By Rabbi Ben Kamin
ENCINITAS, California — For most of Jewish history, we have been getting what we did not deserve. The people who gave the world the God-concept and the scriptural tradition, which inspired old tribes to cease sacrificing human beings in order to gratify their spooky deities, have been reviled. The Jews, who parented Christianity and Islam, have been rewarded with doctrinal prejudice, ghettoization, pogroms, inquisitions, and finally, the Nazi genocide.
This week, President Barack Obama, an African American with Kenyan roots, a Hawaiian background, an Indonesian childhood, and a Chicago political pedigree, went to Jerusalem. He did not go there because of any particular Christian or evangelical zeal. He did not alight in Israel because he was looking to tweak the U.S. Jewish vote in favor of his election; he’s not running for president ever again. There really can be no cynical deduction about his motives.
The president did not travel to Israel because he found the reason in his church. He went because he found the reason in his head. It was time for him to arrive and it was time for the people of Israel to receive him.
Other presidents, notably George W. Bush, have been revered by Israel. So too by the right-wing, falling-in-step American Jewish establishment (which lacks the honesty and courage to ever disagree with Israel, a trait that actually contravenes scriptural Hebrew ethics). But Bush and others have been motivated by Christian messianic ideals. This rabbi honors such tenets and is grateful for the attendant love for Israel and the Jewish people. I’m not as comfortable about the ultimate conversion of the Jews intended in this liturgy but not losing sleep over it either.
But Bush and his prayer book didn’t really help Israel. Not when you consider the calamity of Iraq and the resulting expansion of al-Qaeda there and in so many other molten Arab provinces; the searing nuclear threat of Iran; the false Arab spring that has devolved into a winter of Islamic extremism and even the mass killing machines of Syria, Egypt; the betrayal of Palestinian nationhood continued by the terror seething both in and from Gaza.
Better Obama’s thoughtful embrace of Israel than Bush (and Romney’s) blind zeal. Kinder and more powerful than the latter’s biblical hyperbole was Obama’s thoughtful use of Israel’s language. “Atem lo levad,” (“You are not alone”), spoken in Hebrew by the president, touched the Israeli people deeper than anything in postwar memory. It said, “I get you and I understand your history.” It was the reversal of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s silent “you are alone” negligence while the European nations systemically murdered six million Jews just seventy years ago.
Bush loved Israel; Obama learned Israel. And when he brokered the necessary conciliatory phone call between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Turkish President Erdogan—thus restoring diplomatic relations between these two vital American allies who desperately need each other—he did more than just some good preaching. He did some good teaching.
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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in Encinitas, California. He may be contacted via ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com