E Pluribus Unum

During the 33 years, 1974-2007, that I was rabbi of Temple Habonim in Barrington, I took it for granted that I was a citizen of one of the most stable democracies in the world. Of course, we Americans have continued to grapple with such deep-seated issues as race and class and economic insecurity. Nevertheless, I remained confident that the problems of our American democracy were being addressed by our political leaders in ways which, though flawed like all human effort, would lead to improvement and hopefully resolution.

My generally sunny sense of being an American was reinforced during each of Barrington’s annual interfaith Thanksgiving worship services; they were held at a different location every year – rotating among the Protestant and Catholic churches as well as Temple Habonim. At first, we gathered on the Wednesday evening and in later years on the Monday evening prior to the Thursday of Thanksgiving itself.

I must confess that for me the high point of our community worship was our singing of “America the Beautiful,” our de facto and easily singable national anthem. When participating in each of our community Thanksgiving worship services I experienced a surge of American patriotism as well as more than a touch of Jewish pride. Protestant, Catholic, and Jew: we came together, we sang together, we worshiped together.

During my almost two decades of retirement, I have been gradually shedding my sense of certainty that our nation is still on the right path; like many of my fellow Americans, I am beginning to feel that our body politic is becoming increasingly fragile: we have become a house divided. Both Democrats and Republicans have forgotten how to work together to help form a more perfect union. We can no longer even agree upon the proper processes for conducting our municipal, state and federal elections; this vital core of our democracy – our elections – has been thrown into a confusion of deep doubt and discontent.

In recent years, America seems to have lost its way as a major force in preserving and protecting our global order. Our leaders, on and off, continue to mull over the multiple absurdities of annexing Greenland, absorbing Canada as our 51st state and abandoning NATO. In his July 11 opinion piece, “The Next Civil War” in the New York Times,” Stephen Marche, writing from Toronto, states despairingly, “But as for the entity known as the United States of America, there is no there there. There is no America to deal with. An increasingly isolationist America is no longer leader of the free world. How can it be? When it is no longer leader of itself?”

Our founding fathers understood well that democracy is extremely demanding of its citizens. For 174 years, E pluribus unum – Latin for “Out of many, one” –was our national motto; then, in 1956, Eisenhower’s administration changed it to “In God we trust.” E pluribus unum: it takes all our nation’s collective energy and tenacity and wisdom to bring us together – given our diversity of language, race, religion and birthplace; let us not forget our abundance of varying human talents. Truth be told, our collection of complex particulars which we call America is always threatening to tear us apart. Our Civil War, from Fort Sumter in 1861 to Appomattox in 1865, is a tragic reminder of how quickly our democracy can fall apart, how easily the center of our government can fail to hold.

Ideally, those men and women who are our political leaders should be wise, compassionate, broadly knowledgeable and possess the intellectual flexibility to respond creatively to the nuances and ambiguities of our daily lives. But, and this is a BUT with capital letters, our leaders need to be electable; they need to earn the votes of most of our electorate. Adlai Stevenson was one of the most intelligent, knowledgeable, and well-educated men ever to run for presidential office. Nevertheless, Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated him in landslides in both the 1954 and 1958 elections. Of course, in many ways, General Eisenhower, hero of D-Day, was a formidable candidate; while, to many voters, Stevenson seemed to be a bit of an egghead.

In his 2023 “Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber” (Avid Readers Press), Andy Borowitz has written a laugh-out-loud but frightening book about the plunge of all too many of our country’s politicians into the depths of ignorance – into that dark reality in which certain well-known politicians’ abysmal ignorance of such basic subjects as spelling, world geography and the history of the United States has become a badge of honor. Borowitz suggests that there were three overlapping stages in our politicians descent into this intellectual emptiness: from the public’s ridiculing of politicians for not knowing what they ought to know, to the blasé acceptance of their obvious lack of appropriate knowledge, to the absurdity of the third stage in which our politicians are actually celebrated for their ignorance.

Borowitz concludes his introductory chapter by assuring his readers that “[i]n this book, I’ve made nothing up. All the events I’m about to describe actually happened. They’re a part of American history. Unfortunately.”

However, in his conclusion, Borowitz does offer up a ray of hope:

“One of the worst stories in our nation’s history happened on January 6, 2021. But one of the best happened a day earlier. On January 5, Georgia elected two Democrats to the U.S. Senate. Making the outcome even more improbable, the two winners were an African American, Raphael Warnock, and a Jew, Jon Ossoff.”

The 2023 edition of Borowitz’s book ends with a single word: “correction.” Which goes to suggest that despite all the downs of our nation’s journey during the past several years, we still hold in our hands the possibility for a much-needed CORRECTION.

JAMES B. ROSENBERG is a rabbi emeritus at Temple Habonim in Barrington. Contact him at rabbiemeritus@templehabonim.org.