Jewish Roots of the American Way of Life

Back at the turn of the 21st Century, life’s spiritual journey led me to Pittsburgh and Rabbi Yisroel Miller of Congregation Poale Zedeck, which translates from Hebrew to English as the Workers of Righteousness. Rabbi Miller has since exiled himself to Calgary, Canada, for one last adventure, as it happens. What Rabbi Miller told me once, among the many conversations that we had, came to mind recently: “There’s no word for ‘fun’ in the Torah.”

For those unaware, the Torah is the Five Books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, in English, actually, Greek: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. For the Jews, the word Torah encompasses the entire sacred writings of the Jewish People, and it in fact signifies the entire Jewish worldview. If you don’t live in Florida or California or somewhere in the Southwest, it’s February, which, according to Don McLean in the 1970s song “Bye-Bye Miss American Pie,” was the month that “made me shiver.” The December holidays have come and gone, and your New Year’s resolutions may or may not have turned into real goals for 2012. You realize that your life is going somewhere or you are going nowhere. Many people I speak to are unemployed and struggling. Yet, every day, millions of Americans arise in the morning to go to their job or careers, smart phones and, for awhile longer, Blackberrys, in hand. How does it all keep on going, this American Experiment, better known as the American Way of Life? Because, as Rabbi Miller told me those years ago, there’s no word for fun in the Torah. The pursuit of fun has gotten me into every “jackpot,” that I’ve experienced in my days on Earth. Jackpot being the facetious term they use in New England one finds himself or herself in deep trouble. I’m not going into the details, this isn’t a “tell-all” column – those conversations are saved for the people I trust to hear them.

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Here’s my view on the American Way of Life: It’s going to work, pursuing happiness, and delaying gratification. If one accepts this way of living, you possess the virtues of American values. You can call yourself among the Sons and Daughters of Liberty. If you think the world owes you a living, or you deserve the fruits of other’s labor, or that you are entitled to what you want when you want it, then you are an indolent socialist reprobate. Yes, America has made mistakes, and may even have been guilty of the original sin of slavery. Nevertheless, what I’m talking about is the American Social Compact. If you don’t like it, you should find a country more to your liking, maybe Cuba, or North Korea or Iran and see how you like living there. What those of us in the conservative vanguard want is simple: a government by the People and For the People that works for us, and not the other way around. We want government that supports free enterprise; a government of laws and not men. As the economist Milton Friedman said, the free society engages in voluntary exchange; the predominant feature of socialism is force. We want President Obama out of office because of the federal government’s overreach, because of his coddling of public sector unions, and because he is strangling the country’s energy air hose. That’s what the 21st Century is all about: Reversing the entitlement society and bringing the United States back to its Constitutional roots. Everybody, including myself, has to change, perhaps simply to become more accountable to the people around them, but mostly to honor one’s commitments to one’s family. Be hard on yourself and compassionate to your spouse and innocent children that you brought into this world. I think Glenn Beck has done a great job articulating this need for an internal moral revolution in conjunction with the country’s political regeneration. To decide to look at the glass as being half full rather than half empty is just another way of saying, “I’m grateful for what I have rather than for what I don’t have.” If you have nothing, and you are seeking a helping hand, try looking at the end of your own arm and if you are cold and want to warm yourself by our fire, start by cutting some of the wood,” as my dear departed friend Trucker Bob Colley of Casper, Wyoming, shared with me in my days there. The enduring figure of the Bible that has impacted the American Way of Life the most was perhaps Isaac, the middle of the three Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is a known fact that the American Founders were profoundly influenced by the Jewish Bible and the Jewish model of self government. Isaac is the least written about of the Patriarchs. Isaac was to use American parlance, the strong silent type. Isaac was the connector between the Jewish religion’s founder, his father Abraham, and, Isaac’s son, Jacob, the progenitor of the Jewish People. Isaac persevered. When the Philistines filled his wells, Isaac dug new ones. Isaac toiled, and built, and never left the land of Israel. Isaac established the afternoon prayer, which is a stunning acknowledgment of the role of the Creator, requiring a person to stop in the middle of the day from his activities and to worship the King of Kings. Isaac went about his business without fanfare and he is therefore typical of the millions of Americans, who raise their families and support their communities and don’t seek extra recognition for doing so. It is these Americans who the elites derisively call the denizens of “fly-over country.” It is these Americans who President Obama said, “bitterly cling to their religion and guns.” And, yes, it is these Americans who literally and figuratively “carry the flag” for the future generations of Americans. That’s what we’re all fighting for, and it has very little to do with fun.