Why I am a liberal Jew

I thought I would share with you my opinion why most Jews are liberal and why I am a liberal Jew.

It is an important teaching of Judaism that our money is not really ours, no matter how hard we may have worked for it. Money is a gift from God, and God has instructed us to share a portion of it with the less fortunate. We can do this directly through our own tzedaka or through the government's social programs. I believe we have to do both. The liberal Democrats in the history of the country have always voted for social programs i.e. social security, health care, etc.

According to the Book of Deuteronomy, "For the poor shall never cease out of the land; therefore, I command you to open your hand to your poor and needy brother." In other words, because there will always be poor people, society or the government has to find a way of helping people.

The conservative Republicans have voted traditionally against all social programs yet they encourage the spending of trillion of dollars on defense. Having been in the military for over 26 years I have experienced the huge dollar waste in the Department of Defense. In fact the current Secretary of Defense have spoken about the waste of funds yet the Republican members of Congress do not get it!

I believe that my goal as a Jew is to constantly try to capture the feeling of standing at Sinai and bring holiness into my life by sanctifying even ordinary moments. Helping people will achieve this goal as an individual or through government.


I hope that by reading this E-mail you will be able to understand why I and most Jews are liberal.

Comments on life

Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubberband.

Most of us live somewhere in the middle.

So which side wins?

"Love wins. Love always wins."

My thoughts on death

Everyone knows that they are going to die but nobody believes it. If we did believe it we would do things differently.

Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, "Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?" If you accept that you can die at any time - then you might not be as ambitious as you are. The things you spend so much time on - all this work you do --might not seemas important. You might have to make room for some more spiritual things. In my opinion, we are too involved in materialistic things, and they don't satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.

Once you learned how to die, you learn how to live.