By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO—Editor Don Harrison of this publication asked me to write an article about why I signed up with Rabbis for Obama. I’ve wanted to contemplate it for a while so that any attempt to respond would be based purely on positives. The national campaign underway is already contaminated with enough negativity and mistruths and both sides, desperate to strike pay dirt in our attention-depleted, gossip culture, have resorted to made-up factoids and character distortions to both shock and appeal to voters.
I am a rabbi for Obama (although more so a citizen for him) because he is a refreshingly serious person who speaks fluently and deliberates extensively about policy and people and it does not appear that he has to “re-invent himself” in order to stand for reelection. I like him exactly because he does not seem to relish campaigning and glad-handing and precisely because he is not attempting to invite me for a beer in order to garner my vote. He is inviting me to think—about very hard and pressing issues that have always defined the ethos of this nation: social justice, health care, a judicious foreign policy (more on that below), and the very ability of our chief executive to mingle with intellectual alacrity among the presidents and prime ministers of other nations.
President Obama has never played the race card (although it is used cravenly against him regularly) because he doesn’t think of himself as our black president. He just thinks of himself as our president. (Ironically, a good number of my friends and colleagues in the African American community are critical of him because of this; they are misguided). Nor does President Obama spoon-feed nostalgia into the national debate; he doesn’t vacuously rant about “restoring America” or “making us the envy of the nations” and all that.
“Restoring America” means rebuilding our dilapidated national freeway system, our dangerously deteriorating bridges, our shamelessly inept educational system, and our penchant for starting wars and having our kids die for what are disingenuously corporate interests.
I’m not nostalgic for a time when a person of color could not be elected president, when the secretary of state could not be a woman who had lost the nomination to the incumbent, when the attorney general could not be black, or when the opposition candidate for the White House could not be a Mormon. I honestly believe that a good degree of the visceral opposition to Barack Obama has to do with the fact that his post-racial, global persona threatens some kind of oligarchic psychological syndrome that still cleaves to the Anglo-Saxon marrow of American history.
Here is a guy who works hard, never complains out loud that the job is difficult, has never been associated with any kind of scandal, sexual or financial, and whom I can understand when he talks. And he remains gracious about a notoriously obstructionist Congress that is much more committed to hurting him than helping us.
Finally: President Obama is hardly an enemy of Israel! He is routinely exalted by Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defense Minister, former Prime Minister, and the most decorated general in Israel’s history as “the finest friend Israel has ever had.” The most extensive military compacts ever signed between the two nations have been consummated under this administration even as the Jewish state has enjoyed a robust economy, record-level tourism, and a significant period of peace during all the years that Obama has been president. I don’t need our president to be in love with Israel; I just want him to understand and value it. I do want our president to love peace and that is why I am a rabbi for Obama.
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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be contacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com
Oy Vey, Rabbi Kamin is living in a dream, Obama has constantly reinvented himself by saying that during the years he spent as a congregant of Jeremiah Wright he never heard a bad word about the United States – what?? He is a friend of Israel – but of course Israel should cede the West Bank to her friendly Palestinian Authority/Hamas neighboris n order to achieve peace Sorry Rabbi, but if you put your faith in an Obama administration to stand with Israel over Iran’s nukes and the hostile Mullah’s you may witness the decline and disappearance of Jewish life in the Middle East.. He is for the middle class, yet he is about to raise taxes on us all. He was going work on balancing the budget – yet he added trillions to our debt. He was going to bring us all together, but has helped in tearing us apart. His administration was going to be transparent, but he rammed Obamacare down our throats in the middle of the night behind closed doors. I’m really worried about the next four years if President Obama manages to stay in office, he already issues Presidental decrees to bypass Congress, just like a dictator. I see nothing to put a brake on his “progressive” ideas, he’s leading us forward alright, just like the Pied Pipper – right over the cliff.
The Rabbi’s comment that much of the opposition to Obama comes from his “post racial, global persona” sounds like mud that is slung at Conservatives from the liberal left all the time. It is untrue – what we object to is his very left leaning, America denigrating, anti-business, big government loving positions that are bringing our country down.
Mr. Harrison, I hope you will allow a Rabbinical rebuttal to Rabbi Kamin’s opinion piece.
I salute R. Kamin as a supporter of Israel, and respect his willingness to state his case for President Obama’s re-election. Nonetheless, R. Kamin’s case is both weak and misleading:
1. R. Kamin says: “… it does not appear that he has to “re-invent himself” in order to stand for reelection.” Without venturing anywhere near birtherism or its ilk, much else of his autobiography has been proven invented, or hidden as is his college records. The legacy media has largely been complicit.
2. R. Kamin says: ” President Obama has never played the race card…” However, Pres. Obama has personally intruded himself into unclear purported racial disputes by prematurely — before the facts are established — often to the contrary, taking the side of the Black. Further, Pres. Obama’s appointees, especially Justice Secretary Holder, have repeatedly and consistently racially shaded their rulings and assertions of federal authority.
3. R. Kamin says he is not nostalgic for an earlier time when bad things happened or were widely thought. Correct. But that does not mean that one, or he, should throw out the baby with the dirty diswater. Pres. Obama dismisses the American exceptionalism that made it the wonder and savior of people around the world seeking freedom in favor of cottoning to anti-American leaders of other countries and insulting our friends.
4. The Congress that Pres. Obama now castigates was completely and overwhelmingly under Democrat control for the first two years of his presidency, yet did close to nothing for whatever Pres. obama’s agenda. Oh, the exception was passing ObamaCare, with legislative tricks unilaterally, and with falsehoods and false promises the prices for which are either now being felt or most purposely delayed until after the 2012 election in order to shield Pres. Obama.
5. Last but not least, while under pressure from the now republican House and forced under fear of embarrassment by the still Harry Reid led Senate, military aid to Israel has been kept up, otherwise, especially with regard to the existential and imminent threat from Iran, Pres. Obama has been — at best — timid, and actually a blocker of either Israel’s offense or defense. The drastic scaling down of the delayed military exercises with Israel, meant to improve its missile defense, is indicative. Another earlier indication of how Pres. Obama has needlessly and wrongly treated Israel can be found in R. Kamin’s own words in San Diego Jewish World on April 26, 2010: “There was no particular courage required to excoriate the government of Israel when its housing minister announced the construction of so many new home units in the Jerusalem area exactly when Vice President Joe Biden was arriving in the country to discuss peace talks. Many in the Israeli establishment and editorial community were just as mystified by the timing—even the arrogance.”
“But no courage whatsoever is required for one nation to tell its primary ally and devotee in the Middle East what to do generally within that ally’s municipal sovereignty (especially with respect to its capital city)—let alone try to micro-manage that ally’s business. Timing is one thing, protocol is another. No courage here—just temerity.”