfort mourners, that you enter a house of mourning and you prepare to remain silent until the mourner opens the conversation. You need not say anything, other than, “May God comfort you among all those who mourn in Zion and Jerusalem.” You sit in silence, simply holding the hand of the mourner. Such acts define Jewish eloquence in the face of mortality.
Trump could have simply said: “My condolences to the family of Rob and Michele Reiner.” Done. Or, he could have remained silent.
To quote columnist Bret Stephens in The New York Times:
[Trump’s post] … captures the combination of preposterous grandiosity, obsessive self-regard and gratuitous spite that “deranged” the Reiners and so many other Americans trying to hold on to a sense of national decency. Good people and good nations do not stomp on the grief of others. Politics is meant to end at the graveside. That’s not just some social nicety. It’s a foundational taboo that any civilized society must enforce to prevent transient personal differences from becoming generational blood feuds.
Another piece of Jewish wisdom is about the role of the king, or ruler. Maimonides, in the Mishneh Torah (Laws of Kings and Wars 2:6) wrote:
Just as the Torah has granted him great honor and obligated everyone to revere him; so, too, has it commanded him to be lowly and empty at heart. … Nor should he treat Israel with overbearing haughtiness. For Deuteronomy 17:20 describes how ‘he should not lift up his heart above his brothers.’ He should be gracious and merciful to the small and the great, involving himself in their good and welfare. He should protect the honor of even the humblest of men. When he speaks to the people as a community, he should speak gently. … He should always conduct himself with great humility.
Were the Sanhedrin, or the Jewish court, in session today, it would find Trump guilty of trespassing each of these laws.
Why does it matter? Once again, Jewish wisdom is exportable.
The Talmud (Arakhin 17a) records a disagreement between Judah the Prince (the leader of the Jewish community of his time) and other sages: “One says: The level of the generation follows the level of the leader, and one says: The level of the leader follows the level of his generation.”
The question is, is this generation being shaped by Trump’s personality? Or, is Trump being shaped by the character of this generation?
It’s both. We have seen the emergence of an outrage industrial complex that has created a culture of contempt. Trump is both a product of and a producer of those twin cultural malignancies.
I keep returning to the outburst of attorney Joseph N. Welch to Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency?”
The role of religion in all this is to play the prophetic role, to call it out from the pulpit and to become cultural warriors. That is a lot. And, it is enough.