Rabbi Michael Beals of Wilmington, Delaware, compared President-elect Joe Biden to Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt — away from “an autocratic, cruel Pharaoh” — in a send-off ceremony on Tuesday afternoon.
Beals was invited to give the invocation at the close of the event, marking the Biden family’s departure for the White House.
Speaking with his coronavirus mask lodged beneath his nose, Beals fawned on the President-elect and his family.
The rabbi noted that Biden’s inauguration coincided with a week in which Jewish congregations are reading — as they do every year at roughly this time — the portion of Exodus describing the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.
He compared Biden’s election to “Moses’s freeing us of four hundred years of backbreaking Egyptian slavery at the hands of an autocratic, cruel Pharaoh.”
He continued: “In many ways, dear Joe, you are our Moses, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is our Aaron.”
The coincidence was “beshert,” he said, meaning fated.
“You already know the Yiddish word for mensch,” the rabbi said, describing the common Jewish colloquialism “a person who endeavors to consistently do the right thing.”
“Textbook example: Joe Biden,” he added.
He said that Harris and Biden would be known as “Momala and the Mensch,” a double-entendre with the Yiddish diminutive for “mother,” mamale.
He also described First Lady-to-be Jill Biden as her husband’s beshert, or “soulmate.”
He closed with the traditional priestly blessing.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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