On Friday, President Obama spoke at Congregation Adas Israel just before the Sabbath on the weekend of Shavuot, one of the key festivals of Judaism celebrating the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people.
There, Obama proceeded to lecture Jews about “Jewish values,” which apparently include surrendering to Palestinian terrorism, forsaking the land of their heritage, and allowing Iran to pursue nuclear weapons.
That this happened at Adas Israel is no great shock; the congregation is far-left. As I have explained before, a huge percentage of American Jews reside on the political left because a huge percentage of American Jews care nothing for God, Israel, or Judaism. They are ethnically Jewish but religiously leftist. Adas Israel is titularly a Conservative congregation, but it is truly far-left (its senior rabbi recently came out as a homosexual, in violation of basic Jewish law, and was accepted and celebrated for his heroism); its constituents are similarly far-left, including sycophantic Obama mouthpiece Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, who recently performed an oral colonoscopy on the president during an interview in which Obama pooh-poohed Iranian anti-semitism. In that interview, Obama suggested that historically anti-Semitic European leaders “may make irrational decisions with respect to discrimination” but act rationally where costs are high. Someone should have told Hitler, who lost the entire continent of Europe in order to allocate resources to the continued murder of Jews.
But no matter – Obama was welcomed with open arms by Jewish leftists who love bagels and Woody Allen, but have never read from the Torah except during their incorrectly-performed bar mitzvahs.
And so Obama felt comfortable to make a mockery of the faith of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. First, he led off with the old trope that he has Jewish friends, so if he throws Jews under the bus, that’s just fine: “And as an honorary member of the tribe, not to mention somebody who’s hosted seven White House Seders and been advised by two Jewish chiefs of staff, I can also proudly say that I’m getting a little bit of the hang of the lingo.” Later in his speech, he would claim, laughably, that he became familiar with Israel “as a young man through these incredible images of kibbutzim,” and say that Israeli “pioneers” helped him grapple with his own identity. Nowhere in Dreams From My Father does he mention such precious details. He does, however, find time to praise a series of anti-Israel radicals ranging from Frank Marshall Davis to Jeremiah Wright. And that doesn’t even count his unique relationship with Jew-hater Rashid Khalidi, former advisor to the anti-Semitic terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization.
From there, Obama launched into a history of Judaism that nobody familiar with Judaism would recognize. Apparently, according to the president, Jewish values include pushing “gay rights” (see Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 for a contrary notion from actual Judaism), Betty Friedan’s activism (see Genesis 2:24 for a contrary depiction of traditional marriage), and unionism (oddly, God does not have much to say on collective bargaining anywhere in the Torah). Obama concluded this litany of nonsense by stating that his own presidency is a culmination of Godly hope expressed in the Torah: “So the heritage we celebrate this month is a testament to the power of hope. Me standing here before you, all of you in this incredible congregation is a testament to the power of hope.”
The Messiah has finally come. Praise the nondemominational pro-homosexuality, pro-Palestinian, anti-Judaic god of the newly-revised Rabbi Barack Bible!
The Torah, it turns out, means that God endorses all policies of his newly self-crowned Messiah. That includes the Iranian nuclear deal that will end with Iran operating free of sanctions, and eventually going nuclear. But, Obama assured the congregation, “I will not accept a bad deal. As I pointed out in my most recent article with Jeff Goldberg, this deal will have my name on it, so nobody has a bigger personal stake in making sure that it delivers on its promise.” Except that it will. Obama dropped some already-discredited lies about how sanctions will snap back into place, about how we will know if they cheat on the deal (Iran has already rejected inspections of military sites), and about how all options are on the table (even Obama knows he’s lying on that one).
The Torah also means that Jews must stop worrying about quaint things like land promised by God to them, or protecting themselves. These are simply cynical interpretations of Rabbi Barack’s Bible, and must be rejected:
[I]t is precisely because I care so deeply about the state of Israel — it’s precisely because, yes, I have high expectations for Israel the same way I have high expectations for the United States of America — that I feel a responsibility to speak out honestly about what I think will lead to long-term security and to the preservation of a true democracy in the Jewish homeland. And I believe that’s two states for two peoples, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people on their land, as well…the rights of the Jewish people then compel me to think about a Palestinian child in Ramallah that feels trapped without opportunity. That’s what Jewish values teach me. That’s what the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches me.
He cares so much about Israel that he must plant a state dedicated to its destruction along indefensible borders, and split the capital of Judaism to boot, handing half over to anti-Semitic genocidal Islamists. He must also grant power to those Palestinian leaders who oppress their own people, out of respect for the Five Books of Moses. How Judaic!
Obama did give a sop to the fact that the “Palestinians are not the easiest of partners,” which is somewhat like saying that Charles Manson was not the easiest peace partner for Sharon Tate. He then went on to state that he has a record of fighting against “the scourge of anti-Semitism wherever it exists.” Except, of course, in Iran, where Obama legitimizes anti-Semitic regime and refuses to connect rejection of anti-Semitism with loosening of sanctions; or with regard to the Palestinians, where he says rejection of anti-Semitism need not be a precondition to negotiations; or in France, where when a Jewish supermarket is attacked, he calls it “random.” The Great Defender of The Jews turns out to have a pretty spotty record.
Obama concluded with the old leftist nostrum that “tikkun olam” requires social justice leftism. Tikkun olam itself does not mean social justice at all, but repairs to the law with regard to disputes internal to the Jewish community on issues like divorce and monetary transactions for purposes of protection of rights. But no matter. The Messiah has spoken; Judaism has been rewritten; we live at the dawn of a new Jewish age. All it requires is the Jews to become complicit in their own murder, and to acquiesce in the perversion of the religion that has sustained them for 3,000 years.
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.