Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) sent a fundraising email to supporters on Friday in which he released a photograph taken during his bar mitzvah — the coming-of-age ritual in which a 13-year-old Jewish male is recognized, for religious purposes, as an adult.
(The female equivalent is called a bat mitzvah, and takes place when a Jewish girl turns 12 years old.)
In a schmaltzy, sentimental message, Schiff evidently hopes to tug at the heartstrings — and the purse strings — of liberal Jewish donors:
I’ll admit, it’s easy to chuckle at this photo – the classic 1970s bow tie, the braces, the yarmulke, the looks – but it is also an opportunity to tell you a little about how I approach my faith.
Throughout my career in public service, I’ve thought a lot about the Jewish tradition of “Tikkun Olam,” or repairing the world. And over the last few years, there has been a lot that was broken, and a lot to fix. It’s been my cause.
Before I go any further, and while I still have your attention, I have to ask – will you click this link and pitch in a few dollars to my campaign? If you are not ready yet or need more convincing, please read on. I have lots to share and more to say. I think you’ll like it.
The term “Tikkun Olam” has been distorted from its original context, as Breitbart News explained in 2018:
As Hillel Halkin pointed out in 2008 — when the phrase enjoyed an association with Barack Obama, who later embraced “tikkun olam” in the White House — the ancient Jewish texts use the term in three ways.
One, the “prophetic,” is a utopian vision in the daily Aleinu prayer, hoping monotheism will sweep the world, “when the world will be perfected under the Kingdom of the Almighty.”
The second, the “Mishnaic,” uses tikkun olam in a “pragmatic” sense to alter rulings in religious law to achieve a more sensible result in the public interest. One example: making it possible for wealthy creditors to collect debts through a rabbinical court rather than forgiving those debts in a sabbatical year. While the poor, in theory, benefited from debt forgiveness, it also meant the rich were less willing to lend them money, hurting the poor. (Ironically, that is the opposite of the kind of redistributive policy that today’s champions of tikkun olam would demand.)
The third use of tikkun olam, Halkin pointed out, was a kabbalistic one that saw each Jew as having a personal mission to perfect the world — in a spiritual sense. The Jewish radicals of the 1960s, he noted, appropriated that idea and read their own left-wing politics into it.
In his fundraising email, Schiff claims that while he has forgotten the Hebrew he learned for his bar mitzvah ceremony, he remains inspired by Jewish principles, which “guided my path as I held accountable and stood up to the most unscrupulous man to ever occupy the Oval Office,” i.e. Donald Trump, arguably the most pro-Israel president in American history.
Schiff led the first failed impeachment of President Donald Trump and currently serves on the January 6 Committee.
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). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. 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.