While elections and political upheavals can be consequential, there are things that matter more. That is in part the message of the political philosopher Michael Oakeshott’s magnificent essay, “The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind.” Today of all days is a good one to think about the work of the great Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, whose centennial fell last spring. Amichai Chasson—who was not named after the poet but sometimes said he was in order to impress girls—considers Jerusalem’s role in his work:

Redemption, according to Amichai, prioritizes the human over the mythical, the living person over the dead symbol—especially in Jerusalem, which is full of people and full of symbols. But Amichai does not seek to negate the meaning of symbols; he does not want to immigrate to secular Tel Aviv, and he does his shopping in the outdoor Mahane Yehuda market, not in the supermarket. He chooses to live in this overwrought city, to draw inspiration from it, to understand and honor it, but he chooses different priorities: “From man thou art and unto man thou shalt return.”

But why not look at one of the poems themselves?

It’s sad
To be the Mayor of Jerusalem.
It is terrible.
How can any man be the mayor of a city
like that?
What can he do with her?
He will build, and build, and build.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.