Bob Schwartz

Tzedahah is a Hebrew word often translated as charity, but in the Bible means righteous behavior. It is a requirement of Jewish life. On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, tzedakah, along with tefilla (prayer) and teshuvah (repentance), is how we are written in the Book of Life.

The famine in Gaza is at the highest level on the scale: Catastrophic food insecurity.

The International Rescue Committee explains:

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) scale is how hunger crises are measured. Famines are only declared if and when certain criteria defined by this system are met.

More than 1.1 million people in Gaza are already experiencing Level 5 catastrophic food insecurity, and the entire population is facing some level of hunger.

As it stands, children and families don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and they are already going hungry.

The entire population in Gaza is at imminent risk of famine. Without immediate assistance, thousands are likely to face starvation that leads to death.

This crisis is entirely man-made. Once famine is classified, people are already dying. Stopping famine from taking hold is a race against time.

As an act of simple charity, of tzedakah, donating to the International Rescue Committee would be a good thing. It does seem that Jewish people like me have a special responsibility in this case. Whatever your view is of the current war and how it is being conducted, this is exactly the sort of suffering that tzedakah is meant to relieve. Righteous behavior.

Donate to the International Rescue Committee today.

Our public life is in shambles.

Any public life that includes Trump—so obsessively—would be. Having a disordered personality in such a prominent role would naturally lead to chaos and a dark downward spiral. (Reminder, no matter your feelings about Biden, do vote for him to defeat Trump.)

Biden, however, has added to the shambles. His Gaza “policy” has been at least equivocal and incoherent and at most destructive and duplicitous. Which is why some traditionally Democratic voters are wondering about supporting him, and why a very small but courageous number of people in his administration have left. To counteract the disaffection and loss of confidence, Biden could have long ago injected brave straight talk and active engagement into the situation, instead of toothless rhetoric, which only made him look weak when Netanyahu ignored him.

That didn’t happen. And if the latest peace plan, which may or may not go anywhere, is meant to erase all that’s gone on, that’s just one more miscalculation.

Israel is committed to standing alone in the world. In fact, it is part of its character and a point of pride. If Biden wants to also stand alone in the world, which on Gaza he is now doing, he has his own price to pay. He seems to be calculating that being too hard on Israel is politically worse than going easy. That is proving to be a risky bet.

© 2024 by Bob Schwartz

It shouldn’t surprise you that after Trump’s criminal conviction, I’m not going to be supporting him or voting for him in the 2024 election.

It shouldn’t surprise you because…I’m dead! For those who say I am turning in my grave or crying, same thing.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t advise those in the Republican Party, since that was my party. Literally, “the party of Lincoln”.

I was never known to use much vulgar language, even when I lost my temper. Though times and politics have changed—not necessarily for the better—you won’t hear me say what I might say to these Republicans if I had 21st century sensibilities: What the **** is wrong with you!?

Current Republicans have missed everything I stood for. I was never an angel above politics. That’s not how you win two presidential elections. But I was a person and leader of principle. The Republican Party, the one prepared to nominate a convicted criminal whose crime was to subvert an election, is taking a torch to those principles. American principles, constitutional principles, principles of justice, principles of decent behavior, in and out of office.

I want out. I am begging the Republican Party to renounce me. Stop calling it “the party of Lincoln”. Please take my name off. I may be dead, but I hope my spirit lives on. Just not, apparently, in the Republican Party.

© 2024 by Abraham Lincoln

Political power is one of the great temptations. Read ancient or modern history, read the Bible, read today’s news.

That news includes Nikki Haley, who not long ago called Trump dangerous and demented, now says she will vote for him. This is only the latest example of these kinds of turnarounds. A roster of Republicans brutally criticized Trump while they were vying for the 2016 nomination. The moment he won the nomination and looked like a potential president, they changed their tune. None more radically than Lindsey Graham, whose unwavering support of all things Trump has led to speculation that Trump has some secret personal evidence about him. Pure speculation.

Democrats are not strangers to political expediency, equivocation and hypocrisy. Plenty of examples. But Republicans have taken it to a new level. The Trump phenomenon has laid bare that in the Republican domain, with a few exceptions, all elements of integrity are gone. Maybe sleeping, maybe on vacation, maybe wounded, but more than likely dead for now.

For those of us who are not politicians, just citizens and political observers, the question loudly arises: Is political office and power really so important that all vestiges of integrity can be sacrificed? There were moments in the Nikki Haley campaign when she sounded like she actually meant what she said. We now know she didn’t. Or if she did at the time, she has found something more important, like being president someday.

There are so many Christians who support Trump and so many Republican politicians who are faithful Christians. Which means they may have read the Gospel of Mark thousands of times, and quoted it just as often. Whether they understood it is a different question, as is the question of how closely they follow it.

It is worth, for them and anybody, recalling the words from Mark 8:36:

What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? (NIV)

There are a lot of souls forfeited along the Republican trail.

© 2024 by Bob Schwartz

“I have had many conversations, as you have had, with a lot of young people over the last many months now. They don’t know very much at all about the history of the Middle East, or frankly about history, in many areas of the world, including in our own country.”
Hillary Clinton, MSNBC, Morning Joe, May 9, 2024

I have not forgiven Hillary, or for that matter Bill, for being such a destructive force on the Democratic Party and America.

Without details about all these issues, let’s just say that Hillary is a terrible national politician and leader, who convinced the Democratic Party, against all observation and evidence, that she would be a certain winner in the 2016 election. She didn’t win, and her foreseeable defeat changed America for the much worse.

I have said repeatedly that the best thing for the Democratic Party, for America, and selfishly, for me, would be if Hillary would just go away. Partly so she would stop saying stupid and unhelpful stuff like this. Partly because, as noted, she is responsible for where we are now.

Apparently, my wish hasn’t yet come true.

If I were Israeli, and my leader and his braintrust were as incompetent, despicable and crazy as Bibi and his, I would be demonstrating too. Demonstrating to find out why they could not work out a way for the terrorists to finally release the remaining hostages, without literally alienating the entire world and killing tens of thousands of people.

The ongoing demonstrations in Israel had me wondering something that is absurd on its face, but maybe enlightening. Why aren’t there any protests in Gaza? Even if you believe the people in Gaza have nothing to legitimately complain about, you might understand the burdens of their situation.

You know the answer. Protesting against existential threats you can’t control is pointless, when all of your time and life force is used to survive, with a little left over for grief. It might actually get you jailed or killed as an enemy. Which is why others around the world are protesting for you. Contrary to the view that American and global protestors are motivated by some hateful, selfish, naïve, uniformed petulance, they are just doing what the people of Gaza can’t: Saying, shouting “no”.