Last December I went with my wife to Alabama and Georgia to explore a part of the United States that I didn't know about. I have this plan that before I die, I want to visit all 50 states in this wonderful country. So far I've visited fourteen states. In Birmingham I visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. While we were listening to one of the curators at the Institute, I learned about something that I had never known before. While we talked about the campaigns in the South in the 1960s, she mentioned the important role that Jews had in the Civil Rights movement. My close friend, Jan Lieberman, had told me that her rabbi had taken part in the marches, but I didn't realize the extent to which Jews had taken part in the fight for civil rights. I decided to check out some books in the library to learn more.

For the past few months, there has been a lot of talk about the lack of bipartisanship in the past few years. I have to admit feeling dread at the new Republicans that are coming to Congress this January. There are issues that Democrats will have to fight the Republican Party tooth and nail on, like the Republican promise to try to repeal last year's health care bill and the attempt by some Republicans to reverse the repeal of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. There are some issues, though, that Democrats could possibly collaborate with Republicans on. These collaborations will result in piecemeal, incremental reforms, but in my view, even incremental change is better than gridlock. I read two articles, Brian Riedl's November 29, 2010 article for the National Review titled What to Cut and Daniel Stone, Eleanor Clift and Andrew Romano's article for the November 1, 2010 edition of Newsweek called Yes, They Can to try to find some possible areas of common ground that the Democrats and Republicans can work on. Admittedly, there isn't much common ground between the liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans that dominate the Congress right now. I don't yet know the tendencies of the few remaining moderate Republicans who remain. Perhaps though if we find some areas of common interest to work at, maybe these next two years in Congress won't wind up just being two years of gridlock.