[Insert Progressive Issue] Is A Jewish Value

by Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Truah – The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights

New York, March 29 – Democracy. Feminism. Marriage equality. #ItsHerTurn. Mandated pronouns. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Critical Race Theory. Collective reparations. Drag Queen Story Hours. Free Palestine. Net Zero. Defund the Police. Sanctuary Cities. The list goes on of the pillars of the moral system that is my Judaism, a creed that, as I interpret it, conveniently dovetails with all the moral axioms of the Left. So validating!

I can think of no other way to celebrate and enrich a religious system based on the revelation of eternal principles by the one creator and sustainer of reality than to understand those principles only in terms of the early twenty-first-century zeitgeist, and to dismiss anything previous that contradicts that zeitgeist. Those earlier generations, hard as they tried, got everything wrong: slavery, women without property rights, xenophobia, cisheteronormativity, you name it. All the things our ancestors valued? Canceled. [Insert Progressive issue] is a Jewish value. Not that benighted stuff. Those people were all bigoted in some way, negating all their accomplishments and thinking.

Plenty of the ancient material remains for us to mine and adduce in support of our agenda, especially if we remake it in our own image, rather than relying on the collective wisdom of a bunch of patriarchal men to understand it. What did those men know? They never wore pink pussycat hats to march in Washington, and we have. They, and the people who insist those outdated “scholars” and “thinkers” are even relevant anymore, cannot define Judaism for me, who has the benefit of having read Kendi’s critiques of the white patriarchal systemic matrix that enforces disparities that disadvantage marginalized populations. Those Jews of the past knew nothing of being victims of systemic oppression of marginalized populations that cemented their underclass status. They didn’t have the empathy that I and my colleagues do.

When I declare that [insert progressive issue] is a Jewish value, you must listen, because of the authority that my title of Rabbi confers. I know what Jewish values are because I have the equivalent of a Mater’s Degree in Jewish Studies. Not like those other Rabbis from other institutions, movements, backgrounds, or eras, who only studied material such as Talmud, Midrash, responsa, Kabbalah, and Jewish philosophy, plus whatever other disciplines might help them better understand the world. They never had the benefit of the Soncino translation of the Talmud into English, and they certainly never had Google, so how could they possibly have grasped it?

Being anti-traditional-Judaism is a Jewish value.

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