There is no serious doubt that Israel has benefitted from Donald Trump’s approach to the region.

He moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and formally recognized the city as Israel’s capital. He recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. He pushed through the Abraham Accords, opening unprecedented normalization with the UAE, Bahrain and other Arab states and reshaping Israel’s regional position. In his current political incarnation, he again presents himself as Israel’s indispensable ally in the struggle against Hamas, against Hezbollah and Iran, and in preserving and expanding normalization in the Middle East.

For Israelis living under rocket fire and faced with genocidal rhetoric from their enemies, this is not theoretical. Many experience Trump as the American leader who “gets it” about Hamas, Iran and the basic legitimacy of a confident, unapologetic Jewish state.

But precisely this experience has created a distinct Jewish problem with Donald Trump: a segment of the Jewish world now extols his virtues almost unconditionally and turns a studied blind eye to his serious moral and political failures. Jews who insist on seeing the whole picture—especially American Jews who live inside his domestic reality—are dismissed as naïve, disloyal or suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome.”

The Talmud has a great deal to say about exactly this kind of situation. And its demands on us are far less convenient than many of his Jewish fans would like.

For American Jews, Trump’s record is not just about Jerusalem and Tehran.

He is tied to some of the harshest immigration policies in modern US history, including the “zero tolerance” policy that deliberately separated thousands of children from their parents at the southern border as a deterrent tactic. He has normalized a style of politics built on public insults, vulgarity, routine lying, attacks on the press and the independent judiciary, and open admiration for autocrats and strongmen. His rhetoric around minorities and immigrants has repeatedly blurred the line between legitimate critique and dehumanization.

Most recently, he has gone further into Israel’s internal affairs, publicly urging that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial be canceled or that Netanyahu be pardoned “for the good of Israel”—pressuring Israel’s president to short-circuit the legal process in the name of “friendship.”

In other words:

The question is not: Are Israelis allowed to feel gratitude? Of course they are.

The question is: Are Jews halachically and morally permitted to turn gratitude into moral blindness and ideological embrace?

On that, the Talmud has a sharp answer.

Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 1:7 offers a terse command:

“Do not join with a wicked person.” (Al titchaber la-rasha.)

The Hebrew verb lehitchaber is not about bumping into them on the street. It’s........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)