editorials
T he tumultuous process of the Republican Party’s
eff ort to elect Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as speaker
of the U.S. House of Representatives played out like
a slow-motion car crash on a NASCAR racetrack.

In a voting ritual that had largely been pro-forma
for more than a century — with the party holding
the majority of seats in the chamber anointing that
party’s consensus choice for the speaker position —
a group of hard-right Republican dissidents refused
to go along with the majority. Many predicted that
the holdouts would relent after a couple of rounds of
voting. But that’s not what happened.

Late on Jan. 6, after an unprecedented 15
rounds, the ordeal fi nally ended. McCarthy got
his majority vote. But the victory came at a price.

In addition to the very public revelation of the
dysfunctionality of the Republican Party in what
should have been a celebratory elevation of one of
its leaders, McCarthy was forced to give in to the
holdouts on several of the group’s governance and
process demands.

Those bucking the system were made up primarily
of members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus.

Some holdouts had a score to settle with McCarthy
and refused to support his candidacy under any
conditions. Others demanded a long list of procedural
and operational concessions for the conduct of
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.,
is sworn in on Jan. 7.

business in the House, which would elevate their
infl uence notwithstanding their relatively small
numbers and enable them to pursue their agenda
without many of the limitations built into past practice.

We are concerned that some of McCarthy’s forced
concessions could gum up the administrative process
in the House and unnecessarily interfere with the
orderly operation of important legislative work in
the chamber. But there is one concession relating
to an expansion of legislative and appropriations
opportunities in the House that could benefi t a wide
cross-section of House members.

Over the last couple of decades, we have seen
a signifi cant consolidation of power by House
leadership on both sides of the aisle. It began
when Republicans were in power in the 1990s
and has continued until now. Under this approach,
majority and minority leaders in the House exert
signifi cant control over rulemaking, the legislative
process and the appropriations process. Those not in
leadership have little opportunity for input, as many
bills and related appropriations decisions are not
routinely run through a comprehensive committee
process. The holdout group insisted on changes
that will decentralize control in the House and
open opportunities for a more democratic process,
including a more open use of the committee process.

McCarthy reluctantly agreed.

We recognize that the House Freedom Caucus
has a wholly unappealing agenda. We oppose their
eff orts to cause chaos in the House. We oppose
their eff ort to force a default on the national debt.

We oppose virtually everything the group stands
for and is trying to accomplish. But some of the
governance changes they have demanded could
lead to favorable results for rank-and-fi le members in
the House — and that could be a good thing. ■
Fulfi lling a Campaign Promise
P oliticians like to show voters that they’re living up
to their campaign promises. But smart politicians
know that governing requires more than pleasing
the faithful. When Israel’s national security minister,
Itamar Ben-Gvir, toured Jerusalem’s Temple Mount
last week, he fulfi lled a long-standing promise to his
far-right supporters. But in doing so, he prompted
both expected and less-expected reactions.

To his credit, Ben-Gvir visited the Temple Mount
without an advance announcement and did so
early in the morning when the holy site was not
crowded with the Muslim faithful. He visited with
only a small entourage and left after 15 minutes.

In the circumstances, the visit was surprisingly
restrained for someone regularly described as a
“right-wing provocateur.” Thus far, the visit has not
prompted a mass backlash from Arab worshippers,
similar to the one following the late Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon’s more theatrical visit in 2000.

Still, there have been predictable international
diplomatic reactions. Thus, it was not surprising
that Israel’s regional peace partners, new Abraham
12 JANUARY 12, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
Accords signees and potential peace or accord
partners, along with the Palestinians, condemned
the visit.

The United States — following the Biden
administration’s promise to judge the new Israeli
government not by the makeup of its members but
by the actions it takes — issued guarded criticism,
calling the move “unacceptable” and urging Israel
not to change the status quo on the Temple Mount,
which currently allows Jews to visit there but not
to pray. In response, newly reinstalled Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured critics that
there will be no change in the status quo.

All of that was largely predictable. What was less
predictable were the public, heated reactions of
Ben-Gvir’s Haredi Orthodox coalition partners (who
together hold 18 seats in the 64-member coalition),
who in what appeared to be an orchestrated
response criticized the Temple Mount visit in very
direct terms. In Yated Ne’eman, the United Torah
Judaism’s party newspaper, the visit was criticized
as “unnecessary and dangerous provocation” that
places the lives of Israel’s Jewish citizens at risk.

The front-page article went on to accuse Ben-Gvir
of “upsetting the Arab world, angering the world
and drawing strong American condemnation.”
Similar condemnations were issued by Haredi rabbis
and politicians.

What drives such criticism is the belief that it is
contrary to Jewish law for Jews to visit the Temple
Mount. Thus, as stated in the Shas newspaper
HaDerech, it “is a duty to protest actions that
are prohibited and contrary to halachah,
certainly when it comes to the Temple Mount,
which has been prohibited by all the adjudicators
in all generations.”
The proper approach to the undisputed religious
sanctity of the Temple Mount is a matter of
longstanding debate between the Haredi Orthodox
and religious Zionist Jews — particularly regarding
the propriety of Jewish prayer at the site. That
dispute has now been brought out in the open. The
next steps by Ben-Gvir and his supporters need to
be watched very carefully. ■
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom
Decentralization of Power in Congress



opinions & letters
The Pope Benedict I Knew: A Keeper of
His Faith With a Deep Respect for Judaism
Rabbi David Rosen
Rvin88derivative work: Jüppsche, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
I was fi rst introduced to Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger, later to
become Pope Benedict XVI, in
the late 1980s when he was visiting
Jerusalem. Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem, was eager for me
to meet with the cardinal, telling me that I would discover
a very diff erent person from the image portrayed in the
general media. He was so correct.

That image was in no small part the result of Pope John
Paul II having made him the head of the Vatican Offi ce
for Doctrine and Faith, to enforce orthodox Catholic
teaching. In addition, the fact that Ratzinger was a shy
man with a professorial background and attitude often
led people to see him as aloof and even cold.

He could not have been more diff erent. I discovered a
man of warmth and humor whose company was enjoy-
able and stimulating. Most signifi cant for me was the
discovery of the depth of his respect for Judaism and
the Jewish people, something that always impressed
me in the course of more than a dozen encounters
with him when he was Pope, most of which were in my
capacity as the American Jewish Committee’s interna-
tional director of interreligious aff airs.

He always reiterated his commitment to continuing
the path of his predecessor in advancing Catholic-
Jewish relations, and he highlighted the unique
relationship between Christianity and Judaism.

Benedict XVI, who died Dec. 31 at age 95, was the
fi rst pope to ever invite Jewish leaders both to the
funeral of a pontiff , and above all, to the celebration of
his own coronation at which I was privileged to be one
of those present.

Already during the fi rst year of his pontifi cate, he
received many Jewish delegations and notable individ-
uals, including the chief rabbis of Israel and the chief
rabbi of Rome. In receiving the latter, he declared, “The
Catholic Church is close and is a friend to you. Yes, we
love you and we cannot but love you, because of the
Fathers: through them, you are very dear and beloved
brothers to us.”
The last time I met him personally was well after he
had demonstrated his genuine and impressive humility
in stepping down as pontiff and devoting himself to
study and prayer. I visited him at the Mater Ecclesiae
Monastery in the Vatican gardens. While he was physi-
cally weak his mind was still lucid.

We spoke in particular about the positive treatment
of the Jewish scriptures in the work of the Pontifi cal
Pope Benedict XVI performs a blessing during
the canonization mass in St. Peter’s Square in
Rome on Oct. 12, 2008.

Theological Commission that dealt with this subject,
and which was published under his imprimatur. At
that time, I recalled our fi rst conversation in Jerusalem
when he said to me, “Your duty as a believing Jew is
to be true to Torah, and everything that is holy for you
must have theological meaning for us.”
I said to him, “You know there are many of us who
see religious signifi cance in the return of the Jewish
people to its homeland.”
“Of course, I know,” he replied. “We must also view
it as a sign of God’s fi delity to His covenant with the
Jewish people that has sustained you, even if we
cannot attribute to it the same theological meaning as
you might.”
Cardinal Ratzinger was a member of the papal
commission that ratifi ed the Fundamental Agreement
between the state of Israel and the Holy See, establish-
ing full diplomatic relations between the two. It was my
great privilege to have been part of the Israeli negotiat-
ing team that concluded that agreement.

One of Ratzinger’s closest Israeli friends, the late
professor Zvi Werblovsky of Hebrew University, told
me that the cardinal phoned him from Rome to express
his joy and congratulations on the agreement, declar-
ing it to be a fulfi llment of Nostra Aetate, the Second
Vatican Ecumenical Council declaration of 1965 that
revolutionized the Church’s teaching and approach
toward Jews and Judaism.

During Benedict’s papacy a couple of serious crises
in Jewish-Christian relations emerged relating to the
Society of Saint Pius XII and to the wider provision of the
Latin Mass and its text. These crises, as much a result of
church governance mismanagement as anything else,
were followed by clarifi cations that emphasized the
Vatican’s commitment to Nostra Aetate; its unqualifi ed
rejection of antisemitism as a sin against God and man,
and a complete disavowal of proselytization of Jews.

Unfortunately, they still did not completely repair
the damage to Benedict XVI’s papacy. Nevertheless,
Benedict explicitly and sincerely strove to continue
to advance the paths of his predecessor, especially
regarding the relationship between the Church and the
Jewish People.

In repeating his predecessor’s dramatic gestures
of going to the great synagogue in Rome; of paying
homage in Auschwitz to the victims of the Holocaust,
and of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he
paid respects to the state of Israel’s highest national civic
and religious authorities, Pope Benedict institutionalized
such steps, demonstrating the sincerity of Catholic-
Jewish reconciliation for the Church as a whole. ■
Rabbi David Rosen, former chief rabbi of Ireland,
is the American Jewish Committee’s international
director of interreligious aff airs.

letters Ways to Support Israel
I would like to strongly disagree with Jonathan Tobin’s
assertion in the Jan. 5 edition of the Exponent (“Can
US Jews Love the Real Israel or Only the Fantasy
Version?”) that we should support Israel’s new gov-
ernment under virtually any circumstances.

My father left his home in Wilmington, Delaware,
to fi ght in the Israeli army during the War for
Independence. I’ve been a member of a Conservative
synagogue my entire life, and I read Torah better
than 95% of the boychiks in any of the haredi shuls
in Israel. Why exactly should I support a government
where half of its MPs don’t think I’m Jewish? There
are innumerable ways to support Israel without
supporting a government that has no regard for
democratic principles. To quote my father recently
when describing the political situation in Israel, “This
isn’t what I went to Israel to fi ght for.” ■
David I. Schutzman, Philadelphia
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