When Judging Guilt By Association, Look Deeper

Below is an excerpt from "On Faith," an Internet feature sponsored by The Washington Post and Newsweek. Each week, more than 50 figures from the world of faith engage in a conversation about an aspect of religion. This week's question : Obama and Wright. McCain and Keating. Palin and Muthee. To what extent is it right or wrong to judge candidates by the company they keep?

Having personally stood with many people on account of whom I have been called a bad Jew, a betrayer of "my people" and a potential enemy of my own United States, I am particularly sensitive to this issue. But if we only stand with the people of whom we already approve, how do we build the bridges that improve things with those of whom we do not? Or as the late Yitzhak Rabin responded when asked how he could sit down with Yasser Arafat, "You can only make peace with your enemies." That doesn't mean that we can sit down with everyone always, and how we choose makes all the difference in the world.

It matters who candidates decide to spend time with, as it does for all of us. And it also matters why they are with them. The mere fact that a person, whether me with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia or our candidates for the presidency, spends time with someone is not synonymous with an endorsement of that person and everything for which they stand. And the ability to make that distinction marks the difference between the sickening gotcha politics being played by both sides in this race, and making an honest accounting of the people with whom we hang out and whether or not it is really worth it.

For example, I am far more concerned about Barack Obama's 20-year relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than I am about his episodic and tangential connection to Bill Ayers, even though the latter actually committed very serious crimes. Why? For three reasons: because Wright remains entirely unrepentant about the venomous hate speech that has defined a significant piece of his ministry, because Obama did not repudiate that speech until political expediency forced him to do so, and because calling someone your pastor makes a powerful claim about the esteem in which you hold them.

And even though Pastor Thomas Muthee stood at a pulpit with then Wasilla, Alaska, Mayor Sarah Palin, and slammed "Israelites" for their "control of the economy," I am far less worried by that than I am by the "poor judgment" (so said the Senate Ethics Committee) displayed by John McCain when he intervened, however minimally, on behalf of Charles Keating. Why? Because both the nature of the relationship, and what motivates it, are far more troubling in the latter case than in the former.

-- Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership

To read the complete essay and see more "On Faith" commentary, hosted by Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn, go tohttp://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith.