This photo was taken at the No Kings Rally & March on June 14th, 2025. Mishkanites met up before the protest to sing and pray, centering ourselves in our Jewish values of equality and human dignity. Photo credit: Zach Weinberg.

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A friend, Mishkanite, and founder of a nonpartisan organization whose noble and humble purpose is to save American democracy, told me recently he wants to create a movement to rename July 4th to American Ideals Day.

I kind of love it. Because let’s be honest, the history around July 4th leaves something to be desired. America was born both as a set of ideals that gave new and unprecedented power to the people to govern themselves through choosing their own leaders… and “people” was narrowly defined to exclude women, Black people, indigenous people, and so many others. Slavery was still legal. It would be hundreds of years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives, before all people born in this country could even imagine sharing the same rights and freedoms as white, straight, property-owning men. And, here in 2025, we’re seeing those rights rolling back down the hill as we speak.

But those rights and freedoms were ideals for all people from the beginning. Even though the Founders couldn’t get there themselves, those rights and freedoms were ideals for all people from the beginning. And July 4th is a great time to recommit to these ideals that move and inspire us about this place we call home. Free speech. Free assembly. The right to the pursuit of happiness which means the right to love and marry who one wants and have children if one wants (and not if one doesn’t!). The right to practice Judaism, knowing that our neighbors upstairs may have a picture of the Pope on their wall, downstairs may have a rug for Muslim prayer; to the right may worship at the altar of Mother Nature, and on the left, may be ardent atheists; and up and down the block are many shades and flavors of Christianity… but as long as we all pay our taxes, follow traffic laws and respect one another’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we’re OK. We can live, work, go to the beach and attend sports games and concerts, alongside people with wildly different belief systems and so far, at least according to our shared American ideals, that’s a good thing. For Jews, it’s always been a good thing, even when it’s been hard. (It occurs to me that it’s almost 50 years since the famous Neo-Nazi march in Skokie, which Jews both affirmed their right to do even if they didn’t like it… and then counter-protested with thousands more people, and even more pride, purpose and love of country).

Jewish tradition recognizes two main motivating emotions in how we relate to power: fear and love, yirah and ahavah.  And there’s plenty of reasons to be afraid right now, one is a trans teen or anyone who could possibly get pregnant and need reproductive health care in half the states in America, or a disabled or poor American reliant on medical or nutritional services that will cut by the shameful budget bill just passed in the Senate; or a Jew attending a publicly Jewish event or publicly sharing love of their Israeli family or friends; or, for that matter, a politician or protestor expressing sympathy for the suffering of Palestinian people; or someone who is in this country without legal status, even if they’re married to or have kids and grandkids who are American citizens; anyone who knows the realities of ignoring the climate crisis… The list of legitimate things to fear goes on and on.

But what if, at your barbecue or gathering of friends or even online tomorrow, we don’t talk about what we fear today, but rather ask ourselves and one another: what do you love most about this country? What do you value about this place? What are the ideals that make you want to fight for the soul of this country, even if we haven’t attained them yet or if they’re being threatened? What do you want to cultivate and work toward? Perhaps July 4th could be like a high holidays of American idealism, returning to those values and precepts that remind us who we really are and what we really want to work toward, rather than always being in a posture of reactivity, anger and fear.

At Mishkan, we’ve always been motivated to create the Judaism we practice on the strong foundation of the tradition that precedes us, with the knowledge that others have different ways of practicing and yet, there are certain ideals that weave us all together into a tapestry of Jewish peoplehood: makhloket l’shem shamayim (argument for the sake of truth, or heaven); yirat shamayim (awe, in the presence of the Oneness of all life); tzedek (the pursuit of justice), chesed (lovingkindness), human beings all being created tzelem elohim (in the Divine image) and so forth… There are times we don’t get it right and need to course correct. But we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, and we do hold onto the love we feel for this incredible inheritance we’ve been given.We do this in so many ways, all the time. We have ideals for the ways we want to be parents, friends, professionals, spouses… and then we fall off the wagon, get it wrong, f* it up. Ideally, we apologize. Ideally, we not only say sorry, but we say what value or ideal it was that we missed the mark on, so that we can do better next time. We keep our eye on the love that animates the relationship, reminding ourselves: this is worth fighting for. I want to keep showing up and keep improving. I don’t want to fantasize about running away, I want to imagine reclaiming and loving this thing even more powerfully.

Happy American Ideals Day.