Submitted by Zelda Lily Guest Writer Rabbi Moshe Averick
Generally speaking, I follow the advice of the Talmudic sages who strongly urge caution, and warn of the potential dangers, regarding unnecessary entanglements with politicians or politics in general. I confess that the political arena is a setting that is so foreign and mysterious to me that I am blissfully satisfied to be confined to the bleachers where spectators like myself can sit and watch the three-ring circus which we call the political process. This is not an article about politics. It is about the phenomenon called Sarah Palin and it is rooted in something much deeper than what is generally covered in standard political commentary. (I leave the discussion of her politics to people who, hopefully, understand those issues much better than me.)
No political figure in recent memory has evoked such an immediate and powerful gut reaction from the American people and the media as Governor Sarah Palin (with the notable exception of perhaps President Barack Obama). In the space of roughly 24 hours back in 2008, she went from being the obscure governor of Alaska to the political equivalent of a rock superstar. The cause of this supernova-like explosion onto the political landscape was not due to anything she said or did (nobody knew anything about her at the time), it was due to who she was and is. It was her very presence, the way she looked, the way she spoke, the aura she projected, the vision that people instinctively understood she represented that either churned the stomachs of some, or tugged at the souls and heartstrings of others.
Let me put it a different way: To suggest that the vicious …
