By H. Applebaum
SAN DIEGO — Every time I move to a new city and join a synagogue, I ask the rabbi what he thinks about political talk in the synagogue. In my parents’ time, it wasn’t an issue. Being so close to the suffering Jews had experienced in Europe under a myriad of different political parties, they understood the importance of keeping politics out of the sanctuary.
The rabbis always respond that they try to keep politics out, but the resignation in their voices, and their imperceptible shrugs, tell the real story. Perhaps they wonder why I ask; maybe no one else has, but it’s an issue I feel strongly about.
I will never forget the sadness and desperation in the voice of the woman who related the following story. We were sitting at the track, watching our sons run, and I was discussing my son’s bar mitzvah.
“Where are you having yours,” I asked.
“He’s not having one,” she said, “my husband doesn’t want it.” I sat in stunned silence as she continued. “My husband refuses to even walk into a synagogue; he was brought up that way. He doesn’t even want me to go. I go myself for Yom Kippur.”
Her husband had grown up in a town in New Jersey with a large Jewish population. His family were members of the large synagogue, the hub of the community, and his father, a prominent businessman, was devoted to the synagogue. The father had been bar-mitzvahed there and he took pride in donating time and money to make the place prosper. He used his professional expertise to help design the new synagogue pews and also subsidized their cost. He did all this, despite the fact that his political party was different from that of the other members’. His efforts were appreciated and he was honored by being elected president of the congregation.
Then he decided to run for mayor of the town. One day, as he sat in the congregation, he was shocked to hear a synagogue member, at the bima, admonish the congregation to not vote for him because of his political affiliation. This was his synagogue, where he got his Jewish education, where he brought his family for all the holidays, where he had given large donations, where he had devoted his free time, and where he considered his fellow congregants, his friends. Now they were turning on him, and in the place he considered his second home.
He stood up abruptly and walked out of the synagogue, taking his family with him, never to return again. Perhaps if there had been an apology, he would have re-considered, but there was none. He became a bitter man and neither he nor his family ever entered a synagogue again.
For the bar and bat mitzvahs we have attended throughout the years, our children’s, friend’s, and grandchildren’s, how many of us remember who was mayor then? We don’t even remember who was president. That’s how unimportant politics is compared to our heritage and our religion.
What we do remember is the warmth of the congregation, the shining eyes of the child being welcomed into the Jewish community, the parents, bursting with pride, and the significance of the ritual of Jewish continuity.
The terrible effects of mixing religion with politics go through the generations. A young Jewish boy never got a Jewish education, never was bar-mitzvahed, because a bunch of Jews, years before he was born, let the politics of the day infect their Jewish community.
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Applebaum is a freelance writer based in San Diego.