Rabbi Joshua Waxman: February 2008 Archives

With the Republican nomination all but wrapped up, whatever attention Americans still have left for politics turns to the Democratic nomination, where Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both still viable contenders. Despite Obama’s recent momentum, it’s far too early to count Clinton out; she has shown herself to be a resourceful and relentless campaigner who isn’t above stooping to some low blows. In fact, she’s made her willingness to use hard-edged tactics something of a campaign theme; her point is that she has traded shots and spin with the best of them and has the grit and determination to prove it, while the relatively untested Obama would be walking blindfolded into the arms of the Republican smear machine should he become the Democratic nominee.

Clinton is right that Obama had something of a free ride for a while, receiving perhaps less press scrutiny than other major candidates, (although Bill Clinton’s whining about it only served to alienate voters) but that is now coming to an abrupt end. Nasty whispering campaigns and e-mails-–often anonymous-–have been in increasing circulation, implying that he is a junkie (based on admissions of past youthful drug use) or a terrorist (based on three years spent in a nominally Muslim school in Indonesia) or, better yet, both.

I found Rabbi Stern’s analysis of the economy as a faith-based institution interesting. It cast Alan Greenspan’s (now Ben Bernanke’s) cryptic musings about future conditions in a new light: the high priest of economics reciting just the right words (and perhaps sacrificing a goat) to attain the desired economic outcome.

Faith and the economy is also a tenet than can be seen going back to William Jennings Bryan’s famed speech at the 1896 National Democratic Convention, in which he spoke about the gold standard (as opposed to the more liberal "silver standard") as being an agent of oppression for farmers and laborers who were having difficulty receiving credit. His speech concludes by alluding to a “cross of gold” on whom these farmers are crucified. One could just as easily imagine the imagery of a Golden Calf: that solid and substantive idol that people need as a concrete symbol and validation of their belief, rather than simply taking things on faith.

I have to admit that I was secretly thrilled when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert-–my sole pop-cultural fixes-–announced that they would be coming back on the air at the beginning of January, despite the ongoing Writers Guild strike.

Now, I know that Jews go back to the beginning of organized labor and that such figures as Samuel Gompers and Emma Lazarus helped create a proud legacy of Jewish activism on behalf of exploited workers. I certainly would never cross a picket line to patronize a store or hotel whose workers were on strike. So why can’t I get myself worked up that the Writers Guild strike is an issue that Jews should be supporting?