Rabbi 360

The election results are in.

Here are a few things we do know: it is going to be harder to purchase a firearm in Washington State. The Republicans will control both houses of the U. S. Congress. The Washington State delegation will stay the same. The makeup of the Thurston County Commission will change.

Here are some things we don’t know: What this all means moving forward.

We often speak of politics as operating on a continuum of liberalism and conservatism, or their directional shorthand, left and right. Sometimes we talk about religion as operating internally on that same spectrum (i.e., liberal Judaism vs. conservative Judaism). And then there is the intersection of religion and politics. Do religious conservatives naturally hold conservative political positions, and vice versa?

What does it mean to be a liberal and a conservative? Must a political position be one or the other, or can it…