Bernie Sanders and The Fonz

I would vote for this guy!

As I hope you are aware, this is a picture of Larry David, who has played Bernie Sanders on Saturday Night Live.  (It’s REALLY funny.  See here.)

I would never vote for Bernie Sanders for a whole bunch of reasons.  (I would never vote for lots of other past and current candidates this election season.)  It should not be ignored, however, that there is a Jewish candidate who is not doing half bad as a major party candidate.

How Jewish is Bernie Sanders?  A lot has been written and speculated.  He spent time on a Kibbutz.  He sounds really Jewish.  The latest news is that he will not attend the AIPAC Policy Conference.

Charles Krauthammer wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post last week about the Holocaust and Jewish identity.  In a recent Democratic debate, Anderson Copper asked Bernie Sanders about his Jewishness.  Sanders responded, “I am very proud to be Jewish.”  He then explained that the Holocaust had wiped out his father’s family and that he remembered as a child seeing neighbors with concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms.  Being Jewish, he declared, “is an essential part of who I am as a human being.”

Krauthammer went on to analyze the three ways American Jews explain the role Judaism plays in their lives.

1.  Practice: Judaism as embedded in their life through religious practice or the transmission of Jewish culture by way of teaching or scholarship.

2.  Tikkun: Seeing Judaism as an expression of the prophetic ideal of social justice.

3.  The Holocaust.  It has become increasingly common for American Jews to locate their identity in the Holocaust.

Leaving presidential politics aside for a moment (I know it’s hard!), it is unfortunate when Jewish identity is shaped exclusively – or even primarily – by the Holocaust.  Obviously, the Holocaust has shaped Jewish life today, but it need not be the defining characteristic.

The Holocaust is evil, but, as much as we must remember it, we should not be dwelling on that evil.

Like The Fonz.

There was another article in the Washington Post recently.  It was about Henry Winkler (who played The Fonz on the hit show Happy Days) and how he still maintains and cares for the plant that his "aunt" brought with her when she escaped Germany in a coffin.  It is a fascinating and moving story.  

When Winkler left home, he took a few items with him – one of them was the plant.  He said, “I grew up with it, I heard the story, and I thought maybe it’s my responsibility to make sure it lives.”  When asked what the plant means to him, he responded, “Life, tenacity and will.”

These two stories stand out for me as contrasting.  They are both rooted in the Holocaust, in the worst evil the Jewish people has ever faced.  There are those who let this evil color everything else.  I get it, but there needs to be more.  We need to move beyond the past.  It informs who we are, but we can take a difficult past, cultivate it, and transform it into a glorious future.

As Jews, we live with our history constantly.  Will we get lost in the darkness of our struggles or will we rise to the occasion and recognize that Judaism gives us the opportunity – the privilege – to live meaningful, purposeful, lives while creating a brighter society?

I vote for the latter.

Fonz, what do you say?  Correctamundo!