A few weeks ago, shortly after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a congregant came up to me at the end of a synagogue program with tears in his eyes. He wanted to share with me an experience he had recently had. His pre-teen son, he told me, had come home from school the other day saying that he and his friends had been talking about the shooting. A few of his friends said that their parents had said that Charlie Kirk deserved to be killed – and the son wanted to know if his father agreed.
The question, the dad told me, hit him like a punch in the gut. How is it possible, the dad wondered, that this is even a question? How is it possible that we can be so sophisticated in our ability to parse the news, and yet, so unable to grasp some of life’s most basic principles, like “Thou shalt not murder?” How is it possible that our country has come to this?
The sad truth is that our country has long suffered from the scourge of political violence. The assassination of Charlie Kirk is just the latest incident in a long trend – with dozens of assassination attempts, and with armed uprisings stretching backwards from January 6 all the way to Shay’s Rebellion of the 1780s, in which a group of armed protestors tried to overthrow the Massachusetts state government.
And yet, despite this long history, ours seems to be an era in which politically motivated violence is especially on the rise – with the average number of annual incidents having
quadrupled over the past ten years.
It is clear that something in our politics has gone sour. But it is equally clear that the problem is more than merely political. Rather, there are many complex and interlocking factors that have contributed to the problem – many layers of societal tumult that have fed into our political malaise. And one of those layers of tumult – a layer in which we might be particularly interested this Yom Kippur morning – is the tumult we have been experiencing in American religion.
When we look at statistics, the trends become obvious. Studies from the Pew Research Center show that, over the past several decades, Americans’ participation in organized religion has been
steadily on the decline. Meanwhile, other Pew studies show that, over the same period, Americans’ political engagement has been at
a near-all-time high.
Looking at this data, many observers have theorized that, in the United States today, politics has gradually become our new religion.
We can see it not only in the data from Pew, but also, (if you will) in the data from the pews. In a previous era, when a person of Christian religious faith moved to a new town, they would choose which church to attend based on denominational affiliation: Lutherans would go to the Lutheran church; Baptists, to the Baptist church. Today, however, that is no longer the case. Today, most Christians
choose their church based not on denominational affiliation, but rather, on political leaning: such that, regardless of whether a person grew up Lutheran or Baptist, a political liberal is more likely to join a liberal church – and a political conservative, to join a conservative one.
(As an aside: the same is roughly true in the Jewish community as well – though, in our case, the political dividing line is typically over Israel.)
This observation – that most Americans chose their house of worship based on politics –
leads University of Pennsylvania political scientist Michele Margolis to a surprising conclusion. It may once have been the case that a person’s religious values came first, and that our political opinions were merely a downstream expression of those values. But today, Margolis argues, the exact opposite is true. For most Americans, it is our political commitments that are primary – and we then mold our religious values to fit around our politics.
This dynamic helps to explain how it is possible that a religious group might have internal political disagreements. Take, for example, the issue of climate change. There are some Christian groups who cite verses from the Bible as proof that humankind is responsible for the care of the earth. And meanwhile, there are
other Christian groups who cite different verses from the very same Bible as proof that climate change is just another natural cycle in God’s creation. For each group, it is the political commitment that is primary, and we then mold our religious values accordingly.
In a society in which politics has become our new religion, we naturally end up looking in the political realm for the kinds of transcendent experiences that religion has historically provided. Lacking the sense of congregational fellowship that we once found in religion, we instead go looking for community among the people who vote like us. Lacking the sense of shared belief that we once found in religion, we instead subscribe to certain political ideologies – and, in some cases, even dogmas. Lacking the prescribed rituals that we once found in religion, we instead find ritual catharsis through conventions, rallies, and protests.
Considering this, we should not be surprised by the degree of religious fervor that has invaded our politics. When all the powerful effects of religion are displaced into the political arena, it becomes easier to understand how a person might come to believe in a conspiracy theory – or, worse, might decide to assassinate a political opponent.
To help address our country's political malaise, we would be wise to stop treating politics as if it were a religion.
To be clear: this is not to say that we should stop caring about politics – nor is it to say that we should no longer bring our religious traditions to bear on the political questions of our day. On the contrary: Judaism is a religion that insists that we take the world seriously. Ours is a tradition that has something to say not just about the spiritual questions – like what is a soul, or is it possible for a human being to truly change. Rather, our tradition has something to say – and, usually, a multiplicity of things to say – about every aspect of the human experience: about commerce as well as criminal justice, about medical- and military-ethics.
Instead, when I say that we would be wise to stop treating politics as if it were a religion, what I mean is: that we ought to try and satiate our natural human thirst for meaning not only in the realm of politics, but also, back in the realm of the religious, where it once belonged.
Doing so would come with several practical benefits. For starters, religion can help fulfill our human need for community. Unlike in a political group, where the feeling of fellowship is centered around the shared pursuit of a certain agenda, in a congregational community, the feeling of fellowship is an end unto itself: an extended family with whom to share the highs and lows of being human, with whom to mark the passages of the life-cycle and the changing of the seasons.
What’s more, being part of a congregational community pushes us to form and maintain relationships with people with whom we disagree. Instead of having us hunker down in our own ideological echo-chambers, a congregational community keeps an open seat at the same Torah Study table for people whose political views do not match our own. When we have grappled together over our sacred texts, or mourned together the death of a fellow congregant, it becomes a lot harder to demonize the person with whom you disagree politically.
In addition to providing us with community, religion can also help fulfill our human need for ritual. Ritual helps us to find transcendent meaning. That is: it is meant to help us feel connected to something that is bigger than just ourselves. For example: when we perform the ritual of lighting Shabbat candles, we experience not merely the act of a striking match and setting a wick aflame. Rather, when we strike the match, we might also remember the voice of our grandmother, whom we so often heard recite the blessings; we might feel ourselves connected to the millions of other Jewish households all around the world, who, at the very same moment as us, are also lighting their Shabbat candles; we might feel ourselves connected to long-gone eras in Jewish history, in which our ancestors kindled lights for Shabbat sometimes in secret; we might even feel ourselves connected to the Jewish creation myth, in which God’s first statement was “Let there be light,” linking our act of candle-lighting with the mythic birth of the universe.
Without this kind of religious ritual, we are left to look elsewhere to help us feel connected to something that is bigger than just ourselves. And when we try to fulfill that human need in the political arena, we might find ourselves participating in unsavory activities – whether that is storming the Capitol Building or burning down a police station.
These, so far, are some of the practical benefits of religion: that it can provide us with community, and that it can help us to feel a part of something greater. And it is indeed true, as our times demonstrate, that these practical benefits can also be achieved through politics.
But there is something more that religion has to offer – something deeper, which simply cannot be replicated through politics.
Religion, uniquely, is intended to orient us towards the numinous – towards the mysterious, the awe-inspiring. And in our Jewish tradition, the feeling of awe is nowhere better captured than in these, the Days of Awe – our High Holy Days. This sacred time – and especially today, Yom Kippur – is intended to orient us towards a spiritual perspective that politics can never replicate.
I can think of at least two ways in which this is so.
First: among the two High Holy Days, Yom Kippur is clearly the more important. The Torah calls it Shabbat Shabbaton: the Sabbath of all Sabbaths – the holiest of all holy days. We ought, then, to wonder: Why is it that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are both called High Holy Days, but Yom Kippur alone is considered the highest? Or, put differently: What is it about Yom Kippur that distinguishes it from Rosh Hashanah?
On both holidays, we sound the shofar. On both holidays, we sing Avinu Malkeinu. On both holidays, we chant the U-n’taneh tokef prayer. But it is only on Yom Kippur that we recite the Vidui. That is: it is only on Yom Kippur that we recite the penitential prayers – the prayers of confession, the prayers in which we acknowledge that we have made mistakes in the past year.
The thing that sets Yom Kippur apart – the thing that makes it the holiest of all holy days – is that on Yom Kippur, we humbly admit that we are not perfect. We stand before the open ark and we read these words of contrition from the prayer book – knowing, in the depths of our heart, that they ring true. We say: “We are not so arrogant and stiff-necked as to say before You, our God, that we are blameless and free of sin. Rather, we know we have stumbled and strayed. We have indeed done wrong.”
In the political realm, by contrast, to flip-flop – that is, to realize that one has made a mistake – is considered a liability. In the religious realm, however, admitting to our mistakes is praiseworthy.
Second: in ancient times, when the Temple still stood in Jerusalem, our ancestors did not observe Yom Kippur in the same way that we do today. They did not gather in their local synagogues. They did not chant from a prayer book or read passages from the Torah.
Rather, when Yom Kippur arrived, they went to the Temple in Jerusalem, where the priests would conduct a carefully prescribed ritual. The High Priest – the highest-ranking religious official in the land – would enter the Temple shrine. He would walk through the outer courtyard, pass through the inner courtyard, past the sacrificial altar, and carefully enter the central chamber of the Temple complex: the Holy of Holies – a place where only the High Priest was allowed to enter, and even for him, only on Yom Kippur. And there, inside the Holy of Holies, the High Priest would utter a word that was otherwise never allowed to be spoken. He would whisper the name of God. As the Talmud famously summarizes the ritual: on the holiest day, the holiest person would enter the holiest place and utter the holiest word – a perfect nexus of time, space, person, and language.
But it turns out that the name of God – this holiest word that only the High Priest was allowed to utter – is, in fact, no word at all. It is nothing more than a silent breath of air: the Hebrew letters Yod Hey Vav Hey – a combination of letters that produces no sound, a mere exhalation. On the holiest day, the holiest person would enter the holiest place and utter the holiest word: and the holiest word is to be speechless – to be attuned to wonder, mystery, and awe.
In these two ways – by asking us to acknowledge that we are imperfect, and by keeping us open to awe and to wonder – Yom Kippur orients us towards a spiritual perspective that politics can never replicate.
Perhaps this spiritual perspective is exactly what we need in order to help us heal our country’s political malaise. If we can stop treating politics as if it were our religion, then perhaps religion might be able to reclaim the actual, helpful role that it can play in a healthy democracy.
It is a role that, at its best, religion has long played in this country – a role that was already recognizable in the early decades of our nation, when the famous French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville wrote his seminal book Democracy in America.
What de Tocqueville recognized then, we would be wise to remember today – which is: that democracy works best when it is grounded in some sense of the transcendent. As de Tocqueville wrote long ago: Tyranny “may be able to govern without faith, but liberty cannot.”
