November 13, 2008
The night that Barack Obama became our president-elect, I kept thinking about growing up in the segregated South. The only African Americans with whom I had contact were domestics who cleaned our home and laborers in my uncle’s automobile service center.
In the state of Georgia, the “county unit system” prevailed. Under that scheme, a downstate county with 5,000 voters had the same weight in state elections as Atlanta’s Fulton County with 100,000. That was one of the ways that racist political leaders maintained their stranglehold on Georgia politics. A young Jewish attorney, Morris B. Abram, challenged that law, which was eventually declared unconstitutional. One day I asked Abram why he had been so committed to overturning that oppressive system. He responded that his commitment to battle for human rights came from the Jewish values he learned at home and at his synagogue.
Those values were so threatening to bigots that in 1958 they bombed my temple in Atlanta, just as they set fire to the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four little girls in their Sunday school class; just as they assassinated Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney, who were registering voters in Mississippi; just as they murdered the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis.
Dr. King, who spoke like a Hebrew prophet, was imbued with these values of our biblical tradition, which we teach our children in our synagogues and homes:
- We are all created in the image of God.
- You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
- You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.
In the 1960s, we Jews linked arms with African Americans as 250,000 of us marched to Washington demanding, with one voice, civil rights legislation, antipoverty programs, and an end to the war in Vietnam. That alliance helped to reshape America and launch our nation into decades of prosperity and human progress.
Now, 45 years later, that alliance has once again contributed to a rebirth of the American spirit. With the election of Obama, pride in our nation has surged; Americans of every color, faith, and political persuasion have renewed hope; and citizens of every nation on earth view us through the bright prism of Obama’s election.
I realize that for many Jews Obama was initially an unknown quantity. I understand their initial apprehensions. But now we know that 78 percent of Jewish voters chose Obama — a larger percentage than for John Kerry in 2004 — and this just might suggest that we will be among the strongest supporters of our new president.
Perhaps we grew more comfortable with Obama because his Middle East advisers include men like Daniel Kurtzer, a native of Elizabeth and former ambassador to Israel; Dennis Ross, adviser to Presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton; and Anthony Lake, Clinton’s national security adviser, who converted to Judaism after he left government service. Most of their views on the shape of a Middle East peace agreement are shared by the majority of Israelis.
Perhaps my fellow Jews were struck by the fact that 577 rabbis signed on to Rabbis for Obama and that the leaders of the Chicago Jewish community, who know Obama best, have complete confidence in his commitment to Israel’s security.
Perhaps it was Obama’s background and values that brought Jews back to the fold. Tikun olam — repairing the world — is actually part of Obama’s Hebrew vocabulary. (I heard him use the phrase passionately and pronounce it correctly.) And isn’t this what we are about: to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, educate the ignorant, and let the oppressed go free? As Ari Wallach of JewsVote.org wrote, “His biography feels so Jewish. It feels like an Ellis Island archetype.”
Perhaps it was our children and grandchildren who were inspired by this man in a way that I have never seen before in a national election — never. Perhaps it was the young who had to remind their elders that every one of us can make a difference and that our messianic vision for a better world is not necessarily pie-in-the-sky.
I am encouraged that our soon-to-be president sees diplomacy as a first, not a last, resort; that high on his agenda in year one will be an Israeli-Palestinian peace and a regional Arab-Israeli agreement; that he supports direct engagement with Iran; and that he intends to end the war in Iraq soon and responsibly.
I am hopeful because our president-elect is a well-educated, clear thinker who is interested in ideas and can grasp complexity, who knows something about community organizing, and whose values are drawn from our shared religious tradition. His election offers a powerful opportunity for those of us who care about those values to realize our goals for a better educated, healthier, and more environmentally secure nation.
I have always been proud of the United States of America. But never prouder than on Nov. 4, 2008.
Rabbi Charles A. Kroloff is past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and rabbi emeritus of Temple Emanu-El in Westfield. He is currently vice president for special projects at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
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