With a new president likely to enter the White House in January, it will be fascinating to see whether our divisions will mend or deepen. Will the winning side double down on its smugness? Will the losing side double down on its anger? Will the anticipated chaos make both sides dig in? The next few weeks and months will test the humanity of both winners and losers.

Yes, he will make obligatory speeches, as he did on Saturday night, celebrating his win. But he won’t say anything of substance; rather, he will cleave to the cliches that got him elected.

Our new Platitude President will proclaim there are no red states or blue states but only the United States, an assertion that will crumble when he tries to dismantle our oil industry.

But the 71 million people who voted for Donald Trump despite his incompetence, despite his lying, his bullying, his cheating, his racism, despite all the moral failings he proudly flaunts as virtues? Those people aren’t going anywhere, the poison-spewing right-wing media that created them isn’t going anywhere, and Donald Trump himself isn’t going anywhere. And it’s not remotely clear what the rest of us can do about any of that.

Vot­ers need this elec­tion to be fully lit­i­gated. Who­ever oc­cu­pies the pres­i­dency can­not have ru­mors float­ing around for the next four years about dead peo­ple vot­ing or bal­lot dumps in the mid­dle of the night. The U.S. needs to know that the win­ner is ac­tu­ally the win­ner.
And once Amer­i­cans know that, I have every ex­pec­ta­tion that Mr. Trump will be, act and speak like a great pres­i­dent should—win or lose.

The good thing is that it doesn’t ultimately matter. A formal concession after an election is not embedded in our Constitution — it is a norm.

President Donald Trump has given every indication that he won’t accept the result as fair. Trump also has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. Both moves would be historical firsts…

Well, sip your matzah ball soup while it’s hot because there’s a lot of work to be done. The run-off for Oss-off will be January 5 (as well as the run-off between Loeffler and amazing candidate Raphael Warnock). In line with the groundwork of Georgia activists and 2018 candidate for governor, Stacey Abrams, voter registration in GA is incredibly important to winning statewide races.

Major questions hang in the balance: Will the Supreme Court be packed, military spending slashed, medicine socialized and U.S. energy independence “transitioned” away? If Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are returned by Peach State voters, Americans will have divided government and compromise. If left-wing Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win, the nation will be saddled with the radical outcomes above…

If Ossoff and Warnock win, they would level things up at 50-50. Since the vice president gets to cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate – and the vice president-elect is Kamala Harris – this means the Democrats would be able to get the Biden White House’s legislative agenda through Congress.

The stark comedown threatens to weaken Mr. Netanyahu further as he endures abysmal approval ratings, struggles to avoid a third wave of the coronavirus and put Israelis back to work, prepares for trial early next year on felony corruption charges, and contends with an emboldened opposition and embittered allies who have openly talked of joining forces to oust him.

Biden is an old foreign policy hand, but he inherits a Democratic policy elite that has little to show for its long efforts and embroilments in the region. If he hopes to be more successful here than his former boss, Democrats will need to reconstruct their sense of the region and of America’s interests in it.

While Biden is a known political commodity and has a strong record among Democrats when it comes to Israel, there will almost definitely be disagreements over issues like the Iran deal, the settlements and the Palestinians, and any one of those could be used to ignite a crisis with a clear political benefit.

Rabbi Sacks, more than any rabbi I know, spoke to our generation. The Torah teaches us repeatedly that when there is a difficult problem to solve, we should go to the priest or judge “who shall be in your days”. Of course they are in our days, who else is there? But the sages taught that we must go to a person who is “in your days”, who understands the issues of now, who lives in the present, and not to hark back to long gone leaders.

At his core, Rabbi Sacks was a story-teller. He had a rare sense for the right message for the time. His book, A Letter in the Scroll, is the most effective outreach book I have encountered. Carefully sidestepping all the difficult philosophical and scientific challenges that face many outreach arguments, Rabbi Sacks builds an emotionally and intellectually compelling case for the beauty and excitement of Jewish life.

Jewry will not be the same. The world has lost an iconic voice, a guiding moral light, a beacon of hope amongst the chaos. I cannot believe I will not read another Rabbi Sacks book, in which every page had a sticky note or underlined section; in which I not only came away after reading it enlightened, but also transformed.

It’s easier to see the [“The Vow’s] blind spots when it’s viewed as a companion piece with a new Starz series on the same subject, the finale of which airs tonight. Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult undercuts The Vow’s approach. Its directors interview cult experts in tandem with former NXIVM members to better understand Raniere’s tactics.

I think we’re fascinated by these stories because we want to tell ourselves that it would never happen to us, but the truth is, what The Vow shows, and what Oxenberg’s story will show, is that we are far more susceptible to these kinds of manipulations than we might think. These members were not stupid, silly people. They were idealists who were deeply manipulated then didn’t feel they could leave when they saw it was not all it seemed.

Seduced and The Vow have oddly similar backstories. Both were made by filmmakers with a personal connection to the story… With a story as vast as NXIVM, a group that spanned multiple decades, thousands of members, and several countries, no one documentary can capture every detail.