Two Jewish Moral Worlds . . . can we learn anything from the past?
… Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say, “I love you, ” right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I’ve looked at life that way
… Oh, but now old friends, they’re acting strange
And they shake their heads, and they tell me that I’ve changed
(Thanks, Joni)
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(from Solomon in his older and wiser age: Book of Ecclesiastes
“ain kol hadash tahat ha’shemesh” — “וְאֵ֥ין כׇּל־חָדָ֖שׁ תַּ֥חַת הַשָּֽׁמֶשׁ”
“There is nothing new
under the sun!”
And yet, in remembering and learning, along with life experience, there is less illusion and more wisdom.
Thanks, Joni … Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say, “I love you, ” right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I’ve looked at life that way
… Oh, but now old friends, they’re acting strange
And they shake their heads, and they tell me that I’ve changed
Well, something’s lost (naivete), but something’s gained (wisdom born of experience)
In living every day
… I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions . . . that I recall –
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From Solomon’s near collapse to Solomon’s rise, with a look at life (from both sides now).
________________
1 Kings 1:10: from this week’s Haftara
וְֽאֶת־נָתָן֩ הַנָּבִ֨יא וּבְנָיָ֜הוּ וְֽאֶת־הַגִּבּוֹרִ֛ים וְאֶת־שְׁלֹמֹ֥ה אָחִ֖יו לֹ֥א קָרָֽא׃
but he did not invite the prophet Nathan, or Benaiah, or the warriors, or his brother Solomon.
וַיֹּ֣אמֶר נָתָ֗ן אֶל־בַּת־שֶׁ֤בַע אֵם־שְׁלֹמֹה֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר הֲל֣וֹא שָׁמַ֔עַתְּ כִּ֥י מָלַ֖ךְ אֲדֹנִיָּ֣הוּ בֶן־חַגִּ֑ית וַאֲדֹנֵ֥ינוּ דָוִ֖ד לֹ֥א יָדָֽע׃
Then Nathan said to Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, “You must have heard that Adonijah son of Haggith has assumed the kingship without the knowledge of our lord David.
וְעַתָּ֕ה לְכִ֛י אִיעָצֵ֥ךְ נָ֖א עֵצָ֑ה וּמַלְּטִי֙ אֶת־נַפְשֵׁ֔ךְ וְאֶת־נֶ֥פֶשׁ בְּנֵ֖ךְ שְׁלֹמֹֽה׃
Now take my advice, so that you may save your life and the life of your son Solomon.
לְכִ֞י וּבֹ֣אִי ׀ אֶל־הַמֶּ֣לֶךְ דָּוִ֗ד וְאָמַ֤רְתְּ אֵלָיו֙ הֲלֹֽא־אַתָּ֞ה אֲדֹנִ֣י הַמֶּ֗לֶךְ נִשְׁבַּ֤עְתָּ לַאֲמָֽתְךָ֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר כִּֽי־שְׁלֹמֹ֤ה בְנֵךְ֙ יִמְלֹ֣ךְ אַחֲרַ֔י וְה֖וּא יֵשֵׁ֣ב עַל־כִּסְאִ֑י וּמַדּ֖וּעַ מָלַ֥ךְ אֲדֹנִיָּֽהוּ׃
Go immediately to King David and say to him, ‘Did not you, O lord king, swear to your maidservant: “Your son Solomon shall succeed me as king, and he shall sit upon my throne”? Then why has Adonijah become king?’
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Is there nothing new under the sun?
This is an opinion piece:
Two Jewish Moral Worlds: What the Mamdani Election Reveals
By Samuel J. Abrams From The Algemeiner
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/two-jewish-moral-worlds-what-the-mamdani-election-reveals/
4 Excerpts — yes, worth the 5 minutes to review the whole . . .
1. Political psychology offers a framework for understanding (this) divergence.
Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham’s Moral Foundations Theory describes human moral reasoning as rooted in several intuitive “foundations.” The first pair — Care and Fairness — orient toward empathy, equality, and the mitigation of harm. The second set — Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity — prioritize group solidarity, respect for tradition, and the protection of what is sacred.
Liberals, Haidt’s research found, tend to emphasize the individualizing foundations of care and fairness; conservatives draw upon all five, including those that bind the group together. These moral instincts operate beneath conscious ideology, shaping the stories people tell about justice, duty, and belonging.
Applied to Jewish life, this model illuminates the Mamdani divide. The younger, Park Slope cohort embodies the individualizing moral style. Their Judaism is ethical universalism — a faith of empathy, repair, and inclusion. To them, Jewish history teaches solidarity with the marginalized, not tribal defense. Their political commitments — tenant rights, climate action, anti-racism, and Palestinian solidarity — feel like moral extensions of their Jewish conscience.
Supporting Mamdani, in this light, is not an act of betrayal but an act of consistency. The Upper East Side cohort, by contrast, lives in the binding moral register. Their Judaism centers on loyalty to the Jewish people, reverence for institutions, and defense of Israel as a sacred trust. When a candidate denounces Israel as genocidal, they hear not critique but violation. The vote for Cuomo was not a calculation of interests; it was an affirmation of covenant.
2. The Jewish community’s fracture is thus a microcosm of the American one. If one of the nation’s most institutionally successful minorities cannot sustain moral coherence across generations, the prospects for the larger democracy are sobering.
3. Still, Jewish tradition offers a path forward. The Hebrew Bible itself balances competing moral imperatives: love the stranger (Care), pursue justice (Fairness), remember you were slaves in Egypt (Loyalty), honor your parents (Authority), and be holy (Sanctity). The moral genius of Judaism has always been its capacity to integrate rather than choose. A renewed Jewish civic life would recover that synthesis — not by diluting conviction, but by translating between moral dialects.
4. The Mamdani election did not create this divide; it exposed it. The challenge now is whether American Jews can build a third moral script, one that joins care to continuity, justice to responsibility, empathy to endurance. That work begins by recognizing that not all differences are merely moral styles. Mamdani’s campaign trafficked in ideas that crossed into antisemitism — denying Jewish self-determination, vilifying Israel as inherently criminal, and normalizing hostility toward Jewish identity itself.
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The world (and its peoples) do not change; our perspective changes.
As we often discuss, this requires a renewed look at the harsh realities of the world as it is, along with the people(s) among whom we dwell.
It has come time to take a look at everything that we have either purposely or even accidentally forgotten, and then figure out how to communicate that to the next generation.
