As a progressive Democrat, I may not seem like the most likely person to attribute a great deal of my political beliefs to my religious upbringing. But growing up in the tradition of Reform Judaism, my faith instilled in me values of generosity, open-mindedness, and a watchful eye toward oppression.
My synagogue, the same one I have attended for most of my life, puts a huge emphasis on social justice. Some of my earliest religious memories involve delivering Passover food to lower-middle class elderly Jews. Indeed, most of the volunteering I did growing up was organized by various Jewish organizations in the Chicago area. My religion taught me that we are all created in God’s image, and that we all deserve to be treated with respect. I also learned that the value of giving lay not in some emotional or heavenly reward for oneself, but in the happiness it provided for someone else. These lessons have translated into an urgent desire to make the world a better place, even at the expense of narrow self-interest.
I also attended a Jewish summer camp for six years. My last summer there, I was part of a bi-weekly seminar with the director of the camp. He was a Reform rabbi who grew up Orthodox, the strictest sect of Judaism, and one day he explained to us the reason for his conversion to the Reform movement. He said that, as a Reform Jew, he could observe all the same traditions as when he was Orthodox, but that he now had to decide why he was observing them and choose whether they made sense to him. My upbringing in the Reform tradition, in contrast to the popular caricature of religion as inherently opposed to critical thinking, in fact welcomed challenge and debate, and I became a more open-minded person for it.
Finally, those familiar with the Passover Seder will recognize a phrase that goes something like, “Remember that you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The story of the Jews’ escape from slavery, at least in my household, always came with a command that we remember the stranger in our midst and inveigh against oppression wherever it may be. And the key saying, “Never forget,” contains a call to vigilant protection of others that we abandon at our, and humanity’s, peril.
For these reasons and others, progressive politics and religion, or mine at least, have more in common than most people care to realize.