By Joel H. Cohen
NEW YORK — Invoking his “great love” for his family, the Jewish people and Israel –“I can say the word now” – President Trump planned to sign an executive order establishing a national Ten Commandments Day in honor of Shavuot.
He wants to make the holiday “great again,” he said.
But the president dropped the plan, after an aide, no longer with the administration, cautioned that the “dishonest media would have a field day” with the ironic fact that the president had violated most of the commandments.
In contemplating the Ten Commandments Day, he had tweeted: “Jews wonderful people. Very industrious. Very smart. Some of my best relatives are Jews,” he wrote, a reference to his daughter Ivanka, her husband Jared Kushner and their children.
And, as to the Holy Land, “Israel truly wonderful,” he commented…I’ll be honest with you, wonderful, a nation of winners. Look how much they’ve accomplished in just a few thousand years.”
In another tweet, he said: “Everybody, from Prime Minister Bibi down, treated me very nicely, very, very nicely.”
Trump told reporters that his brief recent visit to the Holy Land was a “remarkable experience. Very impressive. The people, the land and the landscape, very, very impressive.”
That includes the Western Wall, he said, but added, he could have “built it bigger and better…and other countries would have paid for it.”
After reluctantly deciding to abandon the idea of a national day honoring the Ten Commandments (and firing the aide who pointed out that the President had transgressed many of them), Trump considered proclaiming a national Cheesecake Day, also in honor of Shavuot. “After all, Israel is the Land of Cheesecake and Honey.”
“That’s ‘Milk and Honey,’” Ivanka corrected him.
“Same idea.”
But another aide (who reportedly is now doing some resume- updating) remarked that restaurants and states in the United States had been observing a National Cheesecake Day for years, again this year on July 30.
The news left the president distraught. He had envisioned numerous related activities for Cheesecake Day — races, bake-offs, cheesecake-eating contests (a la hotdog challenges).
But, not able to be first with the basic concept (feta compli?), the president dropped the Cheesecake Day idea.
He also discarded an alternative thought: National Honey Day, deciding “that’s probably already on the books, thanks to pathetic bee-huggers.”
All these disappointments, he complained, were just further proof that “no president, no politician in or out of politics, has been mistreated the way I have…The Ten Commandments will just have to go on, unobserved.”
*
San Diego Jewish World assures readers who are new to freelance writer Joel Cohen’s “Just Kidding” columns that they are satirical and should not be taken seriously.