What Nobody in Washington Understands About Balance

There’s a story about Michael Jordan that’s been told and retold, perhaps because it captures something uncomfortably true about how we’ve come to think about public life.

The story goes that when Jordan’s uncle was running for Congress in North Carolina, he asked his famous nephew for a public endorsement. Jordan declined. When pressed, he offered an explanation that became one of the most quoted lines in sports history: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”

People have spent years debating what that answer reveals about Jordan — was it wisdom or cowardice? Principle or calculation? But whatever you make of the man, the line itself points to something real: there are people who choose to operate outside the partisan divide, not because they have no convictions, but because they believe their work serves something larger than any faction.

I find myself in a similar position. As a rabbi, I don’t speak for one party or against another. My tradition asks me to speak to something older and more durable than any election cycle — and frankly, I think that’s where the most useful things can still be said. So what follows isn’t left or right. It’s something I hope cuts a little deeper than either.

Because here’s what I keep noticing: we’ve been told, for a generation now, that the solution to our national divisions is balance. Find the middle. Split the difference. Compromise.

It sounds reasonable. It might even feel generous.

But I don’t think it’s working. And I think I know why.

The Kabbalistic tradition — Jewish mystical wisdom refined over centuries — describes the structure of reality through a pattern of three: a right column, a left column, and a center. The qualities on the right are about expansion, generosity, inclusion — what the tradition calls Chesed, lovingkindness. The qualities on the left are about restraint, boundaries, discipline — called Gevurah, strength. Both are real. Both are necessary. Neither is wrong.

But here’s the key: left entirely to themselves, both become destructive.

Expansion without limits becomes indulgence. Restraint without warmth becomes harshness. You don’t solve this by finding the precise midpoint between them.

What transforms them isn’t compromise. It’s elevation.

The center column in this framework is called Tiferet — usually translated as beauty or harmony, though neither quite captures it. Tiferet doesn’t split the difference between the two forces. It brings something from above into both of them — a quality of compassion and moral clarity that makes generosity wiser and makes strength gentler. Neither side has to surrender. Both are lifted.

And in Kabbalistic thought, Tiferet is associated with something striking: the direct, active presence of G‑d in the world. Which means the center, in this framework, is not a human negotiating position. It’s a gift that comes from above.

Now consider the American experiment through this same lens.

The United States was built on two powerful and genuinely competing forces. On one side, democracy — the radical idea that every person carries inherent dignity and voice, that power rises from the people, that no one stands above the law. That’s the expansive force, Chesed in modern dress. On the other side, capitalism — the conviction that effort matters, that discipline and competition drive human flourishing, that limits and accountability are real. That’s the structuring force, Gevurah translated into economics.

Both are real goods. Both, taken alone, become something else entirely.

Democracy without any higher moral anchor tends toward the demand for everything with no corresponding sense of obligation. Capitalism without moral grounding tends toward power asserting itself simply because it can.

For most of American history, something held these forces in tension — not by neutralizing them, but by elevating them. A broad, shared accountability to something beyond self-interest. A moral seriousness that democracy isn’t just about rights, it’s about responsibility — and that prosperity isn’t just about accumulation, it’s about stewardship.

That wasn’t a political program. It was Tiferet — the divine presence functioning as the elevating center.

When it’s present, the sharp conflict between the two forces begins to soften — not because anyone compromised their convictions, but because both sides were oriented toward something higher than winning.

When it recedes, each side reverts to its worst impulse, convinced the other is the enemy, and no amount of negotiation closes the distance.

So the question isn’t where to draw the line between left and right. It isn’t which side to concede to. Tiferetasks a different question entirely:

What does G‑d ask of us here?

That question can’t be answered by a committee or legislated from Washington. It can only be answered, quietly and honestly, in individual lives — in the choices we make about how we treat people we disagree with, how we wield whatever power we carry, and whether we’re willing to be accountable to something beyond our own preferences.

According to the Kabbalah, that’s exactly where the transformation begins. Not at the top. In us.

Michael Jordan was right that people of every persuasion buy sneakers. He might also have appreciated this: the things worth building — communities, families, nations — aren’t built by picking a side.

They’re built by people willing to be lifted.

Yonatan Hambourger is a rabbi and teacher. He welcomes questions and comments at y@TasteofTorah.org. More of his work can be found at www.TasteofTorah.org.