Why I’m breaking up with the two-party system

Last month, I was in a group exercise with prominent Jewish leaders. A participant began to explain how one American political movement could betray the conditions Jews need to be safe. Almost immediately, a highly accomplished woman cut in.

“It wouldn’t happen that way,” she insisted. “It would be the other party.”

She couldn’t even entertain the possibility that her political tribe might turn on her.

I was stunned. Her loyalty wasn’t just strategic — it was absolute.

She’s not alone. And it’s not only about keeping Jews safe.

If you listen closely, today’s debates often slide from policy into identity. Too many Jewish Democrats and Jewish Republicans argue their party isn’t just better for the Jews—but is the Jewish party.

Both sides retrofit Torah to match their politics, as if a 3,000-year-old civilization can be flattened into a party platform.

But here’s the truth: neither party is aligned with Judaism, and neither can guarantee Jewish safety. Not in any consistent, principled, or sustained way.

This isn’t a call for disengagement. I vote. I care. But if we want to build a Judaism that can survive — and flourish — we need to stop searching for it inside the two-party system.

We need to be political animals, not partisan ideologues.

We need to think Jewishly, not just vote reflexively.

With so much on the line — from Israel to antisemitism to the future of this country — Jewish integrity today demands independent thinking.

This kind of intellectual independence isn’t new. The Torah pointed the way thousands of years ago.

* * *

This week’s double Torah portion, Behar-Bechukotai, introduces one of the most radical economic institutions in the Jewish tradition: Shemitta, the sabbatical year.

Every seven years, farmers in the land of Israel were commanded to stop working their land. Fields lay fallow. Fences came down. Possession was relinquished. Land became, quite literally, ownerless.

This wasn’t utopian fantasy — it was law. And its logic wasn’t economic or political. It was theological: “The land is Mine; you are but strangers and residents with Me.” (Leviticus 25:23)

The land doesn’t belong to the king, the people, or the state. It belongs to God.

Like Shabbat, Shemitta is a ritualized rejection of the idea that the world belongs to us. It resets power. It resets wealth. It resets ownership. It’s a theological declaration channeled into economic law: we are stewards, not sovereigns.

What fascinates me about Shemitta is how completely it breaks with contemporary categories. In the American political system, economic arguments tend to mirror the partisan divide:

On one side, the traditional Republican worldview: capitalism, private property, tax cuts, minimal state interference. This traces back to classical liberalism; John Locke famously wrote that the very purpose of government is “the preservation of property.”

On the other side, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party: redistributive policies, debt cancellation, expanded public programs, and suspicion of private wealth. This vision often draws on socialist thought. As Karl Marx put it: “The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”

Ownership as sacred, or ownership as suspect.

But Shemitta doesn’t fit either frame.

Judaism isn’t capitalist. It isn’t socialist. It isn’t left or right. It starts not with what’s mine or what’s yours — but with what belongs to God.

That doesn’t mean it denies private ownership — far from it. But as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks taught, Judaism protects property rights while rejecting their moral absolutism.

Property is not holy. People are. Wealth may be earned, but it must be shared. Land may be held, but it cannot be hoarded.

That’s not an ideology that fits into our politics. It transcends them.

* * *

Too many Jews still believe one party will save us. That the GOP or the Democrats, on the economy or otherwise, champion “Jewish values.” That loyalty to a side is loyalty to our people.

It’s not. And that illusion is dangerous.

Israel is under fire. Antisemitism is rising in places we once thought safe. The alliances we trusted are fraying. We are not as protected — or as welcome — as we imagined.

So what if we tried something else?

What if we evaluated policies and politicians on merit?

What if we stopped filtering our judgment through party loyalty and started thinking like independent Jews with complex obligations?

What if we called out antisemitism wherever it appears — left, right, center?

What if we stopped pretending politicians love us, and remembered they serve their own interests and a broad range of constituents?

We’d see more clearly.
We’d be better political animals the second we stopped playing for teams.
We’d be better Jews, too.

Torah never fit neatly into a political ideology. That’s not a flaw — it’s the design. Judaism will always ask more of us than slogans or sides can ever deliver.

If we want to survive — not just physically, but spiritually — we need to stop outsourcing our moral imaginations to our two-party system. We need political independence.

Not to escape politics —

But to do it better.