November 5, 2017

I write to you in the wake of what has been a difficult and startling election. While some in our community are breathing a sigh of relief, others are feeling not only disappointment, but anguish and fear.  However, I don’t want to speak about the results of the election, but rather about the process that led us here.

Two values that seemed to get lost in the discourse of the election season were Truth (Emet) and Peace (Shalom). Our tradition teaches that Moshe Rabbeinu was the embodiment of the value of Emet. His primary concern was what was correct and what was just. He spoke truth no matter what, which didn’t always make him popular with the people. Moshe’s brother Aharon, by contrast was more concerned with Shalom, and was even willing to tell some white lies for the sake of bringing peace between people.

Moshe and Aharon’s leadership styles were complementary, because sometime peace has to be sacrificed for the sake of truth, and sometimes truth has to be sacrificed for the sake of peace. Sometimes the path of Aharon is the most appropriate, and sometimes we need to act more like Moshe.

Sadly, during this latest presidential campaign, we’ve heard a lot of rhetoric that serves neither Emet nor Shalom; rhetoric worthy of neither Aharon nor Moshe. Politicians and pundits have spent the last year doing everything they can to sow distrust of the opposing side, leveling false accusations, and calling into question the reliability of fact-based news sources. Many of us have not only listened to this rhetoric, but even repeated it ourselves when it suited our own political inclinations.

Whatever our political loyalties, be they right, left, or center, I believe we all share a basic belief that truth is preferable to lies and peace is preferable to conflict. In the aftermath of this election, I suggest we each examine our own speech and ask, did my words during this election season, in public and in private, serve truth or not?  Did they serve peace or not?

Moving forward, I invite each of us, before we repeat something we heard on television or before we forward an email or share a Facebook post, to ask ourselves, are these words true?  Are they words of peace?  Would Moshe say this?  Would Aharon?  If the answer is no, then maybe neither should we.

May we be blessed to live in a nation where we need not all agree, but where we can disagree peacefully and respectfully.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Garth Silberstein