Republicans’ increasing embrace of Jews and Jewishness, quite apart from issues related to Israel, has been a welcome trend.
But not everybody on the left is happy about it. Which is how we got a recent New York Times story that I struggled to believe was even real at first.
The piece begins with a heartwarming anecdote. Lee Zeldin, a descendent of rabbis and the first Jewish director of the Environmental Protection Agency, affixed a mezuzah to the doorpost of his office at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. (The mezuzah is a scroll of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah that is put at the entrance to a Jewish home and the rooms within it.)
Zeldin invited media to attend the very brief ceremony, consisting mostly of a blessing, in which the mezuzah is installed because, the Times writes, he wanted to offer others “a moment to take a break from their normal routine, and to reflect and think about some other spiritual aspects of their day and their life.”
Sounds great, right? It gets better: “He was joined by other members of the Trump administration and representatives from several Jewish organizations. A rabbi attached a second mezuza to another door frame inside the office suite.”
What a beautiful sentiment.
You’re sensing a “but…” aren’t you? Of course:
“Many Jewish religious leaders praised Mr. Zeldin for publicly celebrating his identity. But for Jewish environmental activists, the reflection was on something different: Mr. Zeldin’s role in weakening rules designed to limit pollution and global warming.”
Amazing.
I wonder who initiated the sabotage of a nice Jewish ceremony, the New York Times reporter or the “Jewish environmental activists.” Did the reporter take it upon herself to call around looking for someone to trash a mezuzah-hanging ceremony? Or did the As-a-Jews go looking for someone to kvetch to on the record? I sometimes forget that humans are capable of such pettiness, but there’s always someone there to remind me.
One thinks of the Jew-shaming undertaken by the media when Ivanka and Jared Kushner moved into the spotlight in 2016, but even in those cases they were usually attacked for at least nominally religious reasons. In this case, his critics are arguing that Zeldin must ignore his constitutional duties and govern according to a left-wing interpretation of the previously undiscovered Jewish obligation to worship Gaia or some other green idol.
And who are those critics? “‘His repealing dozens of environmental protections is an assault on Jewish values, and I would even say a desecration of Jewish values,’ said Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, the founder of Dayenu, a Jewish nonprofit climate organization.”
Okay.
You won’t see the reverse of this story in the Times, that’s for sure. When second gentleman Doug Emhoff affixed a mezuzah to the vice presidential residence, the Times did not interview Orthodox rabbis about whether it was appropriate for an intermarried official to hang a mezuzah at their government residence.
The Times reporter gets in on the act too, of course, writing: “The obligation to repair the world, or tikkun olam, is a central concept of Judaism. But in his position as leader of the E.P.A., Mr. Zeldin is overseeing a profound overhaul of the agency.”
Sure, it’s possible that that isn’t the most insane juxtaposition of two sentences in all of American journalism. But it very well might be.
The “tikkun olam” talking point is the bellbottom jeans of the Jewish people: Once it falls out of fashion, you’ve got to let it stay there. Tikkun olam’s most famous reference, in the “Aleinu” prayer, is a call to do good by following God’s commandments. Elsewhere in Jewish history and law, it pertains to obligations that affect only Jews. Altogether, it has never meant anything remotely close to its secularist political reinterpretation, as Rabbi Meir Soloveichik has eloquently explained in these pages.
Either way, it certainly does not mean “don’t affix a mezuzah to your doorpost unless you enforce the strictest available cap on motor vehicle emissions.”
