
 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
March 20, 2008
/ 13 Adar II 5768
Should people of faith empathize with Obama?
By
Jeff Jacoby
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I have known my rabbi for more than 20 years. The synagogue he serves as
spiritual leader is one I have attended for a quarter-century. He officiated at
my wedding and was present for the circumcision of each of my sons. Over the
years, I have sought his advice on matters private and public, religious and
secular. I have heard him speak from the pulpit more times than I can remember.
My relationship with my rabbi, in other words, is similar in many respects to
Barack Obama's relationship with his longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright
Jr. But if my rabbi began delivering sermons as toxic, hate-filled, and
anti-American as the diatribes Wright has preached at Chicago's Trinity United
Church of Christ, I wouldn't hesitate to demand that he be dismissed.
Sen. Barack Obama and his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
Were my rabbi to gloat that America got its just desserts on 9/11, or to claim
that the US government invented AIDS as an instrument of genocide, or to urge
his congregants to sing "G-d Damn America" instead of "G-d Bless America," I
would know about it straightaway, even if I hadn't actually been in the
sanctuary when he spoke. The news would spread rapidly through the
congregation, and in short order one of two things would happen: Either the
rabbi would be gone, or I and scores of others would walk out, unwilling to
remain in a house of worship that tolerated such poisonous teachings. I have no
doubt that the same would be true for millions of worshipers in countless
houses of worship nationwide.
But it wasn't true for Obama, whose long and admiring relationship with Wright,
a man he describes as his "mentor," remained intact for more than 20 years,
notwithstanding the incendiary and bigoted messages the minister used his
pulpit to promote.
In Philadelphia, Obama gave a graceful speech on the theme of race
and unity in American life. Much of what he said was eloquent and stirring, not
least his opening paean to the Founders and the Constitution a document
"stained by the nation's original sin of slavery," as he said, yet also one
"that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a
Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that
could be and should be perfected over time." There was an echo there of Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr., who in his great "I Have a Dream" speech extolled "the
magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence" as
"a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir."
The problem for Obama is that Wright, the spiritual leader he has so long
embraced, is a devotee not of King who in that same speech warned against
"drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred" but of the poisonous
hatemonger Louis Farrakhan, whom the church's magazine honored with a lifetime
achievement award. The problem for Obama, who campaigns on a message of racial
reconciliation, is that the "mentor" whose church he joined and has generously
supported with tens of thousands of dollars in donations is a disciple not of
King but of James Cone, the expounder of a "black liberation" theology that
teaches its adherents to "accept only the love of G-d which participates in the
destruction of the white enemy."
Above all, the problem for Obama is that for two decades his spiritual home has
been a church in which the minister damns America to the enthusiastic approval
of the congregation, and not until it threatened to scuttle his political
ambitions did Obama finally find the mettle to condemn the minister's odium.
When Don Imus uttered his infamous slur on the radio last year, Obama cut him
no slack. Imus should be fired, he said. "There's nobody on my staff who would
still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any
ethnic group."
When it came to Wright, however, he wasn't nearly so categorical. Oh, he's
"like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with," Obama
indulgently explained to one interviewer. He's just "trying to be provocative,"
he told another. "I don't think my church is actually particularly
controversial," he said. Far from severing his ties to Wright, Obama made him a
member of his Religious Leadership Committee a tie he finally cut only four
days ago.
Such a clanging double standard raises doubts about Obama's character and
judgment, and about his fitness for the role of race-transcending healer.
Tuesday's speech was finely crafted, but it leaves some serious and troubling
questions unanswered.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.
Jeff Jacoby Archives
© 2006, Boston Globe
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|