As scholars of Jewish history, we are acutely attuned to the fragility of democracies and the consequences for minorities when democracies fail to live up to their highest principles.
I listen to girls in the school hallways as they hopefully talk about their grades, their college test scores, their eagerness to leave our progressive, liberal, all-girls school bubble; they will take up jobs they are more than qualified for and reach the top of the work force’s hierarchy.
In her Clinton wardrobe and hair, accompanying herself on the piano, Kate McKinnon’s cold open of the \”Saturday Night Live\” after Election Day was a dirge for the loss of Leonard Cohen, for the loss of Hillary Clinton and for the lost Americans now struggling for hope and direction.
At a time when the globe reverberated with Nazi jackboots, the poet William Butler Yeats lamented: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Dear Mr. President-elect, I started writing this letter before your appointment of Steve Bannon, a move that hasn’t been well received in my Jewish community. I was hoping to reach you before you made any moves. In any case, since you will make hundreds of other decisions, I’m now even more motivated to share my thoughts.
