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What Jewish voters need to know about Ron DeSantis, the Florida Republican running for president
(JTA) – In late April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis visited Jerusalem, voicing support for Israeli West Bank settlements, touting a law he had just signed giving families thousands of dollars per year in private school tuition vouchers and signing a bill that increased penalties for antisemitic harassment.
Two weeks later, his education department rejected two new textbooks on the Holocaust as part of a clampdown on what he has called “woke indoctrination.”
Those two developments may anchor the Jewish arguments for and against DeSantis as he stands on the cusp of announcing a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Supporters paint him as a steadfast ally of Israel who speaks to the pocketbook concerns of Jewish families. In the years since he became Florida’s governor in 2019, the state has seen an influx of Orthodox Jews, drawn both by lax pandemic policies and the promise of discounted day school tuition.
But DeSantis’ opponents portray him as a cultural reactionary whose anti-“woke” politics are inhibiting education on the Holocaust and antisemitism — along with teaching about race, gender and sexuality. He has repeatedly condemned George Soros, the progressive megadonor who is an avatar of right-wing antisemitic conspiracy theories. Surveys show that his near-total restriction of abortion rights is unpopular with Jews nationally.
And hanging over the campaign is the candidacy of former President Donald Trump, who is running for a second term, is leading in the polls — and shares much in common with DeSantis even as he has attacked him.
While DeSantis’ allies have played up some of their differences (such as DeSantis’ youth and military service), when it comes to their respective records on issues of interest to Jewish voters, Trump and DeSantis are less distinct.
Each has sought to cultivate Jewish support by focusing on Israel and erasing church-state separations that, Orthodox Jewish leaders argue, inhibit religious freedoms. And both have attracted white nationalist supporters while leaning into the culture wars.
DeSantis is set to officially announce his campaign in a chat with Elon Musk, who was just condemned by a wide range of Jewish figures (and defended by a handful of others) for tweeting that Soros “hates humanity.”
Here’s what you need to know about DeSantis’s Jewish record:
He has been an outspoken booster of Israel.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a Jerusalem Post conference at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem on April 27, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
DeSantis, a Catholic, has a visceral affinity for Israel, and has framed his support for the country in religious terms.
“When I took office, I promised to make Florida the most pro-Israel state in the United States, and we have been able to deliver on that promise,” he said this week, addressing evangelical Christians at the National Religious Broadcasting Convention in Orlando, The Jerusalem Post reported.
He likes to tell audiences that on his first visit to Israel as a U.S. congressman, his wife Casey scooped up water from the Sea of Galilee into an empty bottle to save for baptisms. The couple had yet to have children.
The water came in handy for the baptisms of their first and second children, but after DeSantis was elected governor, staff at his residence cleared away the unremarkable bottle (which was still half full) after their second child was baptized in 2019. Not long afterward, DeSantis mentioned the minor fiasco in passing at a synagogue in Boca Raton, and before he knew it people were sending him bottles of water from Israel.
The gesture still moves him. “I was sent, all the way from Israel, this beautiful big glass jar filled with water from the Sea of Galilee that sat on my desk in the governor’s office in Tallahassee until our third child was born and baptized, and we used that water to do it,” DeSantis said last month when he visited Israel.
DeSantis made Israel a focus when he was congressman, taking a leading role in advocating for moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He was among a group of lawmakers who toured Jerusalem in March 2017 and was bold enough to pick out what he said would be the likeliest site.
In November of that year, as chairman of the House national security subcommittee, he convened a hearing on what he called the necessity of moving the embassy. The following month, Trump announced the move, and the site the Trump administration chose was the one DeSantis had identified.
In May 2019, just months after becoming governor, DeSantis convened his state cabinet in Jerusalem and gave a definition of antisemitism favored by the pro-Israel community the force of law. The same year, he banned government officials from using Airbnb after the vacation rental broker removed listings in West Bank settlements. DeSantis’ blacklisting of the company was seen was key to Airbnb reversing the decision.
He’s garnered allies — and enemies — among Florida’s Jews.
DeSantis has done much to cultivate support in Florida’s growing Orthodox community, which shares his enthusiasm for bringing faith into government.
In 2021, DeSantis came to a Chabad synagogue in Surfside to sign two bills, one affording state recognition to Hatzalah, the Jewish ambulance service, and the other tasking all Florida public schools with setting aside a daily moment of silence, long a key initiative of the Chabad movement.
In his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018, DeSantis campaigned on steering state money to religious day schools. This year he made good on the promise, signing a law that makes $7,800 in scholarship funds available annually to schoolchildren across the state, regardless of income, and to be used at their school of choice.
DeSantis also has plenty of Jewish enemies in a state where the majority of the Jewish community votes for Democrats.
In his first term, he had a contentious relationship with Nikki Fried, a Democrat who, as agriculture commissioner, was one of the four ministers in the Cabinet who had a vote. DeSantis maneuvered to freeze her out of the decision-making process.
Fried, who describes herself as a “good Jewish girl from Miami,” now chairs the state’s Democratic Party. She routinely calls DeSantis a fascist. In April, she was arrested at an abortion rights protest outside Tallahassee’s City Hall.
Under DeSantis, Florida has prohibited abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. That stance has set him up for clashes with other prominent Jews in the state as well. Last year, he suspended Andrew Warren, a Jewish state attorney, because Warren pledged not to prosecute individuals who seek or provide abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
L’Dor Va-Dor, a synagogue in Boynton Beach, spearheaded the first lawsuit filed against Florida’s abortion ban in 2022, citing religious freedom arguments. Daniel Uhlfelder, a Jewish lawyer who drew attention when he dressed as the Grim Reaper to protest DeSantis’s reopening of the beaches during the pandemic, signed on as an attorney for the synagogue.
His “war on woke” has had implications on Holocaust education.
Recently, much of DeSantis’ tenure has been defined by what he calls the “war on woke,” a term originated by Black Americans to describe awareness of racial inequity but now more often functions as shorthand for conservative criticism of progressive values. DeSantis has enacted multiple pieces of legislation restricting what can be taught in schools and has also limited transgender rights, banning gender-affirming medical care for children.
While most of the books challenged under DeSantis’ education laws have focused on race and gender, the study of the Holocaust has been affected as well. In addition to the education department’s rejection of the Holocaust textbooks this month, Florida laws that make teachers liable for teaching inappropriate content to students have led multiple school districts to take Holocaust novels off the shelves, including a graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary.
DeSantis calls claims that he’s chilling Holocaust education “fake narratives.” He and his defenders point to his requiring all Florida public schools to certify that they teach about the Holocaust.
Neo-Nazi and white supremacist activity has increased under his watch.
A recent report from the Anti-Defamation League described an upward trend of extremist and antisemitic activity in the Sunshine State, driven in part by emerging white supremacist groups — some of whom have gone to bat for DeSantis in the past.
DeSantis has been dogged by accusations that he caters to the far right. One of the most stinging exchanges in the 2018 election season came when Andrew Gillum, DeSantis’s Democratic opponent in the race, accused DeSantis of not being forceful enough in renouncing the white nationalists who expressed support for him in robocalls.
“First of all, he’s got neo-Nazis helping him out in this state,” Gillum said. “Now, I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.” DeSantis flinched.
DeSantis eked out a victory a few weeks later, and was soundly reelected last year, but he remains sensitive on the issue. Last year, when neo-Nazis intimidated Orlando’s Jews with signs and shouts at an overpass, politicians in the state reflexively condemned them. A reporter asked DeSantis why he had not done so, and after calling the neo-Nazis “jackasses,” the governor said the question was a “smear” and added, “We’re not playing that game.” (Several months later, the leader of the antisemitic propaganda group Goyim Defense League moved from California to Florida, saying he thought the Sunshine State would be more hospitable to his efforts.)
DeSantis has also called liberal prosecutors “Soros-funded”. It’s not an unusual political gambit — the billionaire Jewish liberal donor does fund progressives running for prosecutor. But Soros has also been the focus of multiple conspiracy theories that antisemitism watchdogs say are antisemitic, casting the Holocaust survivor as a malign influence with excessive power.
Some Jewish donors are already supporting him.
DeSantis appeared last year at a conference in New York of Jewish conservatives, where he talked to a friendly audience about his war against the “woke” and was also conveniently in the room with some of the most generous Republican donors.
He is reportedly working some of those donors, who gave generously to his gubernatorial runs. He was a star last November at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual Las Vegas confab, and Axios reported that he met with Miriam Adelson, the widow of GOP kingmaker Sheldon Adelson, as well as other Jewish donors when he was in Jerusalem last month.
A number of them are hanging back, not wanting to alienate Trump while he remains influential in the party. (Adelson has said she does not want to weigh in on the primaries.)
Among the Jewish donors and fundraisers said to be in DeSantis’s camp: Jay Zeidman, a onetime Jewish White House liaison who is now a Houston based businessman; Gabriel Groisman, a lawyer who is the former mayor of Bal Harbor; and Fred Karlinsky, a leading insurance lawyer.
Last week, Jewish conservative political commentator Dave Rubin tweeted that DeSantis would bring “Freedom, sanity and competency” to the country. Groisman shared the tweet with the word “This.”
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The post What Jewish voters need to know about Ron DeSantis, the Florida Republican running for president appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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An Israeli poet was scheduled to do a reading in New York. Then her publisher called.
It was supposed to be a party to celebrate the revival of a nonprofit poetry press and to welcome a beloved Israeli poet back to an America quite different from the one she visited decades ago.
But politics in that new America intervened, canceling the party.
Hamutal Bar-Yosef, a contemporary icon of Israeli poetry, had planned to be in New York City this week to read from the new English translation of her collection The Miraculous Mistake.
Bar-Yosef’s book is one of three volumes coming out this fall by Sheep Meadow Press, an American nonprofit that had been dormant since its founder, renowned Jewish poet Stanley Moss, died in 2024.
The scheduled reading was also part of a new chapter for Poets House, a national poetry library and meeting place in Manhattan, which, after a four-year hiatus sparked by the pandemic, reopened in 2024 and began offering rental space.
But as conversations about the upcoming event unfolded, Greg Miller, the new head of Sheep Meadow, grew concerned. Bar-Yosef, who is 86, had just received one of Israel’s most prestigious literary awards, the Bialik Prize for a lifetime of achievement in poetry. But not everyone at Poets House seemed enthusiastic about welcoming her, he told the Forward.
Given her elevated profile and the anti-Israeli climate now pervading the literary world, Miller called off the event. He said select staff from the Poets House offered to help him find a new venue in the spring.
“As a result of this conversation and others it was important for someone who is representative of Israel right now to have security,” Miller said. “And so I made the decision we were going to postpone and find a more appropriate venue, the right spot for her that will give her the audience she deserves.”
Poets House did not respond to the Forward’s inquiries. Bar-Yosef declined to be interviewed for this story.
Sheep Meadow and Poets House have a long history, going back 40 years since Sheep Meadow founder Moss also helped found Poets House as a place that “exists to create a welcoming home for poets, poetry readers and for those who are exploring poetry.”
Moss, whose Almost Complete Poems won the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry in 2016, founded Sheep Meadow Press in 1977 as a nonprofit press with a particular focus on international poets in translation.
Thursday’s event was going to feature a reading of poems from Soon, Moss’s final collection of poems completed in his 99th year. Miller also planned to share the stage with Bar-Yosef to read from his own new collection Green Runs Through It.
Moss and Bar-Yosef appeared together for a reading at the 92nd Street Y when Sheep Meadow published an English translation of Night, Morning, one of her nine poetry collections.
But much has changed for Israeli and Jewish authors since then and especially since the Israel-Hamas War began on Oct. 7, 2023. According to a PEN America report published in July, editors have increasingly ignored submissions, rejected them outright or asked agents not to submit Israeli authors in the future.
Miller said it comes down to what the word Zionism means for audience members. Bar-Yosef believes in a homeland for the Jewish people and the state of Israel, Miller said. For years, she has helped transport Palestinian children from the West Bank to hospitals inside Israel. She has Palestinian family members. A prolific prose writer, literary scholar and translator, at least three of her poetry books have been translated into Arabic. She also has published in journals that include Arabic and Hebrew writers.
But because others have imposed their own meaning on the Z-word, finding a safe and welcoming space in the U.S. for an Israeli to read poetry free of indictment has become a challenge.
“I don’t want to be the shillelagh of the left or the right,” Miller said. “I don’t want Hamutal to be that either.”
Bar-Yosef’s latest collection of verse, originally published in Hebrew in 2020, explores grief through the various losses in her life including the death of her older brother in the War of Independence, the suicide of one of her sons, the murder of family members in the Shoah and choices that have become clear long after the fact and too late to right the wrongs.
“It is poetry that addresses harsh realities directly, eschewing pathos and sentimentality, and refusing to hide behind musicality or fluidity—qualities that can otherwise veil the blemishes and scars of reality,” one reviewer wrote in Haaretz when the original Hebrew edition was released in 2020.
A description of the collection by its distributor, Wesleyan University Press, describes it as “a glimpse of holy solidarity, of a time, perhaps some 500 years in the future, where there will be no need for steel doors and bomb shelters” – a reference to the poem Five Hundred Years, which opens with: “It’s hard to believe, but five hundred years ago people like us had slaves.”
It ends with: “That is how they will talk about wars and terrorist attacks as a way of settling disputes or salvaging pride after five hundred more years, perhaps even less.”
The post An Israeli poet was scheduled to do a reading in New York. Then her publisher called. appeared first on The Forward.
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The power of Sukkot to unite the Jewish people
אין דער גמרא שטייט אַז יעדער ייִד קען — טעאָרעטיש — נוצן די זעלבע סוכּה. דאָס שטרײַכט אונטער דעם פֿאַקט, אַז מיר זענען אַלע גלײַך, און אַלעמען באַגריסט מען גלײַך אין דער סוכּה.
אין דער אמתן, ווען מען וואָלט געבויט אַ גענוג לאַנגע און ברייטע סוכּה, וואָלט דאָס גאַנצע ייִדישע פֿאָלק — אָן אויסנאַם — געקענט אַרײַנגיין אין איר און עסן אין דער זעלבער צײַט.
דער דאָזיקער באַגריף פֿון אַחדות דריקט זיך אויך אויס אין אַ באַזונדערער מצווה פֿון סוכּות: די אַרבעה מינים. די תּורה באַפֿעלט אונדז, אַז דעם ערשטן טאָג סוכּות זאָלן מיר נעמען אַן אתרוג, אַ לולבֿ (אַ צווײַג פֿון אַ טייטל־פּאַלמע), דרײַ הדסים (מירטן־צווײַגן), און צוויי ערבֿות (הושענות), כּדי זיך צו פֿרייען פֿאַרן אויבערשטן.
וואָס שטעלן מיט זיך פֿאָר די אַרבעה מינים? דער אתרוג האָט סײַ אַ גוטן גערוך סײַ אַ גוטן טעם; דער לולבֿ האָט אַ טעם — טייטלען — אָבער קיין גערוך נישט; דער הדס האָט אַ גוטן גערוך אָבער קיין טעם נישט; און די ערבֿה (הושענא) האָט ניט קיין טעם און ניט קיין גערוך.
דער גערוך שטעלט פֿאָר מעשׂים טובֿים, גוטע מעשׂים, וואָס — אַזוי ווי אַ גערוך — האָבן אַן השפּעה אויפֿן אַרום; בשעת דער טעם שטעלט פֿאָר לימוד התּורה, וואָס דערנערט די נשמה אַזוי ווי פֿיזישע שפּײַז דערנערט דעם גוף.
יעדער איינער פֿון די אַרבעה מינים שטעלט פֿאָר אַן אַנדער סאָרט ייִד: עס זענען דאָ ייִדן וואָס צייכענען זיך אויס מיט זייער חכמת התּורה, אַנדערע מיט זייערע גוטע מעשׂים, אַנדערע מיט ביידע, און אַנדערע מיט קיינעם פֿון די צוויי. דער געדאַנק איז, אַז מיר זענען אַלע אָפּהענגיק איינער פֿונעם צווייטן, און יעדער איינער דערגאַנצט דעם אַנדערן. נאָר ווען מען האָט אַלע פֿיר צוזאַמען קען מען מאַכן די ברכה און מקיים זײַן די מצווה.
בכלל ווערט פֿאַרשטאַנען, אַז די לערנונג פֿון דער דאָזיקער מצווה איז, אַז דער וואָס געפֿינט זיך אין דער העכערער רוחניותדיקער מדרגה פֿונעם „אתרוג“, אויסגעצייכנט סײַ מיט חכמה סײַ מיט גוטע מעשׂים, דאַרף זיך — אַלטרויִסטיש — אָפּגעבן מיט דעם וואָס געפֿינט זיך אין דער קאַטעגאָריע פֿון „ערבֿה“, אָן קיין באַזונדערער רוחניותדיקער מעלה.
לויטן זעקסטן ליובאַוויטשער רבין, רבי יוסף יצחק שניאורסאהן זצ״ל, איז פֿאַראַן אָבער נאָך אַן אַנדער דינאַמיק: דער וואָס געפֿינט זיך אין דער מדרגה פֿון „אתרוג“ קען און דאַרף אויך לערנען עפּעס ווערטפֿולס פֿון דעם וואָס געפֿינט זיך אין דער קאַטעגאָריע פֿון „ערבֿה“.
דער וואָס געפֿינט זיך אינעם מצבֿ פֿון „ערבֿה“, אָן קיין באַזונדערער רוחניותדיקער מעלה, און פֿונדעסטוועגן פֿילט ער זיך „זייער ייִדישלעך“, דריקט אויס אַ טיפֿן, אומברעכלעכן ייִדישן צושטאַנד, ניט געקוקט אויף דעם וואָס עס פֿעלט אים אין ייִדישן בילדונג און וויסן. דער וואָס האָט אַ סך געלערנט קען דורך זײַן פּערזענלעכער אַנטוויקלונג אַ סך פֿאַרשטיין און אַ סך פֿילן; פונדעסטוועגן איז אים אָפֿט שווער צו דערגרייכן און אויסדריקן דעם עסענץ פֿון זײַן נשמה. צו דער דאָזיקער בחינה פֿון זײַן אייגענעם מהות קען ער צוקומען דווקא דורך לערנען פֿונעם ייִד פֿון דעם „ערבֿה“־טיפּ, וואָס פֿילט זיך ייִדיש נישט צוליב זײַן ייִדישער בילדונג, נאָר טראָץ דעם וואָס עס פֿעלט אים. זײַן ייִדיש געפֿיל שטאַמט פֿון זײַן עצם הנשמה, דעם „פּינטעלע ייִד“ וואָס איז אינגאַנצן אומאָפּהענגיק פֿון קיין שום סיבה.
דער ליובאַוויטשער רבי זי״ע ווײַזט אָן, אַז די אַרבעה מינים שטעלן פֿאָר די אַחדות פֿונעם ייִדישן פֿאָלק, ניט נאָר ווײַל זיי רעפּרעזענטירן דעם צוזאַמען־פֿאַרבונד פֿון פֿיר פֿאַרשידענע קאַטעגאָריעס, נאָר אויך ווײַל יעדער מין פֿאַר זיך שטעלט פֿאָר אַחדות אין זײַן אייגענער קאַטעגאָריע.
דער אתרוג וואַקסט און ווערט דערנערט במשך פֿון אַלע פֿיר סעזאָנען פֿונעם יאָר. די בלעטער פֿונעם הדס וואַקסן אַזוי, אַז לענגאויס דעם שטאַם קומען אַרויס גרופּעס פֿון דרײַ בלעטער פֿון דער זעלבער הייך. בײַם לולבֿ דאַרפֿן די בלעטער ווערן פֿאַרמאַכט און צונויפֿגענומען און ניט צעשפּרייט איינער פֿונעם צווייטן — אַחוץ דעם וואָס יעדער בלעטל איז צונויפֿגעלייגט פֿון צוויי העלפֿטן — און די ערבֿות וואַקסן צוזאַמען אין אַ סאָרט אַחדות.
דאָס שטעלט פֿאָר נאָך אַן אַספּעקט פֿון אַחדות, ווײַל אַ מאָל איז גרינגער זיך צו פֿאַראייניקן מיט איינעם וואָס איז אַנדערש פֿון מיר, ווי מיט איינעם וואָס איז ענלעך צו מיר און קען אויסזען ווי אַ קאָנקורענט.
אַזוי אַז אויף סוכּות דריקן מיר אויס דרײַ מדרגות פֿון אַחדות אינעם ייִדישן פֿאָלק: איין מדרגה וואָס שטאַמט פֿון דעם געמיינזאמען עסענץ, וואָס איז העכער פֿון פֿאַרשידנאַרטיקייטן;איין מדרגה וואָס דריקט זיך אויס דווקא דורך די פֿאַרשידנאַרטיקייטן; און נאָך אַ מדרגה — די אַחדות צווישן די וואָס זענען ענלעך איינער צום צווייטן.
אין דער אמתן, קומט איינס אַרויס פֿון צווייטן. אויב אַ מענטשנס אַמביציע איז עגאָצענטריש, איז זייער שווער זיך צו פֿאַראייניקן מיט אַנדערע. אויב אָבער זײַן אַמביציע איז אויסצופֿירן דעם ג־טלעכן ציל, וועט ער אָפּשאַצן און שעצן די הצלחה פֿון יעדן וואָס שטעלט זיך צו אויסצופֿירן דעם בשותּפֿותדיקן שליחות.
עס איז די אַחדות וואָס דריקט זיך אויס אין די מצוות פון סוכּות וואָס דערמעגלעכט די אמתע שׂימחה פון „ושמחת בחגך“.
די שוואַכע, צאַרטע סטרוקטור פֿון דער סוכּה האָט איבערגעלעבט טויזנטער יאָרן פֿון געשיכטע און רדיפֿות — אין די גולאָגן און אין די קאָנצענטראַציע־לאַגערן. הײַנט־צו־טאָג קען מען אין אַ סך קהילות איבער דער וועלט זען ווי ליובאַוויטשער ישיבֿה־בחורים פֿאָרן איבער די גאַסן פֿון שטאָט מיט אַ מאָבילער סוכּה, כּדי צו פֿאַרבעטן ייִדישע דורכגייער מקיים צו זײַן די מצוות פֿון עסן אין דער סוכּה און צו מאַכן די ברכה אויף די אַרבעה מינים.
אז איר וועט זיך אָנטרעפֿן אין איינעם פֿון זיי, ביטע גיט זיי איבער א גרוס!
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The Jewish soul and Hasidic inspirations of Annie Dillard
The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Annie Dillard, who died Sept, 15 at age 81, drew on Jewish inspiration past and present for her meditative books on humans and the deity, including the nature-imbued narrative Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
Raised a Presbyterian, in young adulthood Dillard discovered Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim, in which she found a kindred spirit among Hasidic rabbis who, according to legend, would turn somersaults and do cartwheels and flips in the synagogue before ritual acts such as reciting Kiddush, the blessing uttered to sanctify Shabbat and Jewish holidays; lighting Hanukkah candles; and weddings. As Dillard put it at Michigan’s Calvin College Festival of Faith & Writing in 1996, her introduction to Hasidism was through Buber’s books and she “really, really, really liked them.”
Herself exultant by temperament, fond of energetic dancing and sports, Dillard saw no contradiction between exuberance and serious consideration of moral and ethical questions. Indeed, she followed the Hasidic spiritual concept of Bitul ha-yesh (ego effacement) to become receptive to the divine by reading from a range of sources to find inspiration for her own books.
These included Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, whom she described to an interviewer in 1992 as “the great religious thinker” of the 20th century, and Simone Weil, the French philosopher. The latter two, “especially Heschel,” added Dillard, “have everything I need.”
What she needed as a writer was to fulfill her self-definition as a “Christian Hasid,” as she informed a reporter in the year 2000. The English literature maven Lori Kanitz has observed tyhat Dillard drew on Hasidic notions to better mull over nature and creation. Dillard agreed with the concept that humans assist God in redemption by making everyday physical objects and moments into something sacred or consecrated.
She favored the argument by the 16th century rabbi Isaac Luria that divine sparks trapped in the material world might be liberated through intense spiritual awareness. Especially in books such as 1999’s For the Time Being, she blended Yiddishkeit with heterodox Christian philosophers such as the Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to address questions about faith, suffering and individual existence.
The result was an emotionally fraught style, rich with biblical allusions. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek likens a combative domestic feline’s ensanguined paws to the “mark of Cain” and “blood sign of the Passover.” In this exalted, highly artful prose with Judaism as part of its vocabulary, the Quran is mentioned in the distressing context of animals devouring one another in nature, followed by the French Catholic thinker Blaise Pascal’s implication that after creation, God more or less abandoned humanity. Yet this existential doubt is calmed by two further citations from Albert Einstein to remind the reader that “subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not” and “Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse.” Bringing in Einstein, another example for Dillard alongside Abraham Joshua Heschel of the quasi-omniscient good grey Jew, shows her acute admiration for Jewish wisdom.
Characteristically, Dillard published in a 1998-99 issue of a University of Notre Dame publication for Catholic readers an essay insistent in its Yiddishkeit. The text begins by reminding readers of the execution of Rabbi Akiva by the Romans in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Unsparing of gory details, this account is followed by quotes from the Nobel-Prize-winning Holocaust poet Nelly Sachs, Gershom Scholem, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, Rabbi Pinhas of Koretz, Rabbi Menachem Nochum Twersky, and a rare modern too, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner.
Blending nature with Jewish elements, Dillard recounts a trip to Lavi, a kibbutz in northern Israel near Tiberias, where she witnesses birds mating in mid-air. Juxtaposed with maxims by Christians, her narrative has an anthological aura, akin to that of Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy (1945) which by contrast contains almost no direct passages from Jewish mystics.
Overall, Dillard kept in mind, as she suggested to one critic in 1999, that her goal was to persuade “the agnostic intellectual” that all spirituality need not be discarded by a discerning reader. That said, in some of Dillard’s books, the transitions between different traditions, from Sufism to Inuit beliefs, could appear contradictory.
But then as friends observed, Dillard herself could seem to be a walking contradiction; she was obsessed with nature, but also a lifelong chainsmoker. And although according to Lori Kanitz and others, her works were redolent of such venerable Jewish ideas as tsimtsum (divine contraction) and shevirat ha-kelim (shattering of the vessels), she likewise surrounded herself with a self-created Jewish mishpocheh of literati.
Dillard achieved the latter feat by energetically supporting modern American Jewish writing, lauding authors with more sheer enthusiasm than they may have been accustomed to receiving from fellow Jews. Drawn to high spirits and celebrants among living Jews, she was a fan of Louis D. Rubin’s Small Craft Advisory about shepping nachas from boats; she termed Rubin’s book a “moving account by a happy man.”
Part of appreciating happy Jews for Dillard was relishing Jewish humor with a highly developed sense of the absurd. She provided a blurb for a book by Jewish chef Peter Kaminsky about how to prepare decidedly un-kosher pork products, noting: “I love ham and I love this book.” She similarly kvelled at the inherent absurdity of describing how in 1982, the American Jewish Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was assigned the task of guiding a tour group in Disneyland composed of visiting Chinese communist authors. And she valued that a hybrid factual/fictional work by journalist Jake Silverstein was both “warm and funny.”
Dillard also persistently lavished serious praise on Jewish contemporaries such as the American visual artist and novelist Rosalyn Drexler for being “committed to a lifetime struggle for excellence.” Dillard deemed Fortune’s Daughter (1985) by Alice Hoffman “one of the best” American novels of the previous decade and in 2010 welcomed a debut story collection from Hester Kaplan as evidence of a “remarkable new writer.”
Unsurprisingly, Jewish writer friends of Dillard expressed gratitude for her enthusiasm for their efforts. The biographer Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages includes an acknowledgement to Dillard for “precious gifts of time, friendship, intelligence, and candor.” Jewish readers can likewise be grateful to Dillard for her characterful investment of time, friendship, intelligence, and candor in conveying elements of Yiddishkeit in serendipitous contexts.
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