Kavanaugh And Due Process

As Jews, we should be sensitive to the needs for equal protection and due process. Historically, millions of Jews have perished because there was no due process and no equal protection. Our Constitution provides for both as well as our freedom to worship.

It saddens me greatly that so many people have been willing to abandon those very precepts, which are incidentally mirrored in Torah. I speak of the ease with which so many otherwise well-meaning people have swallowed hook, line and sinker the notion that Judge Brett Kavanaugh is unfit to be a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (“For Young Jews, Kavanaugh Hearings Are A ‘Wake-up Call,’” Oct. 5).

Kavanaugh will not allow attacks on our religion by government and will be true to the founding authors of our Constitution. Our safety and our children’s safety in this country as Jews is job one. With Yom Kippur just concluded we asked for forgiveness and acknowledged God wants us to change, to repent and to reform. Who among us is the same adult we were as underage — the word means not yet an adult — people? Even if the unsubstantiated allegation of what a 17-year-old tried to do at a party was true it does not mean the man, father, jurist of today will follow that path.

Indeed, all the witnesses point in the other direction, that Kavanaugh is a friend to any woman who wants to succeed in the law, has an even temperament and follows the letter and spirit of the law. Do I need to ask what the Torah tells us about convicting a person without corroborating evidence?

Instead of destroying families and terrifying qualified candidates, why don’t we try to build bridges between ourselves so we can agree to disagree and coexist in peace?

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party that I joined as a young man does not recognize due process or equal protection; as an attorney and as a Jew I can stomach no further part of it.