WASHINGTON (RNS) — Given his decades-long expertise in interfaith relations, non secular freedom, and religion and politics, Rabbi David Saperstein is usually sought out for speeches and recommendation.
Within the wake of the November election, the director emeritus of the Non secular Motion Middle of Reform Judaism was invited to talk about the implications of the incoming Trump administration at a dialogue co-convened by the Nationwide Council of Church buildings and the Nationwide Council of Synagogues. He voiced specific concern about what he sees as diminished bipartisanship and dialogue throughout traces of distinction.
“We’ve misplaced numerous that on this hyper-partisanized, divisive environment,” he stated in a follow-up interview with RNS.
“And I pray for each President Trump to form of see the sunshine on this, however for different political leaders in each events to acknowledge that the future of humankind depends upon recapturing a few of that skill to search out frequent floor and to work collectively and to make compromises as a way to not permit the right to be the enemy of the nice.”
Saperstein, 77, talked with RNS about his work as a mentor to future rabbis and lobbyists, how his time on the U.S. Fee on Worldwide Non secular Freedom knowledgeable his work as a spiritual freedom ambassador, and his hopes for the way forward for non secular social motion.
RELATED: Rabbi David Saperstein, 50 years later, nonetheless dedicated to lobbying for frequent floor
The interview was edited for size and readability.
At “the RAC,” you will have been identified for coaching adults in addition to teenagers — a few of whom turned out to be future rabbis — on the connections between Judaism and social justice. What has been the essence of what you need them to study?
We would like them to study the Jewish roots and Jewish views on a number of the nice ethical points they face of their lives, and on this planet they’re inheriting from us. We would like them to have the advocacy abilities, whether or not they agree with our positions or not, to be efficient and worth the coverage positions they maintain, and we wish them to know the rights embodied in our First Modification, and that the success of our democratic experiment depends upon each citizen stepping as much as the plate to assist form this nation and to reside as much as its beliefs.
Rabbi David Saperstein on the Non secular Motion Middle in Washington, D.C., Dec. 16, 2024. (RNS picture/Adelle M. Banks)
Are you involved concerning the state of democracy?
Profoundly involved. It’s the most precarious second, actually in our lifetimes, and I believe extra precisely, for the reason that Twenties, probably the most precarious second by way of the survival of the democratic beliefs, modalities, rights and freedoms that the American expertise has been devoted to.
Given your veteran standing, what’s your reply to those that ask you, “What will we do now?”
We clearly have the power, starting with the advocacy with this new Congress and this new administration, to attempt to examine a number of the excesses that we’ve, to attempt to rebuild the bipartisan coalition — will not be a big group within the Republican configuration proper now — who’s prepared to problem efforts that individuals concern will come from this administration that may injury democracy and our democratic establishments. However I believe there are sufficient that we will forestall a number of the injury that many speaking heads are warning about, and we’ll mobilize for the subsequent election to get people who find themselves extra broadly dedicated to our democratic norms.
On the identical time, we’ve to acknowledge there are huge challenges that transcend our concentrate on the incoming administration that we should come to grips with. In different phrases, local weather change imperils life as we all know it on Earth, the lingering affect of racism and sexism in America, of suspicion of minority teams, of homosexual folks in America, non secular minorities in America, the rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia. All of those have been maybe exacerbated by this incoming administration. These considerations signify a lot bigger traits we’ve to be discovering methods to battle for, even when it’s completed within the civil society sector proper now and may’t be completed as successfully as we wish within the authorities sector proper now.
You prayed on the Democratic Nationwide Conference when President Barack Obama was changing into a presidential nominee, and also you’ve labored with former Republican Sen. Sam Brownback and Rep. Frank Wolf on non secular freedom. How do you view bipartisanship, and do you will have any hope for its success sooner or later?
Whichever administration is in energy, and whoever controls the Home and the Senate, we’ve been in a position to proceed to work collectively on quite a lot of these points. Individuals could be stunned, below the floor, what number of occasions we’re in a position to really get some issues completed. You possibly can solely go so lengthy earlier than you cope with local weather change. If you start to speak of rounding up tens of millions of (immigrant) folks, the info are going to make that unattainable. After which you need to search for different choices. That’s going to require bipartisan cooperation.
However the breakdown of bipartisanship is de facto one of the crucial alarming traits in American political life and cultural life. If you concentrate on it, it’s exhausting to consider any nice achievement for social justice within the twentieth century that didn’t occur due to a bipartisan coalition on Capitol Hill. The labor motion, the New Deal lastly started to cope with the Melancholy, the Civil Rights Motion, the anti-war motion, the ladies’s rights motion, the environmental motion, the Nice Society — all of those had bipartisan assist and the assist of multiracial, multireligious, multiethnic coalitions of decency all through the nation.
Thomas Farr, from left, the primary director of the State Division’s Workplace of Worldwide Non secular Freedom, and ambassadors-at-large for worldwide non secular freedom Rabbi David Saperstein, Suzan Johnson Prepare dinner and Sam Brownback attend an occasion commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Worldwide Non secular Freedom Act on Nov. 9, 2018, in Washington. (RNS picture/Adelle M. Banks)
As the primary chair of the U.S. Fee on Worldwide Non secular Freedom — this unbiased, bipartisan physique that strove to cope with egregious conditions — you oversaw studies yearly on the necessity for change in locations throughout the globe. What change did you see in that function?
There are a selection of ways in which change for the nice was mirrored. As a result of that report is completed yearly, anyone in each embassy — and quite a lot of the bigger consulates — needs to be assigned to really draft the report. As a way to try this, they really have to succeed in out to numerous these persecuted minority non secular teams or sects who, earlier than this course of started, had nobody to go to. However now they really know anyone on the American Embassy they will name, urging them to press the federal government to rectify a selected disaster that arises.
Is there an instance of how your time at USCIRF knowledgeable what you had been in a position to accomplish as an envoy?
It occurred to me, after some time of what I discovered at USCIRF, that significantly in autocratic international locations, if the ministry of inside safety didn’t log off on (addressing a spiritual freedom drawback), it wasn’t going to occur. They’re anxious about minority teams that they don’t have management over changing into agitated, extremists capturing that agitation, that form of factor. The plight of minorities is usually seen by governments by means of a nationwide safety prism. So I started to ask for conferences with the minister of the inside or safety minister. It actually helped in quite a lot of conditions to get higher legal guidelines handed, or to get particular person prisoners (of conscience) out.
Is there one thing chances are you’ll not have completed, however you would like you might have, or any specific disappointment?
I spent a long time preventing for common well being care, and whereas the (Inexpensive Care Act) was a serious step ahead, bringing it to tens of millions who in any other case would have fallen by means of the cracks, we’re nowhere close to the place we needs to be in common well being care.
However you understand, with all of those issues we face, we’re the primary era in all of human historical past that really produces sufficient meals to feed each human being on Earth. We’re the primary era that may wipe out ailments which have plagued humanity from time immemorial. We will educate each baby, together with each lady, and that makes such a distinction for the financial power and the steadiness of communities and international locations. A failure now could be a failure of ethical imaginative and prescient and political will. However we’re alive at a time the place we are able to make these prophetic goals of that world of justice and peace actual, if we’re decided and prepared to do it in a manner that no era earlier than us may do.
And in a world wherein you are able to do virtually every thing, what it’s best to do — the ethical query — is a very powerful query dealing with humanity. On that the non secular communities of the world have a profound and pressing contribution to make.
