What If Our Politicians Used Judeo-Christian Values To Run Their Campaigns And To Govern
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/opinion/james-talarico-christian-democrat-texas-primary.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/opinion/israel-citizen-palestinian-war.html
These two pieces from the Opinion page of The New York Times on Sunday, March 8, got me thinking. As both an American and a Jew, someone with deeply vested interests in both the United States’ and the Israeli political systems, am I satisfied with the values displayed by the men and women in these two systems at the present moment given that both countries will be going through important elections this calendar year and both launched attacks on Iran? No, I am not.
What these two articles framed for me was that the way I was thinking about the competitive politics of the two countries was completely wrong.
Here, in the U.S., of course, I was thinking Republican vs. Democrat when the dominant philosophies of neither party align with my values. I can never be a MAGA Republican devaluing minority rights, wanting to isolate the United States, punishing our allies, and cozying up to authoritarians. That’s not me.
However, I am also not a Mamdani or AOC Democrat ready to give away the treasure of the nation to undocumented immigrants and throw the borders wide open.
In Israel, I have trouble with the manner in which the Netanyahu government has conducted itself in Gaza and the West Bank. I cannot believe the Israeli citizenry has not demanded some accountability for October 7 and heard from its leaders how the bombing of Gaza has led to greater security for Israel. And, as the second article above points out, the wide spread marginalization of the 2 million Arab citizens of Israel is not right either even as these Arabs make up a disproportionate number of the health care workers in the country.
But, I also am not yet comfortable with the two-state solution until the Palestinians manage to acquire some responsible leadership even as the current Israeli government does everything in its power to prevent this very thing from occurring.
Then I read the first article by David French who is rapidly becoming my new, favorite conservative.
Perhaps the answer to America’s woes has arisen in Texas. His name is James Talarico. Mr. Talarico, a 36-year-old member of the State Legislature, is a devout, Christian seminarian who actually avows Christian values, that is the ones addressed by Jesus of caring for the weak and poor and treating everyone as an equal, created in the image of God. What a concept! It is always about here that I, a Jew, have to say that when I read the New Testament for the first time as a freshman at Duke, I was so struck by the weight of Christian values and of Christianity as the most high-minded of all religions. I just couldn’t get my head around how it would work for humans. It was based on faith rather than law, as Judaism is. Jesus actually expected people to do the right thing without telling them 613 times specifically what to do as Judaism does?
Talarico espouses his values as those of true Christianity–not Christian nationalism which separates everyone into good vs. evil. Nope, he really believes in a politics based on Christianity. How much do I believe he’s on the right track? I broke my long-held rule that I adopted after working on Capitol Hill of never sending money to a politician. I gave him $50.
In the second article, Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israeli analyst with the International Crisis Group, a think tank on crisis prevention, describes the woeful treatment of the large number of Arab citizens of Israel. She is right. This is as unacceptable as is the Trump Administration’s killing of our own citizens in Minneapolis.
Both the United States and Israel are heterogeneous nations. Our citizens come from all over. But, if the predominant faith of America is Christianity, let’s treat each other using true Christian values. James Talarico aspires to do just that.
In Israel, for sure, most of the citizens are Jews, but about 20% are not. They should have equal rights and equal representation. Currently, under the Netanyahu government, they do not. The people of Israel have to change this at the next election. And the people of Texas need to give us a U.S. Senator whose values are ones we can all respect—Christians and Jews and Muslims.
The politics of both nations need to embrace the values of their major religions. Right now, this is not the case. The rise of James Talarico provides one other very Christian value. Hope. It’s not a strategy, I understand, but it is essential for a politician wishing to change the core values of the American government.
