These are issues that keep our leaders up at night, but too many of us remain callous, dismissive, or suspicious of any change that might rock the boat

I still remember swallowing down the bile in my throat as I read the transcript of Barack Obama’s speech during the 2024 Democratic National Convention — you know, the event where Kamala Harris was introduced as the undisputed heir to the shaky Biden throne. I zeroed in on a few lines and repeated them to my children. I wanted to see if they’d react with the same instinctive distaste.

“After all,” Obama reassured his rapt audience, “if a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don’t automatically assume they’re bad people. We recognize the world is moving fast, and that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us.”

To my relief, my kids grimaced when they heard the former president’s oozing condescension toward an older generation he clearly saw as obsolete and morally benighted. “That’s not how you talk to parents and grandparents!” was their instinctive response.

Yet many people today do talk and think that way. Obama’s preening moral superiority has continued to resonate as statues and ideals are toppled by youngsters who — thanks to their Qatar-sponsored education — deem themselves eons more enlightened than the visionary men who founded and fought for their country.

But even in the Democratic party, you can hear voices of caution regarding the radical progressive flank. New York Times business and economics editorial writer Binyamin Appelbaum pointed out this week that a purely progressive agenda is not a healthy one for the party’s future. “Healthy political parties…. cannot be solely progressive or conservative. They must be both. They necessarily embody a set of judgments about what to preserve and what to change.”

Appelbaum’s prescription of thoughtful evaluation — keep what works, discard what doesn’t, don’t burn for the sake of burning but don’t petrify for the sake of preservation  — doesn’t only hold true for political parties. It’s true for communities and for individuals looking to grow and thrive in a changing world.

Traditionally religious communities are generally wary of calls for change. To frum Jews raised and nurtured on respect, even awe, for the spiritual heights of those who preceded us, the moral superiority of the progressive youngster feels wrong, even dangerous. We believe in the wisdom of those who came before us, and in the sagaciousness of those among us who’ve lived longer, absorbed more, seen further. We don’t believe that younger is better; in fact, Chazal teach us that youthful attempts to build often spell destruction.

But we don’t discount the perspective and experience of those on the ground. Throughout history, our leaders have fused their hard-won wisdom and experience with a capacity to go out to their people and listen. They stay up late at night or squeeze minutes from a crammed day to feel the smallest Jew’s pain. They consider all those accounts from the everyman, evaluate what’s working and what isn’t, and determine where red lines must be reinforced and where change is crucial.

There’s a reason Zohran Mamdani’s “tear it all down” progressive attitude makes us uncomfortable. We’re suspicious of that youthful zeal to take a wrecking ball to sacred structures and systems. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen when people express pain, or tell us what isn’t working.

With all the fear of Mamdani’s anti-Semitic history and hostile ideological background, with all the doubts about his slim résumé and lack of executive experience, he succeeded in building a campaign that addressed at least half of New Yorkers’ chief frustration: affordability. Similarly, Mikie Sherrill won the NJ governorship by a landslide with a very focused promise to halt price hikes on electricity. Just a short election season ago, Donald Trump made it back to the White House by promising to make groceries affordable, too. You might be a cynic and say that for all the talk of the country’s bitter partisan divides, its electorate will reliably coalesce around a carton of affordable eggs — be it on the blue or red side of the aisle. And you might be right.

But there is something deeper there. Venture capitalist Peter Thiel — a tech billionaire and JD Vance sponsor who’s assuredly no fan of socialism — has been sounding a warning for years that the system that worked for boomers just isn’t working for the next generation. When people can’t afford to buy a home or pay for childcare, he predicted, they will act out their frustration at the ballot box. Sometimes that will put power in the hands of a tariff-wielding rightist (itself a curiosity), sometimes a centrist, sometimes a radical socialist. Even when the numbers don’t add up, even when said socialist’s fantastical promises seem mathematically challenged at best, the voters aren’t propelled by math so much as by frustration, a sense that “something has to change.”

I’M currently at an age and stage somewhere between that young generation quick to condemn it all and the older, wiser, sager generation loath to alter what has worked so well in the past. When my teens discuss societal problems in passionate, grand generalizations, I find myself tempering their righteous indignation. I try to encourage nuanced thinking and to point out the grays hiding between the blacks and whites. But I can get passionate, too, sometimes, and when I think about our communal problems, I find myself repeating the same teenage mantra: “There has to be a better way.”

Maybe that’s why I keep worrying and waiting to see real change for our precious young women who dream of building their own homes, only to spend years waiting for the phone to ring. I don’t think we should be trashing the system or tearing downs its foundations — I’m old enough to recognize that every seeming quick fix will bring multiple new issues to resolve — but I don’t think we can just smile and say, “It will pass, they’ll figure it out.” We can’t just sit by as suggested fixes are repeatedly ignored or rejected. People have entrusted their children and their nitzchiyus to this system. If it’s betraying so many earnest, striving young women — either with trying years that feel spiritually hollow before an eventual resolution, or even worse, with no acceptable resolution — we dare not ignore their pain.

Put your ears to the ground and you will hear murmurs of other issues: a housing crisis that reflects the bigger international reality yet also carries its own specifically frum mutations. A tuition crunch mirrored by a teacher shortage — two sides of the same corroded coin. A slew of fresh, vulnerable marriages on the rocks paralleled by older, established families that just can’t manage to make it through the month. People are crying for relief. I know these are issues that keep our leaders up at night, but too many of us remain callous, dismissive, or suspicious of any change that might rock the boat.

In our Succos edition, a Family First feature quoted the Aleksander Rebbe’s interpretation of the pasuk “binu shnos dor v’dor.” Instead of the literal translation — “contemplate the years of succeeding generations” — the Rebbe translates the word shnos as “the change.” Contemplate the differences between each generation, he counsels, to understand the correct way to reach each one.

I don’t know too many traditionally frum Jews who would describe themselves as progressive. It’s not our way for youngsters to topple authority or ancient understandings, to “re-educate” those who possess the knowledge that only comes with years lived and experiences amassed. But while our foundations and fundamentals are immutable, not every system, protocol, or procedure necessarily carries sanctity. Like the ancient shofros constructed anew for each generation, our modes and methods of transmission can and sometimes should change with time.

Each generation has its own lexicon and rallying cry, its triumphs and its real, wrenching pain. We’re seeking an allegiance so much more enduring than a tick at the ballot box. There’s no way to win that allegiance without mastering the nuances of this generation’s lexicon, thrilling at their triumphs, and most importantly — acknowledging their pain.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1086)