Over the past year, decisions by the Trump administration have introduced a new level of instability into American life. New international tariffs disrupted the global trade market and raised constitutional questions at home. Aggressive immigration raids in Minneapolis, which ignored standard law enforcement procedures and led to heightened — and at times lethal — violence, have raised grave concerns domestically.
And now, the war with Iran and the widening conflict in the Middle East have ushered in a new era of international instability. Even without boots on the ground, the shocks of this conflict are being felt domestically, as the stock market spirals and gas prices skyrocket. For American Jews in particular, this new conflict feels close to home, as family and friends in Israel are sent dashing into shelters repeatedly every night.
With each emerging crisis, the scripts we have long relied on no longer seem adequate to guide us. From its actions in Minneapolis to the Middle East, the current administration is rewriting the norms that shape our society. The impact of these actions on our domestic life and foreign policy will be felt long after the events themselves are over.
President Donald Trump’s willingness to go off script can be risky, but also beneficial, a fact to which the Jewish community is particularly attuned. For decades, U.S.-Israel relations have been shaped by bipartisan norms that supported Israel while trying to constrain any escalation of conflict in the region. These norms offered a degree of stability, but as the events of October 7th made painfully clear, they neither resolved the Israeli-Palestinian conflict nor guaranteed Israel’s long-term security.
True to form, since coming to office, Trump has ignored those norms, in ways that changed the script and opened important doors. His willingness to improvise helped secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and his decision to strike Iran without congressional approval dealt a blow to a dangerous regime and to one of Israel’s most formidable threats. Many American Jews have praised these moves.
But those same actions also illustrate the dangers of improvisation. The president has drawn the United States into an ever-widening conflict with no clear aims or exit strategy. Even more concerning, the war with Iran highlights yet again the administration’s disregard for established procedures and democratic norms. The president does not simply deviate from the script when needed; he rejects the script itself.
In Jewish tradition, the idea of going off script to pursue a better outcome is encapsulated in the idea of acting lifnim mi-shurat ha-din (literally: “within the line of the law”). The Babylonian Talmud tells stories of both rabbis and God acting in this manner, and later tradition celebrates these examples as moments of moral creativity, often rooted in generosity or compassion. But the Talmud itself is more cautious. It is aware of the instability such actions might produce, the risk that improvisation might undermine existing norms. Even when it champions the idea of acting lifnim mi-shurat ha-din, the Talmud cautions us: Most of the time, most people should just stick to the script.
A striking teaching in Bava Metzi’a 30b encapsulates these tensions. The Talmud tells a story about Rabbi Ishmael and his encounter with a man who is carrying a heavy bundle of sticks. Rabbi Ishmael’s elite status exempts (and perhaps prohibits) him from manual labor, but he nonetheless wishes to help the man with his burden. Deviating from expectations, Rabbi Ishmael offers to purchase the man’s sticks so that he will no longer have to carry them. What initially seems like it will be a straightforward exchange quickly spirals into misunderstandings. Rabbi Ishmael is only able to resolve the interaction by making a dubious legal pronouncement, which the Talmud immediately declares to be invalid. Of all the Talmudic tales of rabbis acting lifnim mi-shurat ha-din, this narrative highlights the dangers of improvisation, showing how even good intentions can lead to morally and legally murky territory.
But the Talmud offers a surprising coda to this narrative. Immediately after raising these concerns, it cites Rabbi Yochanan’s teaching that “Jerusalem was destroyed because its inhabitants judged strictly according to Torah law.” The claim is shocking on its face, but the text quickly clarifies: The issue is not the people’s adherence to Torah, but rather their refusal to improvise when circumstances demand it. A society that is unable to respond flexibly when needed will ultimately fail. A leader who is never willing to go off script may be unable to usher in the needed changes that we struggle to even imagine.
This passage reminds us of the core challenge of such decision-making: Improvisation is inherently unstable. Going off script introduces new possibilities, and we cannot know in advance where they will lead. A leader who never deviates from the script may miss opportunities to dramatically improve our world, but a leader who improvises risks creating substantially worse conditions as well.
When the Talmud explores the possibility of acting lifnim mi-shurat ha-din, it places such actions against the overarching backdrop of adherence to norms. The phrase appears infrequently, reflecting the Talmud’s assumption that improvisation will be rare.
The dilemma we face today is different. The problem is not that our leaders sometimes improvise — it is that, under the Trump administration, improvisation has become the norm. By constantly rejecting or ignoring established scripts, rather than occasionally deviating from them, the administration risks erasing those scripts entirely. These scripts represent generations of accumulated wisdom, reflection, and democratic consensus. Abandon them, and what replaces them may sometimes be better — but it may also be far worse.
American Jews who support the current war with Iran, and see it as necessary for Israel’s protection, should not ignore the ways that this current war is part of a pattern of unpredictable decision-making at the highest levels of government. As the story of Rabbi Ishmael reminds us, even wise leaders with good intentions can run into problems when they improvise.
Although the Talmud wrestles with the challenges posed by improvisation, it also offers guidance for how to balance these tensions in its depiction of divine decision-making. Avodah Zarah 3b teaches us that God sits in judgment of the world for three hours every day. Only when it becomes clear that the world cannot withstand divine judgment and merits destruction does God move from the seat of din — of law, of judgment, of established norms — to the seat of compassion and mercy. The text associates this orientation towards mercy with the divine decision to act lifnim mi-shurat ha-din (Avodah Zarah 4b). In so doing, it reminds us that our laws and norms form the backdrop of our society; it may sometimes be necessary to deviate from them, but we should only do so when we realize that those scripts impede us from achieving something better.
When our leaders improvise, they should do so because they seek to respond with greater care to the needs of their community than our normal scripts would allow. Without such constraints, improvisation becomes irresponsible. When pursued for its own sake, or without limitation, it risks unraveling the very fabric of our society.
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