When Providence Becomes a Party Instrument

There is a dangerous moment in Jewish political life when theology ceases to be an opening toward judgment, humility, and self-examination, and becomes instead a blunt instrument of factional revenge.

The recent claim that Donald Trump’s supposed turning away from Israel is a divine punishment for the attorney general’s decisions regarding enforcement against ultra-Orthodox draft evaders belongs precisely to this dangerous category. It is not merely an unfortunate remark. It is a symptom.

The problem is not that a rabbi speaks politically. Judaism has never been a religion of private spirituality sealed off from public life. The prophets were not wellness coaches. They spoke to kings, courts, merchants, priests, armies, and corrupt elites. But the prophetic voice does not say: God agrees with my party, therefore the legal official opposing my camp is wicked. The prophetic voice begins elsewhere: with trembling, with responsibility, and with the unbearable question of whether Israel itself has become deaf to justice.

That is why language matters. To call the attorney general “garbage” is not a minor rhetorical excess. It reveals the deeper logic of the argument.........

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