On Friday morning, as Reform (read: liberal) Jews lined up and endured security checks to see President Obama's address, I snarkily posted on my Facebook page that I "warn the ghost of Moses to stay away from D.C. There's a Golden Calf in town and we all know what happened the last time he saw thousands of Jews worshiping a false idol." That drew many "Likes," including from some non-Jews.
Obama’s Jewish Pitch: Liberal, Not Israel
That Obama’s speech followed a lengthy tribute at the event on the 50th anniversary of Reform’s Religious Action Center was not exactly a coincidence. The RAC is the embodiment of the belief by some that the liberal political stands are indistinguishable from Judaism. Much of the RAC’s agenda: support for abortion, Obamacare, “economic justice” (so defined as to encompass support for higher taxes and more entitlement spending) and gay marriage are not Jewish issues even if they are ideas that many Jews support.
And it is to those concerns that Obama spoke with passion on Friday as he bragged that “the change we needed and voted for” had satisfied much of the laundry list of the RAC’s political wish list. The old quip that Reform Judaism consists of the Democratic Party platform with holidays thrown in never seemed more true as thousands yelled their approval when Obama let loose with class warfare rhetoric. By casting the political debate as a “moral issue” of the interests of “working people” against “the powerful,” the president played to the desire of liberal Jews to interpret their own partisanship as somehow being part of their religious tradition. Indeed, so deeply entrenched are such attitudes among liberals that it never occurred to the cheering throng that letting a candidate for public office — even an incumbent president — use a religious gathering for partisan political purposes was inappropriate. ...
I’m not surprised in the least by this reaction. Unfortunately, the hateful and un-American class warfare rhetoric of Obama’s is red meat for Jewish liberals.
But I wonder if any of the clergypeople in attendance -- there had to be at least 2,000 -- are aware of their own hypocrisy. How can you castigate "the rich" for "not paying their fair share" when they, as clergy, as well as their houses of worship are exempt from paying income taxes! In addition, most (Reform) clergy, while not being quite the 1%, reside in quite luxurious homes and drive pretty fancy cars. Not all of them, of course, but very many. To these clergypeople -- many of whom are happy to give lectures about those evil Christian theocrats trying to impose their religion on us and invoke the putative "separation of Church and State" -- I say put your money where your mouths are. Really believe in a separation of Church and State? Then put your money where your mouths are and abdicate your tax exempt status.
Tobin goes on in a subsequent post:
... [T]hough the president told his Reform listeners not to “let anybody else tell a different story,” his account of his relations with Israel is, to put it mildly, incomplete.
From his first moments in office, Obama set out to distance the United States from Israel. The intention was both to draw a distinction between the closeness of the Bush administration to the Jewish state but also to create a greater bond between the Arab and Islamic world and the United States. President Obama’s June 2009 Cairo speech drew a moral equivalence between the Holocaust and the plight of the Palestinians. This attempt to reach out to Muslims failed miserably, but the one thing he accomplished was to convince the Palestinians they could avoid negotiating with Israel because Obama was willing to fight the Israelis for them.
In his speech, the president noted his frustration with the lack of progress toward peace but failed to acknowledge that he has chosen to vent that anger solely at Israel by picking damaging and unnecessary fights with the Netanyahu government. No president has done more to undermine Israel’s position on Jerusalem. His stance on the 1967 borders was, like his stance on Jerusalem, a precedent setter that tilted the diplomatic field toward the Palestinians. It is this record that has caused Israelis to regard him with less favor than any other American president in a generation. ...
Indeed. And yet after the speech I found myself debating the issue on Facebook with Jewish friends in attendance at the speech. They can't see what makes Obama so anti-Israel.
At the Israel's daily paper HaAretz, Chemi Shalev wrote:
If I were a Republican watching the live stream of President Obama’s speech before the Reform movement’s biennial convention in Washington on Friday, I would have reached two immediate conclusions: 1. Obama, the consummate campaigner who has been more or less missing in action since his inauguration, is back and 2. Forget about the Reform Jewish vote. He’s got that locked up.
Yes, he does. That's for sure. Remember that old nasty quote from George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State: "F**k the Jews. They won't vote for us anyway."? Well, for Obama and the Democrats, the strategy is evidently: "F**k the Jews. They will vote for us anyway."
Indeed, they must have been tearing their hair out, the Republicans, to see the audience give wave after wave of ecstatic applause and standing ovations to the man who, as Mitt Romney put it, “threw Israel under a bus” - especially after weeks of having fallen over themselves to express their undying love and uncritical support for the Jewish state. Perhaps there won’t be a sea change in the Jewish vote, they might console themselves after this speech, but let’s hope for a modest stream, or a trickle, at the very least. ...
Recent Comments