BUILDING THE MIDDLE CLASS WITH KAMALA HARRIS AS PRESIDENT IS THE JEWISH THING TO DO
BUILDING THE MIDDLE CLASS WITH KAMALA HARRIS AS PRESIDENT IS THE JEWISH THING TO DO
ⓒRabbi Marc Gopin
Vice President Harris has supported the middle class and the poor, proven repeatedly by pioneering rescue packages such as the American Rescue Plan, the Expanded Child Tax Credit, the Rent Relief Act, and Medicare for All. Only courageous policies and legislation demonstrate a solid record of building prosperity for all. Only one candidate embraces those values and has acted upon them with deeds rather than just empty words and promises.
As a Rabbi, I support Kamala Harris for president and urge my fellow Jews to do the same because building prosperity for all is perhaps the most crucial issue of our time. Most Americans became poorer under Donald Trump with massive tax relief for the super-rich only. The increasing poverty of the middle class and the unaffordability of homes, education, and health not only suggest a failure of Jewish values but also a danger to the safety of all Americans.
American poverty and American prosperity deeply affect us as Jews. The American Jewish Poverty rate is around 10-15% nationally, such as in Pennsylvania, but over 20% in New York. It is a whopping 45% of ultra-Orthodox Jewish households. The Biden and Harris administrations did much to correct the Trump administration's failures regarding the middle class. Still, this work needs to be completed with the vigorous vision and record of the Vice President.
Vice President Harris upholds crucial Jewish values of antipoverty that go back thousands of years, as seen in the Holy Scriptures and rabbinic tradition. The prophets, especially in the Book of Ruth, champion an embrace of strangers, love, and care for them, especially when those strangers face financial deprivation, tragedy, and homelessness. The instruction to love strangers appears over 30 times in all the books of the Hebrew Bible, the most frequently mentioned commandment of them all. Love of strangers embodies Jewish identity because that identity was forged with the searing memory of being enslaved as strangers in the land of Egypt. Freedom from slavery thousands of years ago was always seen as necessitating and obligating active compassion and love for strangers, so much so that it is fundamental to the blessings and inclusive duties of every Jewish holiday. Widows and orphans were especially singled out because all of them, strangers, widows, and orphans in those ancient times, were left bereft of homes. They were the quintessential homeless, and the entire ethical and holiday system was built around caring for them.
Today's parallel between legislation to engage the homeless and those nearly homeless cannot be more clear. The Bible also insists on never forgetting the poor among Jewish people, even if in America, they are a minority of Jewish people. Today, we Jews need to support the wise path of Vice-President Harris since the poor deserve this help. Following Jewish values means that all Americans should have equity, not just equality. The Vice President said, “There’s a big difference between equality and equity. Equality suggests, ‘Oh, everyone should get the same amount.’ The problem with that, not everybody’s starting in the same place.” Our shared values as Jews with Vice President Harris is that we should fight for everyone’s equity.
A solid American middle class is also necessary for Jewish security, safety, and survival in this country. Historically, antisemitism grows astronomically when there the middle class is abused and disappears. That antisemitism always comes in the form of scapegoating Jews when unscrupulous politicians want to project their failures onto us.
Donald Trump scapegoated Jews just recently, warning that if he fails to win the presidency, the Jews are to blame! That is a dangerous echo to the horrors of World War 2 and the Holocaust when dictators blamed Jews for all of the failures of society. We Jews cannot and will not go back to that dangerous time, least of all in the United States of America.
We Jews should choose the wise path of uplifting the poor not only because it is the ethical thing to do, not only because it is called for in Scripture and the Talmud, but because our history is littered with antisemitic outbreaks precisely at the times when the middle class was robbed by the wealthy and then distracted from social justice by manufactured scapegoating of the Jewish people. We owe it to ourselves and all Americans to embrace Vice President Harris's wise and carefully considered political path at this crucial moment in history.
Rabbi Marc Gopin is the James Laue Professor and directs the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution at the Carter School, George Mason University.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/compassionate-reasoning-9780197537923?cc=us&lang=en&
Compassionate Reasoning - Marc Gopin - Oxford University Press
Around the globe, people who work in the helping professions are often heroic bridge-builders and creators of peaceful societies. They have in common, Marc Gopin argues, a set of cultivated moral character traits and psychosocial skills. They tend to be kinder, more reasonable, more self-controlled, and more goal-oriented towards peace.
Marc Gopin
Books: https://amzn.to/3y58Nps
James H. Laue Professor of World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution,
Director CRDC,The Jimmy and Rosalynn School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, George Mason University
CRDC:
http://crdc.gmu.edu
Blog:
http://www.marcgopin.com
PODCAST:
co-owner, Gopin Associates LLC, "Building Human Relations and Healing Conflict"
https://gopinassociates.com