When Prayer Meets Politics Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Jessica: Welcome to Thoughts & Prayers, a show from the Shalom Hartman Institute. Inspiring new connections to Jewish prayer in a changing world. I’m Jessica Fisher.

The idea of starting each morning at my Jewish Day school with the Pledge of Allegiance didn’t phase me when I was young. It didn’t occur to me that “under God” wasn’t necessarily the same God that I was learning about in my Judaic studies classes. I also didn’t think about all the different faiths and those of no faith at all that said the pledge. 

Later, once I learned about the idea of the separation of church and state, I started to realize that this piece of our civic system didn’t make sense at all. God shows up in many places in our government and so does prayer. What did it mean when I, as a Jewish student, said that I was part of “one nation under God?” Whose God was I talking about, and why was I even talking about God and my country in the same sentence anyway? 

In this episode of Thoughts & Prayers, we’re talking about places where Jewish Prayer and American politics intersect. This issue extends far beyond the Pledge of Allegiance. We find God and prayer in our courthouses and congressional sessions, and at this point, it’s hard to imagine political speeches without a politician saying, “God bless America.”

Sometimes these moments come with nods toward interfaith representation. Perhaps a rabbi or an imam or a Buddhist priest is invited to offer a benediction. But even on those occasions, the framework and the presumption is Christian. This tension is not limited to the public sphere. In many of our synagogues, we pray for the government on Shabbat morning. So the intersection of Jewish prayer and American political life enters our most sacred spaces and moments. 

I spoke to Rabbi Elie Weinstock about the purpose of reciting the prayer for the government on Shabbat, even when you don’t find yourself aligned with the party in power.

Elie, thank you for helping us explore this topic. 

Elie: My pleasure. Great to be here 

Jessica: As the rabbi of a congregation. I’m sure you get all kinds of questions from members of your community. Following the 2020 election and the events of January 6th, 2021, you led a class for your congregation about reciting the prayer for the government when you don’t support the people in office.

I imagine that it was in response to questions that you received from members of your community that sounded something like “Rabbi, the prayer for the government feels really easy to say when I support the government, but I struggle to say it when I didn’t vote for the party in power, or when politicians I don’t support pass laws I disagree with. Should or can my political affiliation affect my kavanah when saying the prayer for the government? Is it ever appropriate to skip it?”

Elie: Sounds like you’re a member of my congregation! Both in terms of the political aspect of the question and in terms of the religious component and the convergence of the two. That’s definitely the sentiment that was expressed at that time, because many congregations all over the world pray for the welfare of the government each Shabbat. There has been the tradition to recite the prayer for the government as an element of patriotism, as an element of prayer and petition for protection. 

And like many rabbis, I have congregants with diverse political views and they can disagree strongly with one position or one party or another. And when that disagreement comes, there’s often a call from one side or the other regarding how to relate to the government is a prayer for the government, support for the government. And I always respond by noting that it’s about the prayer, not the people, not the parties, not the policies. I emphasize the ideals over the individuals.

And the roots of this custom go all the way back to the prophet Jeremiah who instructed the exiled Jews in Babylon: “Seek the welfare of the city to which I’ve exiled you and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its prosperity, you shall prosper.” That verse, in Jeremiah 29, is instructive, and a strategy for Jews who are living under foreign rule to want there to be some form of stable government because in that stability, the Jews can also find stability. It’s a very pragmatic theology. 

And if you, you know, fast forward into the 19th century, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch saw this prayer as part of the Jewish civic mission, but recognizing that in a spiritual, even a religious sense, if we’re tied up together with the society in which we live, which means we’re tied up with what the government does and the policies it has and the laws that it makes and passes.

Jessica: Yeah. It’s a really strategic approach for a religious mission, right? If everything is stable, the people in power don’t need a scapegoat to blame their troubles on, right? And also all the boats get lifted as you find this kind of prosperity in stability. 

But why not say every Jew is obligated to spend a year serving the country, doing something for the good of the country in a tangible way, rather than saying, no, all Jews should pray for the country?

Elie: So I think that it’s not mutually exclusive. You can do one and the other. At the same time, prayer is often the classic Jewish response. The Jews didn’t necessarily have the luxury of being more proactive in how to protect themselves or to influence their fate, or to serve or to volunteer.

Options have expanded, especially in the modern era. So at the same time as we believe in seeking the welfare, it doesn’t have to just be through prayer, but prayer is the religious default mechanism. 

Jessica: Yeah. That also explains why prayer felt like the right approach for Jeremiah, for the rabbis. If you wanted a stable government to ensure your own welfare, prayer was their technology, right, to get the things that they needed, especially in times when Jews were disenfranchised. And like you said, today we have more ways to influence policy, but prayer is still one of the ways that we can influence the world around us. 

Elie: I love the idea of prayer as their technology. I think that it’s somehow in our religious DNA, we have certain spiritual responses that have become imprinted in how we respond. And when it comes to our relationship with the government or the rulers, the Jeremiah, Rabbinic, diasporic response has become the default. And throughout Jewish history, it, it changed, right, depending on who the rulers were. The language of the prayers, friendly, less friendly. King Ferdinand of Spain, Czars of the USSR, you know, even in Nazi Germany, there have been prayers in the communal liturgy for praying for the ruler. 

At some point, sometimes you have to pray to switch rulers, but there’s been this sense that as the Jews have less and less ability to impact it themselves, let’s have this religious response, let’s pray for the government, and we can discuss the policies or the disagreements over kiddush. 

Jessica: The idea of praying to switch rulers reminds me of the line from Fiddler on the Roof where he says, you know, “May God bless and keep the Czar far away from us,” right? 

I think also one of the things that I wanna surface here is that we have questions also around like, how do you orient your intentions around saying this prayer, depending on your political affiliations or the actions of the government in that moment, right? Maybe the words of the prayer don’t change, but the circumstances and the government that you’re praying for do.

Elie: I think in general it’s part of the challenge in prayer, whether it’s formal and standard or regulated, or whether it’s meant to be more personal. We’re instructed in the Talmud that your prayer should not be kevah, should not be rote. At the same time, the siddur stays the same. And how to balance between making it standard and making it familiar, but not too familiar is always the challenge.

Even within prayer for the government, different countries have a standard prayer for the government. You know, in the United Kingdom it’s about the King, and America, it’s about the president. The version that I use for the prayer for the United States is one that I heard in its initial form from Rabbi Haskel Lookstein. It sidesteps personalities and politics, and the idea is to focus on the voices and the values that matter most. 

I view the tradition of praying for the government that has an aspiration for something for our own community, our people, for the society in which we live, while Americans, and making it for all humanity and transcend the politics.

Jessica: Right. With all of this in mind, is reciting this prayer an act of Judaism, is it an act of patriotism, some combination of both?

Elie: For me, it’s all of the above, or whichever one most resonates. Prayer is meant to be personal, but prayer is also communal. And prayer has something that’s traditional, prayer supposed to be something that’s dynamic. So I see it as, the praying for the government is Jewish, it’s patriotic, it’s aspirational for humanity, it’s all. 

We don’t endorse every action of a government by our prayer for the government. It’s more of a commitment to stability, to peace, the hope that those in power will make the right decisions. Not saying what those decisions are, but make the right decisions. Act with wisdom, act with compassion, recognizing that our fate, to some extent, lies in their hands, and that their fate is in God’s hands, right? And to do so in a way that keeps it as apolitical as possible is probably very helpful, especially as the political temperatures rise. We’re not about personalities or politics. It’s about people. It’s about possibility. 

And that’s the same with any aspect of prayer. When we talk about prayer in general. Prayer is a religious obligation and a very personal endeavor. At the core of it is that even when we’re frustrated, even when it’s hard, even when we don’t like the government, we may not even like the rabbi, we pray, because prayer allows us to hope, to hold our leaders accountable to higher standard, and because prayer reminds us that leadership and our actions matter. 

Jessica: Amen. Thank you, Elie. Elie Winestock is the senior rabbi of the Jewish Center of Atlantic Beach on Long Island and is a senior rabbinic fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute 

Part of what Elie articulated in our conversation is that praying for our country and its government is an educational opportunity. Even when we deeply disagree with a particular political direction, praying creates a space where we can keep dreaming about a different future, and it recommits us to holding our leadership accountable. Praying reminds us not to get too jaded. 

While Elie tries to keep the focus in the sanctuary on, as he says, ideals, not people, at times, the boundary between praying for and praying against a government can get blurry. Some people see prayer in these two contexts as radically distinct, but others understand them as part of the same project. It may seem like prayers offered at a protest against a particular policy or party are prayers against the government, but these prayers too can be expressions of aspiration. Praying for the future health and welfare of the country and its people by praying against what is happening in the present.

Rabbi Annie Lewis shared a story about creating space for Jewish language and rituals at a protest that took place on Shabbat, and about how creating a space for prayer helped her and members of her community show up more fully as both Jews and Americans

Annie: Until we all are free, we are none of us free. Until we all are free, we are none of us free. Until we all are free, we are none of us free. D’ror Yikrah. 

It’s January, 2018. It’s the morning of the Women’s March and it’s Shabbat. I’m serving as a rabbi in Center City, Philadelphia. I live and work within walking distance of the Liberty Bell, with its cracked shell and its inscription from our Torah: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” These words from Leviticus herald an era of social and economic justice, a promise of freedom for all people in the Jubilee year. They are a horizon we look toward as we work day in and day out for a better city, for a better country. Every time I pass by the bell, I think of my mentor, Leibel Fein, of blessed memory.

Leibel shared a story about his father when he was a boy in cheder in Moldova. The Rebbe would tell his students about the famed bell across the ocean in America with words from “Our Holy Torah.” When Leibel’s father made it to America and visited the bell, he saw that our holy words were indeed etched into it, and he stared at its jagged scar, a symbol of the distance left to travel for this country to truly become a land of liberty for all.

Leibel’s father became a beloved teacher in Baltimore. He said he preferred to think of himself as a bell mender. And for Leibel too, there was always more mending to do—for the Jewish people, for America, for Israel. Leibel taught me to be rooted, relational, and relentless when it comes to bell mending, when it comes to birthing a better world into being.

For this second annual Women’s March, with Leibel’s influence in mind, I would be showing up for the sake of my 2-year-old daughter, Zohar Leiba, her middle name given in Leibel’s memory. 

In our majority Christian country, often demonstrations are scheduled on Saturdays in the Jewish community. Many of us wrestle with how to bring our full selves into the public square. We want to march and we want to daven, to pray with our own shul communities. We also want Shabbat to be a taste of the world as it could be, a day where we can disconnect from societal stressors. But we also don’t want to miss out on a chance to show up with our Jewish voices, to pray with our feet, to turn things toward justice.

In our congregation, we experiment with different strategies. Sometimes when rallies fall on Shabbat morning, we’ll add an opening clause to the prayer for our country to acknowledge the public action taking place on the other side of the stained glass windows. 

For the Women’s March in 2018, its Parshat Boh, and we decide to hold an event upstairs in the social hall for the Jewish communal contingent to gather before the march and walk over together. We root ourselves in familiar ritual practices. We thank God for our bodies and our souls, for waking us up, for making us free, and for giving us the strength to go out in the streets for the sake of our country. We say Shema, we share words of Torah, and we grab breakfast bars to nourish us along the way. 

As we gather before the march, I situate us in Jewish time. I preach on the moment in the Exodus narrative when Pharaoh finally gives in and says to Aaron and Moses, all right, already, go, go worship your God. And then Pharaoh backtracks and asks, but who are the ones who will go? Moses responds, we will all go. We will go with our young and our old. We will go with our sons and our daughters. We will go with our flocks and our herds. All of us. We will all go. We will leave no one behind.

Generations after Moses, his message to Pharaoh is refracted in the words of the Jewish poet Emma Lazarus, in her letter “Epistle to the Hebrews”: “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” 

This gathering in our synagogue building for prayer and community, these words drawn from our weekly Torah portion, each of these enables people in my community to live out our Jewish values and our American dreams side by side. 

During my time in Philly, as I lead services and facilitate lifecycle events, I also pour myself into weaving public relationships. I relish the work of co-creating a multi-faith coalition of congregations known as POWER, dedicated to making Philadelphia a city of opportunity for all. Through POWER, Jewish, Christian and Muslim neighbors fill each other’s sanctuaries to take action on local issues and to stand with one another. When the unbearable happens, we see ourselves as God’s co-partners mending the places in our city that are cracked like our bell. We dream and we work for a world where each and every person will be seen as beautiful, beloved, worthy of dignity, and worthy of life. 

My fellow clergy members in POWER teach me how to pray in public. They show me that prayer can fly beyond the boundaries of the siddur and the sanctuary. We pray over hoagie lunches and we pray at polling sites. We pray outside dilapidated school buildings, we pray inside the airport, and we pray in front of Philly’s hallowed Eagle Stadium. We pray beside the Liberty Bell with its promise of freedom and its birthmark of brokenness. 

Until we are all free, we are none of us free. We hold on tight to this truth. 

Our tradition in Mishlei, Proverbs, teaches us that life and death are in the power of the tongue. When we bring Torah and song to the public square, our words become keys for unlocking redemptive possibilities. When we pray our words light up our moral imaginations and lay the groundwork for new realities. When I speak and sing Jewish words of prayer in public settings, in local and national demonstrations, I aim to be solidly rooted in tradition, in relationship with Klal Yisrael, mindful of the divine as the source of language and life, and in awe of the power of words to remake worlds. I include words and phrases in Hebrew and Yiddish, always with translation and always without apology. I quote our sacred texts, our liturgy, our ancestors, our prophets, our rabbis. 

Until we all are free, we are none of us free. D’ror Yikrah.

This prayer song I wrote is an example of the creative work I love of weaving words from our tradition with melodies that can move us to action, that can move with us as we act. I want non-Jewish allies to hear our particular holy words surging with moral power and universal messages. I want the Jews who are there to feel permission that as we lay a path toward liberation, we can pray and protest with our whole neshamas, that showing up at rallies or marches or protests is as much a part of our Jewishness as it is part of our Americanness, that we are as obligated to protest injustice as we are obligated to pray, that we are all bell menders and bell ringers, as we find the words and lift our voices so that we and all people may live fully and safely and freely. We cannot leave anyone or any part of ourselves behind.

Until we all are free, we are none of us free. Until we all are free, we are none of us free. Until we all are free, we are none of us free.

Jessica: That was Annie Lewis, Director of Recruitment and Admissions for Religious and Educational Leadership and Assistant Dean of first year rabbinical students at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She’s a senior Rabbinic fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute.

Annie’s story is primarily about finding ways to bring Jewish language and rituals into the public square in order to push for not yet realized ideals in our country. Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt has also publicly articulated dreams for the United States through prayer and ritual, but in very different contexts.

Where Annie’s prayer and teaching took place at demonstrations against government policies, Lauren has modeled rabbinic work and Jewish ritual within government settings, like officiating Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s funeral, and offering a benediction at the Democratic National Convention in 2024.

Lauren: America let us pray. God brought us out of the narrow place of oppression to freedom. Let’s remember the treacherous road our ancestors traveled to freedom. There’s sacrifice and resolve to bring a better, more inclusive world. 

Jessica: I spoke to Lauren about what it means to pray as a rabbi and a Jew on the political stage.

Welcome Lauren. 

Lauren: Jessica, it’s so great to be here. Thank you for having me. 

Jessica: So in the benediction you gave at the DNC, you offered a distinctly Jewish prayer that felt universal and accessible in its content. How do you understand the role of prayer in civic contexts in our purportedly secular country? 

Lauren: I think when it comes to the DNC or any kind of sort of political moment like that, you know, I was there, definitely as a rabbi, and I’m also there representing our tradition. And what I’ll say is that Americans are religious people, not all, not all prescribed, you know, to a particular religion, but religion is a very deep part of what it means to be in America. And I think seeing a multiplicity of religious leaders on that stage, which is what happened over those four days, Muslims and different denominations within Christianity and Jews and Sikhs. And so it made total sense to me that that is something that would be asked for on that stage. 

And I guess the other thing that I would say that I, I’m not sure people picked up this nuance, but the vice president, she had just given her acceptance speech of the party and right after she spoke and that acceptance speech, she had her pastor from San Francisco up on the stage with me, and I was representing the Second Gentleman Emhoff as his rabbi on that stage. And so what you really had in that moment was the pluralism of America, the pluralism of their marriage, the pluralism of multiplicity of religions on that stage, and a moment where I thought it was, this is one of the beauties of America, is that all of these things can exist at once.

Jessica: That’s such a beautiful image that you paint of, you know, the diversity of what’s being represented there. You began your benediction with saying, “America, let us pray.” And this particular formulation, especially in English, felt very Christian to hear, as is the word “benediction” for that matter. How did you think about crafting a Jewish prayer as a rabbi in this public setting, and how did you think about also making it feel universally meaningful to people who are not Jewish? 

Lauren: So I will say when I was asked to do this, both benediction and convocation were used. And I have to tell you, I had to Google both, cause I was like, what is that?

Jessica: What’s the difference? 

Lauren: Am I being asked for a prayer? Is it an opening? Is it a closing? What is it? So basically exactly your question is exactly what the struggle was. So all of this really is translating for me. I feel like in any space that I’ve been asked to do things outside of, obviously, you know, a synagogue, a Jewish ritual, something like that, I always feel like I’m going into the mode of translation. What is being asked of me and how do I authentically bring the Jewish voice to this experience? 

So when I said “America, let us pray,” my thought was I need to get the attention of the people that are in front of me. I knew balloons would be coming down from the sky and I thought, this is gonna be crazy, so I need to do something that calls them to prayer. And the thing that I thought of is the barchu. The barchu. That’s exactly what we’re doing at Shacharit and at Maariv. We’re saying to people, you may be mingling, you may be on your phone, you may not have come in with the kavanah, the intention to actually pray. So what do I do? When I say barchu, that means, “Guys we’re ready. This is serious. We’re beginning the prayer.” 

And I thought like, what in American contexts, like what could I say to Americans that are, you know, thousands of people in a convention center to say like, this is what we’re doing now guys, we’re turning to prayer and I thought, I’m gonna translate barchu into some kind of thing that I could say ecumenically to everybody that’s there. “Okay. America, we’re praying now.” That’s what we’re doing. 

Jessica: Yeah. It’s interesting how you’re describing this. I’m picturing you trying to get everybody’s attention while there’s balloons falling down and there’s so many people in the room who are doing their own thing, and the people who are watching on TV I’m sure are multitasking while they’re watching.

But then there’s the other addressee of prayer, which is God, right? So how did you think about God in that moment?

Lauren: There were thousands of people in that stadium, and I thought, you know, one of the things that is my job as a religious leader is to hone into what I think of as like a radio frequency. If there’s a frequency in here of energy, I wanna capture it, and help move it towards something. That’s how I think about prayer. There was this buzzing energy of hope, of joy, of people working towards tomorrow, and I thought that’s what I need to tap into, because the God that I’m addressing, which is the God of my own tradition, I’m one who believes there are many spokes in this wheel and we all have our different access points of getting to God, and my tradition is the Jewish tradition, but everyone sitting here can feel the kind of energy that’s in here. And if I can help bring our energy and give it words and help move it, that’s something I wanna do as a prayer leader.

Jessica: What made this prayer that you offered, or the offering of a prayer in this space prayer, what made it to tefillah, as opposed to an extension of a partisan platform?

Lauren: I think… look, I, I wasn’t up there giving any policy suggestions. That’s not my expertise. It’s not what I wanna spend my life doing. I really felt that the words that I was going to use in that space were words that I would say in any space. Words that come from our tradition. Words about the downtrodden and caring about the vulnerable. Finding a path to take care of all kinds of people in our society. 

I would never say something that I feel like I couldn’t back it up within the Jewish tradition, and my feeling was like. I’m not up here asking people to believe in a particular policy. That’s not my job. But I am up here saying that there is a religious moral voice that is real in America, and I have a responsibility, I believe, to help be a moral voice, a religious, moral voice of our time. And so that’s really what I saw myself doing. 

I will say, I do not think it’s appropriate to endorse a candidate from the bimah or you know, a non-Jewish clergy, from their pulpit. But there… those laws have changed over the last couple of months. So I will say to you like, I would never do that from the bimah here. That is not appropriate. But I do feel like, as a religious leader, showing up as myself in spaces that feel like there is a moment here, America’s in a moment here, it’s important to hear from our religious leaders. 

Jessica: Yeah. Do you think that your prayer would’ve looked different offered at an inauguration or a political protest than it did at this convention?

Lauren: I’m not so sure, to be honest with you. I think probably what I will always lean on is what is the message the Torah is trying to send, and how do I help bring that message into the 21st century? Whether I’m speaking from my own bimah, I’m giving a Dvar Torah on a Shabbat morning about what does the parsha say, and how do I both bring light to what’s in the Torah and also make it relevant for the 21st century?

Honestly, I’m one who feels like the halakha that we don’t pray in places that do not have windows, to me is so way beyond just talking about the space, but it’s actually a spiritual image of, if what we’re praying for is only for the four walls that we’re praying in, then what are we doing? It feels to me like we ought to be able to say things both in the context of our religious institutions, but also those things should also be able to be said in political protests. 

The idea of using the tradition in that sense feels to me like that’s exactly why it’s there. The Torah is a political document, you know, talks about all kinds of things about justice and how to make life better, who we should be thinking about, who we should be caring about, how do we figure out, you know, our relationship to power? And it feels to me like those things shouldn’t be just within the four walls of the religious institutions that we lead. 

Jessica: Thank you. Lauren Holtzblatt is co-senior Rabbi of Adas Israel Congregation in Washington D.C.

In our conversation, Lauren referenced a Talmudic passage about the importance of praying in a room with windows. She challenged us not to limit our prayers to our own needs, but to remember the world beyond ourselves and the walls that shelter us, and that our understanding of politics can be as rooted in our Judaism as prayer.

Rabbi Akiva Mattenson comes to a similar conclusion through reflecting on a Midrash. He suggests that our prayer and political lives can inform and strengthen one another, and he urges us to reject cynicism and instead choose belief in both of these arenas. 

Akiva: “Avraham approached God,” Genesis 18:23. Rabbi Elazar said the verse means this: Avraham said, I come before you, whether to battle you, reconcile with you, or pray to you. 

Bereshit Rabbah 49:23. God is planning to burn the city of Sedom to the ground, a city filled with cold and bitter cruelty with pained cries that have pierced the heavens. But God wonders whether to tell God’s loyal servant, Avraham. Perhaps Avraham should learn from God what it means to do what is right and just, and so God tells him. Hearing the devastating news, we arrive at the scene that opens this teaching—“Avraham approached God.”

Avraham approaches to say something to God to say something about what Avraham knows to be right and just. We know these moments, these moments of approach, the meaningful silences before we say something ethically charged to another person. 

In my life, I feel this ethical potential of words, the weight of approaching most pointedly in two worlds: the world of prayer and the world of politics. In prayer and in politics, I’m committed to my words meaning something, making a difference, moving things ever so slightly toward being more just and more good. It’s striking, then, that the other place that this same teaching from Rabbi Elazar about approaching appears is when Avraham’s great grandson Yehuda approaches the Egyptian governor, who turns out to be his brother Yosef, for the safe return of his brother Benyamin.

Repeating this teaching in both places pushes us to reflect on the importance of approaching in both. We approach to speak to God, and we approach to speak to governors. And we approach both to say something of importance about the good, the just, and the right. 

To insist on the importance of approaching in both contexts is first of all, to insist on the value of saying something. It’s no small thing to approach. Cynicism and despair about our capacity to make any difference by stepping forward lies in wait for us, whether in prayer or in politics. But note, this teaching says, Avraham and Yehuda do approach, and move mountains with their words. 

But repeating this teaching in both places also does something else. To say that the art of approaching is needed in prayer and in politics is to say that each can be an opportunity to build the muscles we need for the other. If we’re doing it right, prayer can prepare us for the work of political engagement, and political engagement can prepare us for the work of standing before God in prayer. 

So what does that look like? And what should it look like? If approaching is a freighted silence, we know that the feelings that bubble up in us, in those silences flow into our words and color them. What, then, should our emotional palate be for the work of approaching God or the political arena? 

Rabbi Elazar enters with an answer, speaking for both Avraham and Yehuda: “I come before you whether to battle you, reconcile with you, or pray to you.” 

Sometimes we come ready for battle. Our hearts are inflamed by fiery passion and moral commitment. Prayer and politics in this form occupy the register of protest, advocacy, or activism. We know what is right and what is just, and this isn’t it. To cultivate this style or mood of approaching is to grow our capacity to say what needs to be said, our courage to speak truth to power, and our tenacity to continue the fight in the face of obstinate resistance.

Sometimes we come to reconcile. The word here for reconciliation is piyus, a word with many meanings. It can mean asking for forgiveness and compassion, engaging in persuasion, or coming to an agreement. What these things have in common is the making or remaking of relationship. In battle, one person leaves with victory. In reconciliation, two walk away from the field together. Words here aren’t hurled violently. They’re offered as an invitation to a relationship or an expression of a desire for one. We know what it looks like for prayer to take this shape. 

When politics takes this shape, it can manifest as the weighty business of truth and reconciliation, or the more prosaic business of public deliberation, seeking to persuade one another and deciding on a course of shared action in ways that reinforce the bonds of relationship rather than fraying them. 

To cultivate this piyus style of approaching in politics is to grow our capacities for weighing the consequences of our actions, for speaking to the concerns of others, for making ourselves understood and for working towards shared life and relationship with others.

But beyond battle and reconciliation, sometimes we come to just pray. To be sure, I’ve been speaking about prayer throughout—embattled prayer, conciliatory prayer. But here we’re talking about prayer boiled down to its essence, stripped to its bones. To pray is to yearn. Praying means giving voice to those fragile hopes that live inside of us. It means speaking vulnerably about what we long for, the world we dream of, the goodness and the justice we seek when we pray. In this sense, we trade the fierceness of battle for the alternating ache and sparkle of dreams. We trade the business of relationship for the play of imagination. Praying or doing politics in this way becomes the prophetic work of imagining redemption.

To cultivate this style of approaching is to grow our attunement to what we hope and yearn for, to grow our ability to dream wildly and beautifully about the just, the right, and the good. Battle, reconciliation, prayer. 

Rabbi Elazar gives us three styles of approach for both Avraham and for Yehuda, for both prayer and politics. It’s worth noting the multiplicity here. Some times, places, and some relationships call for one mood more than another. Some people may find themselves inclined more toward one than another. But a flourishing ecosystem of prayer or of politics must find time, space, and people for all three. 

I want to say a final word about approaching. As we said, approach signals that moment before words, that freighted silence before speech. There’s wisdom here for prayer and for politics. Our prayer and our politics so easily becomes so much din and noise. We may need to teach ourselves again how to pause in silence before prayer and before politics. Teach ourselves how to feel again the ethical potential of our words. 

I believe we can do it. In a way, I am approaching you with a charge and a prayer. Let us learn again the art of approaching.

Jessica: That was Akiva Mattenson, faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute and a content advisor for this podcast.

In 1840, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, a Canadian politician and author, wrote: “Never discuss religion or politics with those who hold opinions opposite to yours. They’re subjects that heat in handling until they burn your fingers.”

In some ways, as our country and our world become increasingly divided and we retreat into the safe spaces of shared ideologies, this adage has become less relevant because we don’t interact as much with people whose opinions differ from our own.

But it could also be more relevant because when we do interact across divides, the encounters are more charged. One of the central challenges of leadership today is the increasingly narrow categories of what is safe to talk about. Many rabbinic leaders feel called to talk about both religion and politics, but are afraid of the ramifications of being overly directive on either topic. There’s a risk of alienating members of a community from each other, from the rabbi or from Judaism itself, yet the role of a rabbi, or any leader for that matter, is to speak with conviction on issues of consequence. A rabbi does this by drawing on the weight of Jewish tradition.

For each of the rabbis we heard from in this episode, talking about politics in a prayerful mode is an opportunity to reset our relationship to the ugliness of the political landscape. It’s a reminder to hold ourselves in our leaders to our loftiest moral standards, framed by words, drawn from our sacred texts. Engaging with politics is also a way to concretize our religious ideals to give a different shape to our dialogue with God.

Thomas Chandler Haliburton may have been right about the risks of discussing religion or politics in mixed company. It is possible that you run the risk of getting burned, but as we heard in this episode, when done with care, it is also possible that discussing and even linking prayer in politics might instead give off more light than heat.

When praying for or against a government or a political party, each of the rabbis we heard from says there is something to be gained cultivating a sense of civic belonging, affirming our ideological commitments, or integrating our spiritual lives with our political activity.

Maybe there will always be some uneasiness for American Jews encountering prayer and state in the same breath. And maybe as our country becomes more fractured, the ability to pray together about and for our country will get even harder. But it is also possible that all of the things we could gain from speaking about religion and politics are worth the risks of a painful conversation