America’s history of tolerance and acceptance

A student once asked Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezeritch: “We are taught to thank God for every day we live, but why would we thank God for bad days?”

The rabbi responded, “Go find Rabbi Zusha. He will help you understand.”

So the student went to visit Rabbi Zusha. He found him living in a meager house with broken furniture, clothing tattered. “My rabbi sent me here,” the young man explained, “so you could teach me why we must thank God for bad days.”

Rabbi Zusha answered with surprise, “I don’t know why he sent you to me. I’ve had no bad days. Every day is a gift for which I give thanks.”

We should take Rabbi Zusha’s lesson to heart this holiday season, thanking God for the blessings of home and family, friendship and community.

And, as I remind myself after an election that did not go as I, a liberal Jew from New York City, had hoped, we should thank God for our country, troubled and divided, but ours. 

The presidential election revealed the discontent many Americans feel with government and with their lives — for some a sense that the establishment’s cultural values and economic priorities are not their own, for others a feeling that the deck is stacked against them. 

Big city liberals like me must learn to see through our eyes the lived experience of small town America. And in our own communities too, we must remember that those with whom we disagree are our neighbors, not our enemies. The concerns motivating their votes are no less consequential than ours. 

America suffered many ills pre-existing election season: routine mass shootings; an ever-widening chasm between rich and poor in housing, health care, education, and jobs; a cultural divide where one citizen’s pursuit of personal freedom is perceived to threaten another citizen’s security or belonging. The presidential campaign aggravated these tensions. 

Many Americans will need reassurance of their safety. We must denounce any attempts to undermine the separation of powers, checks and balances, and other constitutional provisions safeguarding democracy and minority rights.

America’s early commitment to minorities was made explicit in the summer of 1790 when the newly elected president, George Washington, visited Rhode Island. Moses Seixas, warden of the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, authored a letter of welcome celebrating this new republic “generously affording to all liberty of conscience, and immunities of citizenship — deeming everyone, of whatever nation, tongue or language equal….”

To this vision, Washington responded with an historic affirmation: “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the government of the United States…gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance….”

That ideal remains in jeopardy for too many: women whose health is endangered by abortion restrictions; LGBTQ youth facing legalized discrimination in school; undocumented immigrants who fled violence in Central America and now fear family separations through mass deportations; rural families whose farms cannot sustain them; line workers whose local plants have closed; unemployed youth caught in the throes of addiction.

The presidential campaign threw into sharper relief the fissures we knew divided America. Now we must heal them so that we can one day realize the hope inscribed on our national seal, E Pluribus Unum, “Out of Many, One.”

As we turn from the partisan fight to the binding of our wounds, houses of worship have a role to play. Experienced in bridge-building, we are uniquely positioned to help span the divides that separate neighbor from neighbor, and the diverse communities that make up America yet remain strangers to one another.

Through intra- and inter-communal conversation, we can strengthen alliances with those with whom we agree, and we can better understand the needs and hopes of those with whom we do not agree but with whom we might yet develop meaningful partnerships. And always we will remain spiritual sanctuaries for those seeking comfort, and ethical touchstones challenging the status quo. Our mission must be to lift up a vision of unity for a divided nation.

Washington closed his response with this benediction: “May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.”

May this season of Thanksgiving be one of happiness. May we be thankful for the joys of our lives, and for America — troubled and divided — but ours.

Davidson is the senior rabbi of Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York.