Around 6,000 people registered to be on a call Sept. 17 with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, to speak directly to the Jewish community.
The call also featured Rabbi Lauren Berkun, vice president, rabbinic initiatives at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Miami; Rabbi David Ellenson, director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University; and former United States ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro. The Bidens were introduced by Karen Adler, a longtime aide to Joe Biden, while Aaron Keyak, the campaign’s director of Jewish engagement, gave the pithiest endorsement: “We need a mensch in the White House. One thing I can tell you: Joe Biden is a mensch.”
Biden joked that like many rabbis, he had to learn to “sermonize on Zoom.” His seven-minute speech reminded the audience that this year the High Holy Days are taking place “in a time of profound pain and loss,” but they “teach us that we can find purpose in pain.”
The Days of Awe, he said, “give us a chance to restart and speak up, to ask ourselves the most important questions, such as what kind of person are you going to be, what kind of people, what kind of country do we wish to be?”
Describing himself the son of “righteous Christians,” Biden said he was raised to believe that “silence is complicity,” and that both the Jewish and Christian faiths “instruct us that we can’t ignore what’s going on around us: a deadly pandemic, an economic crisis, a moral reckoning on race, a declining faith in a bright American future.”
The common thread between them, he said, is “a president that makes things worse, who appeals to the dark side of us, who in fact talks about division. A person who does not focus on unity.” He also noted that a priority of a Biden administration would be “to bring people together around the values that unite us. We can begin to repair this nation.”
“Remember your power and make this year one of hope and progress. It’s got to be better than last year.” — Joe Biden
Biden also pledged to “restore America’s mandate to be a nation of immigrants.” In the faces of new arrivals, he said, “we see the grandparents streaming into Ellis Island,” including both his and his wife’s. Together, he said, America can “stamp out bigotry and anti-Semitism.”
He also spoke about President Donald Trump’s response to the 2017 protests in Charlottesville, Va., and the images of “people carrying torches, their veins bulging … chanting the same anti-Semitic bile that was heard in the streets of Germany in the ’30s.” Biden said this was one of the reasons he decided to run for president. “When the president was asked about the young woman that was killed, what did he say? He said ,‘There are very fine people on both sides.’ That’s not who we are.”
Biden also promised that the U.S. would remain “a steadfast ally of Israel” and exhorted the community to “remember your power and make this year one of hope and progress. It’s got to be better than last year,” he said, and wished everyone a “Shanah tovah — have a happy, healthy and sweet new year.”
Jill Biden echoed her husband’s thoughts, praising the Jewish community. “In every generation you have shown us what it’s like to live up to our highest ideals and deepest principles,” she said, adding, “This season is not just about reflecting on the past, but imagining what’s possible in the year ahead. It’s a moment to repent, pray and allow us the glimmer of hope …. Redemption is always possible; renewal is within.”
