During his recent visit to Washington, Prime Minister Netanyahu echoed the sentiment of a majority of American Orthodox Jewry when he correctly called Donald Trump “the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House.” Jews from Woodmere to West Palm Beach and Lakewood to Los Angeles exhaled in relief when the presidential race was called on January 5. No more free passes for pro-jihadis, no more framing Jews as privileged white folk who have it coming, no more one-handed support for Israel, no more coddling terrorists and their enablers, no more crazies owning the streets: Trump is going to make America great for Jews again.
Phew! Baruch Hashem. Four years’ reprieve at least, hopefully a lasting turnaround.
Jews in the U.K., meanwhile, continue to hold their breath as Islamists deepen their grip on the country with almost no pushback from the tottery Labor government (that’s reserved for impolitic posters on X). Ten thousand miles away, trepidatious Australian Jews maintain cautious optimism that this spring’s elections will change the direction their nation is headed. French Jews seem the most in touch with their grim future – they’ve led the pack in aliyah applications since October 7.
For America’s Jews – and Israel’s, and Americans generally for that matter – Trump’s return is the best news since Joe Biden entered the White House in 2020. And that’s reason to give thanks to the Almighty. May Trump and his team be good shlichim for all of us.
However, the community’s restored faith in the goldeneh medinah, like a starry-eyed renewal of vows after nearly heading for divorce, is not an altogether benign development.
“Al tivtichu b’nedivim, b’ven adam sheh-ain lo t’shu-ah,” says the Psalmist – Don’t put your trust in benevolent big-shots. A flesh-and-blood leader does not have the capacity to bring salvation, and even the most valiant human efforts can be thwarted by a Higher Power. Politicians who help our cause deserve our support, but bitachon should attach only to the Ribbono Shel Olam.
Aside from the halachic/hashkafic issue with placing overmuch trust in leaders is the problem of what could be called the fantasy of political constancy. When our favored politician or party is on the upswing, the promise that holds casts a sort of spell. Especially when the leader in question is a political rock star. The other side is down-and-out and it seems there’s no turning back. Oh, the places we’ll go…
Yet a president (or governor, or prime minister, or any official) is only as good as the duration of his tenure. Every election is a potential tsunami, as instantiated by the boatload of day-one executive orders wiping out seminal policies of the previous administration. Red wave, blue wave – the terminology itself evokes a flood tide. Voters are fickle, which is why, since 1900, the House of Representatives has switched between Republican and Democratic control 12 times; the Senate, 16 times.
But while incumbents come and go, the people on the ground are much more entrenched. Yes, Trump’s ICE agents are busy rounding up violent illegals for deportation as I write this – and threatening to do the same to imported pro-Hamas inciters on campus – but he’s not going to be able to get rid of all of them. And the antisemites and Israel-bashers and Muslim radicals and terror apologists, not to mention the woke lunatics and godless ideologues and morally bankrupt culture warriors – overlapping categories all – have not gone anywhere. Trump won, Republicans took control of both houses, but the roughly half the country who wanted a different result are as angry as ever and have not changed their minds about any of the issues that decided the race.
Will they have to fly a little lower under the radar? Probably. But that doesn’t mean they’ll have disappeared or stopped agitating for the collapse of everything Trump stands for.
And it doesn’t mean the person sitting next to you on the subway or in the office cubicle down the hall or standing in front of the lecture hall is any less likely to hold an ugly, distorted view of Jews or to think that Israel is the devil on earth and that you are complicit in its crimes. Or to support the indoctrination of your children and all children about made-up genders and the superfluousness of basic boundaries.
Putting our entire stock in the chief executive du jour requires pretending that our heterogeneous democracy is instead a totalitarian monolith. That the U.S. is North Korea and that everyone will believe what they are told.
Spoiler: They will not.
But these are the heady first 100 days of Trump 2.0, and hopes are running high. Consequently, the mass aliyah wave that a Kamala win might have precipitated has evaporated like snow in Tallahassee. No need to pack your bags or finish filling out that Nefesh b’Nefesh application after all.
Is that a bad thing? Though unfortunate from a Torah perspective, it is better – in my view, based on almost 10 years of living here – for aliyah to be driven by a desire to be here rather than to get away from there. Coming to Israel should be like marrying for love, not out of desperation. That mindset leads to greater happiness and fulfillment, motivation to integrate and contribute, and acceptance of the inevitable challenges.
In any event, wherever our home base, we should all – despite, or perhaps because of, the transience of political power – pray fervently that the positive changes we’re already seeing have as lasting an impact as possible.
