The debt ceiling compromise reflects deep Jewish wisdom
(L-R) U.S. President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) depart the U.S. Capitol following the Friends of Ireland Luncheon on Saint Patrick’s Day March 17, 2023 in Washington, DC (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Rabbi Brad Hirschfield May 31, 2023
It looks increasingly likely that Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy’s compromise will allow Congress to raise the debt ceiling, allowing the U.S. to avert the potentially catastrophic results of a federal default.
President Biden did this despite months of insistence that he would not negotiate.
Did the president back down, wimp out or betray his fundamental principles, as some within his own party are accusing him of doing? Did McCarthy?
Regardless of your political affiliation, both Biden and McCarthy deserve credit for narrowly averting a crisis. And Jewish tradition teaches us that compromise, not dogged adherence to ideology, is a sign of strength.
Compromise is courage
The Talmud itself views compromise — the finding of some shareable middle, which is neither side’s ideal — as the ideal result of great jurisprudence. This is true even if, in doing so, we feel less of the immediate visceral satisfaction that comes with getting our way.
Politics and policy are inherently messy — at least in a vocal, diverse democracy. It pretty much always requires compromise.
For some, compromise is, at best, the ugly tax we pay for getting things done, more of a necessary evil than an ideal. Yet there is a rich Jewish legal and policy approach, led by 11th century sages like Rabbi Isaac Alfasi (The Rif) and other major medieval Jewish jurists, that takes the opposite position.
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The goal, according to these authors, is not so much to get the One True Right Answer, but to find a resolution that balances competing interests and needs.
That is an especially powerful claim to make when one believes, as these authors do, in a revealed truth of God. We live in a world where many people believe that religious wisdom teaches a clear right and wrong, and tend to have little appreciation of compromise. According to The Rif and those who champion compromise, there are multiple possible right outcomes which reflect divine law. The right answer depends on who the litigants are and what compromises they can reach.
Alfasi, and those in his intellectual camp, would be cheering for Biden and McCarthy, whether they agreed with them equally or not.
Pursue justice
Justice, which is often invoked in popular culture as something pure and absolute, is in the Jewish understanding something quite different.
The Bible’s best-known passage on the topic is from Deuteronomy 16:20 — “Justice, justice you shall pursue.” The key word in that passage is “pursue.”
We are not commanded to achieve justice. We are commanded to pursue it, suggesting that justice is a moving target. This fact opens the door to the possibility of reaching new compromises, without necessarily violating what is just, as many of both the president’s and McCarthy’s critics charge.
To center the pursuit of justice, versus justice itself, resists an understanding of justice as the attainment of finding some ultimate resolution. With the use of “pursue” comes not only an acceptance of compromise as a tool in making public policy and law, but truly embracing compromise as part of the sacred and messy process we call politics.
Jewish tradition does not view justice as a fixed thing at all. If it were, we would be commanded to achieve it rather than to pursue it. The Torah, after all, is hardly shy about making strong demands regarding what we are supposed to do and not do.
We should view compromise not as a betrayal of justice, but as the mandate we are meant to live. Taking strong positions is a necessary part of principled politics, as both Biden and McCarthy know well. Doing so is a crucial part of their jobs. But so is compromising.
Compromise, in the name of serving as widely and durably as possible, even if it includes some things we oppose, or leaves out the needs of some we wish were more included, is what we want our politicians to do.
The final agreement between the president and Speaker McCarthy is not what either of them originally wanted. Yet each is able to live with the outcome, without feeling that they have relinquished either their integrity or their core commitments.
That deserves praise, not criticism. They have found the kind of compromise which does not compromise them. And they have put people ahead of an adherence to ideology, a capacity we need in our leaders now more than ever.
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