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If The Worst Should Happen! (by Rev. Dr. Eric Smith)
(My feelings overwhelm and my thoughts run amok, but the words are not flowing as of yet … thankfully, the words of my friend and colleague, Dr. Eric Smith, feel right to share with you.- R.Mo )
The cover of Time Magazine for the week of November 14 has a photo shopped picture of candidates Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton holding a sign that reads, “THE END IS NEAR”. Of course the Time Magazine cover was alluding to the fact that the most contentious and negative Presidential Election in recent memory was coming to an end. However for some Hillary Clinton supporters the cover turned into an ominous prophesy I am sure many Clinton supporters went to bed on Election night in shock and thinking “Oh No The End Is Near.” No doubt an equal number of Trump supporters would have felt the same way had Clinton prevailed.
To my broken hearted sisters and brothers who went to bed thinking the election of Donald Trump is the worst thing that can happen, I say take a proper perspective about the election.
If you woke up this morning without a diagnosis of Cancer, HIV/AIDS or any number of other health issues, then the worst did not happen.
If you woke up this morning and found your children home and safe, then the worst did not happen.
If you woke up in a country (which you did) that did not have the military seize power overnight and declare marshal law and the elections invalid, then the worst did not happen.
In other words, stop acting like the world has slipped beyond God’s control. Remember on November the 8th 2016 the country elected a president not a God. So if, by chance or happenstance, the worst should happen remember what God told Moses to tell the children of Israel who were caught with the Red Sea in front of them and the Egyptian army behind them. “Go Forward!”
We are not called to sit down and whine. We are called to “Go Forward” with an agenda that includes a voice for unity not divisiveness. We are called to “Go Forward” with the agenda to lift up girls and women not treat them as sexual conquest for men with power or star power. We are called to to “Go Forward” with the agenda to remove ridicule and stigma from those with handicaps. We are called to “Go Forward” with the agenda to fight for full inclusion in the church for all people in the LGBTQ community. We are called to “Go Forward” with our agenda to promote “Interfaith Dialogue.” As Hillary Clinton put it, “we believe that the American dream is big enough for people of all races and religions, for men and women, for immigrants, for LGBT people and people with disabilities.” Therefore, God and the American Dream calls us to “Go Forward!”
We are called to “Go Forward” because “The End Is Not Near” and it is not here. We are called to “Go Forward because God is still in control. So if by chance or happenstance the worst should happen, remember these words from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Admitting the weighty problems and staggering disappointments, Christianity affirms that God is able to give us the power to meet them. God is able to give us the inner equilibrium to stand tall amid the trials and burdens of life. God is able to provide inner peace amid outer storms. This inner stability of faith is Christ’s chief legacy to his disciples. He offers neither material resources nor a magical formula that exempts us from suffering and persecution, but He brings an imperishable gift: “Peace I leave you.” This is the peace which surpasses all human understanding.”
The worst has not happened, but if by chance or happenstance the worst should happen, I say in the words of an old Negro Spiritual, “I must go on. I will go on to see what the end might be.” The end God has in mind is the best thing not the worse thing that could happen. So “Go Forward!”
From Peter Beinart: An American Jewish Trump Emergency
Time to form an American Jewish Emergency Committee Against Donald Trump … A mobilization would counter the shameful acquiescence to Trump in some corners of the American Jewish establishment. By Peter Beinart | Jun. 22, 2016
But more than a year since Donald Trump announced his presidential candidacy, and several months since he became the presumptive Republican nominee, there is still no American Jewish Emergency Committee against Fascism (or bigotry, or whatever name you choose to describe Donald Trump’s attacks on American Muslims, Mexican immigrants, an independent judiciary and a free press).
I hadn’t thought about this absence until last Shabbat, when an idealistic young Orthodox rabbi named Joshua Frankel came up to me during Kiddush and proposed creating one. His vision is to create a network of rabbis and lay leaders across the country so that wherever Trump speaks, there is always someone to protest, in Judaism’s name.
Of course, some American Jewish groups have already criticized Trump. The Forward’s Nathan Guttman reports that between last December and this May, the Anti-Defamation League condemned Trump’s statements at least five times. The American Jewish Committee called his proposed registry of American Muslims a “horror movie that we Jews are quite familiar with.” The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism organized a walkout of Trump’s speech at AIPAC. The Jewish social justice group Bend the Arc led anti-Trump protests just this week. And earlier this month, four prominent rabbis—one Orthodox, one Conservative, one Reform and one Reconstructionist—jointly declared that “Men and women of faith should indeed form a coalition to denounce the racism and bigotry that Trump spews forth and inspires.”
These protests are laudable. But they’ve been episodic. Frankel’s idea is to create something continuous, a protest that does not end until Trump’s presidential bid does. By challenging Trump wherever he goes, rabbis could use his campaign to rouse their own communities against bigotry. After protesting a Trump rally, some might take their congregants to a solidarity event at a local mosque. Others might help immigrants register to vote. The goal would be a rolling mobilization in which thousands or tens of thousands of American Jews join the struggle to defeat the most openly bigoted and authoritarian major party nominee in modern American history.
Such a mobilization would counter the shameful acquiescence to Trump in some corners of the American Jewish establishment. It would counter AIPAC’s decision to invite Trump to speak, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations’ failure to issue a single press release condemning him and Sheldon Adelson’s pledge to spend as much as $100 million helping him get elected.
It would show that American Jews take seriously the Torah’s 36 injunctions to remember the stranger because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. And it would put Jews on the right side during a moral crucible that Americans will remember for decades. Mexicans and Muslims will not always be the reviled outsiders they are in America today. One day, the children and grandchildren of the people Trump is demonizing will be highly integrated and politically influential and they will remember who defended their communities when they were under siege.
In defending Mexicans and Muslims, American Jews will also be defending ourselves. Trump is a bigotry entrepreneur. He looks for racial, ethnic and religious resentments that are being underserved by the political class. Today, Jews are not a primary target of those resentments. Nonetheless, Trump’s supporters have generated more public Jew-hatred than any campaign in decades. If you loathe “hyphenated Americans” and yearn to restore the hierarchies of 1950s America, chances are Jews may bother you too.
In the mid-twentieth century, American Jews participated in the civil rights movement in astonishing ways. The American Jewish Committee funded the research into the effects of segregation by African American psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark that helped sway the Supreme Court in Brown versus Board of Education. In the 1940s, notes J.J. Goldberg in his book, Jewish Power, the American Jewish Congress employed seven lawyers working to fighting segregation, more than either the Justice Department or the NAACP.
The reason was enlightened self-interest. American Jews knew that, as a conspicuous minority with a history of persecution, they would benefit immensely if America became a more equal, tolerant society. Conversely, they knew that if African Americans failed in their struggle for equal citizenship, Jews might also fail in theirs.
The same is true today. An election like this comes along once or twice a lifetime. Let the Trump campaign be an opportunity for American Jews to show our children the kind of people we still are.
Avraham Burg on the Kidnapped Israeli Young Men
The Palestinians: A kidnapped society
