Jews are celebrating Chanukah this week, and Christians are celebrating Christmas. Atheists, including any number of G-dless Soros/Sanders Jews, also are celebrating Christmas, but not in a way that a faithful Christian would. For the G-dless, it is a national holiday that they make so secular that I, as an Orthodox Jew, am deeply offended. Chanukah needs to be Chanukah. Christmas needs to be Christmas.
It is a strange time. Christians watch Democrats — including Nancy “As a Catholic” Pelosi — make a sacrilege of “peace on earth and good will to all” by infusing the nation with division and hate. Jews watch our JINOs make a mockery of Chanukah in the same way. Indeed, just as Christmas in most of America is secularized, neutered, commercialized, and more about money and buying merchandise, so it is that Chanukah is turned on its head in America. The reason that people give Christmas gifts is not supposed to be because it is sales season, but to commemorate that the three wise men (or “Magi”) came to the manger (or house) bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. It is appalling that it takes an Orthodox Jewish rav (rabbi) to explain this every year to so many non-Jews who are clueless. “Oh, thank you, Rabbi. I never knew that.” And Chanukah has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the nonsense and piffle that is spit out in the media by Jewish ignoramuses.
For the record, when the ancient Greek empire conquered the Holy Land and defiled the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, they also removed the holy menorah (candelabrum) that the Jews lit there daily. It had been kindled with special olive oil prepared in accordance with special requirements providing the fuel for the wicks. When the Maccabees defeated the occupiers and liberated Judea (the “West Bank”), they set about clearing out the idolatry placed in the Holy Temple and turned to restoring the Temple’s sanctity. It then came time to light the menorah again, for the first time in years, but they were barred from using regular olive oil. Rather, they were permitted to use only the sacred oil prepared in accordance with the laws of Judaism. They ran into a theological dilemma: They could find only enough consecrated oil to fuel a wick for one day, and it then would take another full week to prepare more sacred oil. So they had to decide between two options:
(1) It has been so long, so many years, since the menorah last was lit — maybe we just should wait another week and then resume the proper procedures when we have enough consecrated oil prepared to light daily without interruption?
Or …
(2) Look, we have enough sacred oil to light for one full day right now. Yes, it will run out in 24 hours, leaving the menorah extinguished again. And then, in another week, we can resume. But meantime, we miraculously have liberated the Temple from a world empire, and do we really have the right to delay marking G-d’s miracle?
They decided not to delay, saying essentially: “G-d has given us this impossible victory, and we have liberated Judea (the ‘West Bank’) and the Holy Temple. Let’s not over-think this. We have the Temple, the menorah, and a day’s consecrated fuel. And it is a miracle that we even located that amid the ruins. So let’s jump right in and resume the Holy Temple service.” And they did so. The next day — to everyone’s shock — the 24-hour supply of sacred oil was not yet consumed, and so it continued day-after-day, the minuscule supply of oil incomprehensibly fueling the menorah for eight days until the new supplies of consecrated oil finally arrived that week later. That inexplicable overturning of nature was taken as a sign from G-d Almig-ty Himself that the military victories of the Maccabees had not been mere successful war games or temporary wins achieved merely by clever maneuvers but something more profound, a liberation of the Holy Temple and Holy Land that had been ordained and blessed directly by G-d Himself as part of a greater plan that would restore the Jewish people’s sovereignty to the Promised Land.
So it had nothing to do with the pablum that sounds so nice on TV: “We light the menorah to show that, in times of darkness, it is blessed to light a candle.” Well, OK. That’s a nice thought. But that has nothing to do with Chanukah.If you want to leave on a light to overcome the darkness, uh, just set a timer, OK? But that’s not Chanukah. Chanukah is that Jews were denied the right to practice our religion in the Land of Judea (the “West Bank”) by the spiritual progenitors of Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Hamas, and Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), and the Maccabees destroyed them. And, by the way, the George Soros-Bernie Sanders types of their day were dispatched along with them.
That is Chanukah. OK? From an Orthodox rabbi. Not from some Communist anti-Semite like Sanders or some apostate like Soros. Not from Jonathan Greenblatt’s ADL or from some pro-Sharpton organization of Reform rabbis who would not know how to read or understand — or even to find — the Judaic source materials of Chanukah (hint: Tractate Shabbat 21b; Rambam Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Megillah v’Chanukah, chapter 3).
2. A Seasonal Sidebar: On Rudy Giuliani Being More Jewish Than the Despicable Apostate George Soros
The other day, Rudy Giuliani said that George Soros is hardly a Jew and that Rudy is more a Jew than Soros. The Obama Jews who run leftist organizations like the Obama-lite Anti-Defamation League went wild, coming down hard on Rudy. Of course. Jonathan Greenblatt, the former Obama official who turned the ADL into an Obama-lite operation, knows “nothing from nothing” (as my grandparents would say) when it comes to Judaic authenticity. The reality is that Soros indeed is an apostate and, if these were times when Torah values defined the Jewish world, Soros formally would have been excommunicated by now. (Technically, since Jews do not do “communion,” we do not “excommunicate.” Rather, we put apostates under a ban, a “cherem.”) Thus, although the chances of Soros showing up in my synagogue are less than nil, the fact is that, if he did, he would be in cherem. He would not be allowed near the Torah scroll or the Holy Ark. If he had come to recite a kaddish in memory of his Nazi Guardian whom he assisted in his teens, keeping records of property the Nazis confiscated from Jews, the apostate would be escorted out the door.
Same with the Communist Bernie Sanders, enemy of Israel. It is a requirement of Jewish law that certain prayers may be recited only in the presence of ten or more Jewish men. If Bernie Sanders were to show up in my shul — again, less than no chance — and if we had nine other Jewish men in the sanctuary at the time, we still would not be able to recite certain prayers that require ten men because we would not count him as a Jewish man. He is in cherem.
Of course we could not count Rudy either because a Jewish person is someone who either is born to a Jewish mother or who converts to Judaism according to Torah law. So Rudy is not really more Jewish than Soros, just as President Trump is not really more Indian than is Elizabeth Warren. But his figurative point is well made. We would accord Rudy every conceivable honor. We would welcome him to sit in the front row. We would honor him. By contrast, if Soros or Sanders were to show up, we would have to call security very quickly — to protect them from the members of my congregation. Soros and Sanders are apostates, despicable. Rudy is a great friend. Although his comments have been criticized on the Left, his remarks actually were right on.
3. The Hateful Pelosi Democrats and the Ghost of America Future
We Americans enter this Christmas and Chanukah season at a fork in the road for America’s destiny. In eleven months, either the whole enterprise of nearly 250 years may go down the tubes, or we continue to have a fighting chance to save the United States of America. Remember Ebenezer Scrooge’s question of Marley’s Ghost when he was shown the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (variant, the Ghost of Christmas Future): Are these the images of what will be or what may be? In this regard, the impeachment process potentially may prove to have been a blessing because it alerts Americans as a last-ditch warning: behold the Ghost of America Yet to Come. If we Americans choose the wrong way in a year, it is what will be.
The last half century points to a continued pattern among Democrats of unbridled character assassination and concerted defamation. Not just calling someone a bad name or mocking them on Saturday Night Live. But drawing upon absolutely false innuendo and rumor — and outright perjury — to perpetrate the focused assassination of a human being’s character in every way but physical.
Republicans never did this to Ruth Ginsburg or Sonia Sotomayor. The GOP never did this to Obama or Holder, both of whom were despised as conservatives despise all that is evil. But Republicans never assassinated their character. Even the hapless Birther stuff about where Obama was born never descended to stamping him as a rapist, a sex maniac, and the like. But Democrats, on the other hand, basically give Republicans a choice: either you capitulate to our Weltanschauung and play ball on our terms, or we destroy you and gleefully stain your name for history books. So the Democrats emasculated one Bush into imposing the taxes he promised never to levy and the other Bush into continuing the disastrous home-lending redlining laws that absolutely guaranteed, as surely as the sun-and-morning follow the moon-and-night, that there would be a catastrophic economic collapse emanating from the real estate market. They saw one GOP Supreme Court choice after another fall into line with the Democrats — Brennan, Stevens, Powell, Blackmun, Souter — or face destruction. Even Reagan Justices Sandra O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, both fair jurists, never reflected the rock-ribbed conservative intentions and values voiced and voted by Reagan voters. So those justices, all appointed to SCOTUS because conservative Republican Americans elected presidents who campaigned on conservative promises, were spared personal destruction while they cast decisive votes on a wide series of critical Supreme Court cases that changed, degraded, and often corrupted the very core values of the American social fabric that the electorate majority had voted to protect.
Politicians, commentators, and talking heads always talk about “The American People.” We hear it all day: “The American People see right through this.” “The American People are too smart to [fill in the blank].” But that is just not true. If “The American People” were so smart and see right through lies, we would not be in this national mess at a Christmas-Chanukah 2019 Season that should be the happiest American holiday winter in a century. No Civil War. No World War. No new Korea/ Vietnam/ Afghanistan/ Iraq entanglements. The decapitators of ISIS decapitated or self-detonated. An economy so strong that new records are set almost weekly, sometimes daily, with unemployment for all groups as low as any of us can remember in our lifetimes. People are working, wages rising. No more reliance on foreign oil or on foreign anything. The military restored. Aluminum and steel manufacturing saved. China stared down.
By all yardsticks, this moment should be such a happy time, perhaps the happiest in American history, even better than Armistice Day, V-E Day, V-J Day, the fall of the Berlin Wall — because we have no war of devastation just ending. We are, at least at this minute, at peace. Cities are not ablaze. America has never been better situated. And it is Christmas. It is New Year’s. It is Chanukah. It is the most wonderful time of the year.
And yet, instead, we are surrounded by the deepest hate, the most evil division. Hate for Trump. Hate for people who support Trump. Imagine — just imagine! — that you cannot wear a hat in public that says America should be great. So what should America be — garbage? Is that what Pelosi and Ocasio want — hats that rue for a return to Obama: “Make America Second-Rate Again”? The hate that the Democrats generate even turns within, among the Democrats themselves. Ocasio-Cortez, the Vice President of Bernie Sanders’s dreams, hates Buttigieg. Elizabeth Warren hates Buttigieg. Buttigieg, meanwhile, can’t figure out why multi-millionaires like Sanders (three houses) and Warren (enough millions that she can buy out any Indian casino she wants) hate him so much. He and Blacks are like oil and vinegar; they can’t stand him. And the whole bunch of Democrats all hate Tulsi Gabbard because she seems not to hate any of them. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker are accusing all of them of racism — as well as all the Democrat voters whose polling results have defined them into oblivion — because the Democrats refuse to implement the same Affirmative Action program for presidential candidates that they impose everywhere else, so as to guarantee a minimum number of places for losers like Harris and Booker to be on the stage for which they could not qualify fair-and-square.
It is terrible how the Haters have ruined the Season of Christmas and Chanukah. They voted for an impeachment that was a joke — truly humbug. Now they want to suck every last flavor out of its marrow because, once they hand it to the Senate, it goes into the garbage disposal. Yet they do not stop. They hint at even more impeachments, more charges.
We Americans are at the fork in the road. Trump stands a very good possibility, if not probability, of being reelected. Yet, if we get another Democrat House next November — if that is what “The American People, in their wisdom” opt for — then the enterprise goes down. The Pelosi Democrats are destroying our society, our social fabric. For those of us who are students of history or who lived through real racism, we know that racism essentially ended in this country several years ago. We elected a Black President. We have had Black cabinet officers and Supreme Court justices for more than half a century. Blacks are admitted into any college or grad school without disadvantage, even with extra considerations. Hiring decisions and promotions at law firms, medical centers, media centers, and university faculty are not made to the detriment of people of color. And yet Obama took his Presidential election — the election of a Black President, something that never has happened in France, the UK, Italy, Germany, Russia, China, Turkey, etc. — and, with Pelosi and Democrat assistance, turned our national long-sought attainment of peaceful racial relations on their head. To win elections, they divide Blacks against Whites, Latinos and other Hispanics against Anglo-Saxons, Caucasians, and Anglophones. They ascribe concern over terrorism to an Islamophobia that basically does not exist in this country. It all is a hoax, aimed at dividing a nation.
At a Christmas-Chanukah time when we Americans of all races, religions, ethnicities, and colors should be celebrating — perhaps more than ever before in our history — all that unites us and that makes us the greatest country on earth, and all that we have accomplished together as we now experience perhaps our greatest moment in history, we instead are riven by division, hate, strife, distrust, and calumny. And this is but the Ghost of America Future.
We are going to have a very tough eleven months ahead. If we elect a Republican House and reelect Trump next November, perhaps we get back on track. As we have learned with the exposing of the festering FBI Swamp, the Deep State and the corrupted national culture may be too far gone to save. Maybe, maybe not. And maybe it even will take an extra four or eight years of Pence after Trump’s second term to set the course straight. But if we have another two years of Pelosi gaveling the House, with her henchmen polluting our news and world, daily with one investigation after another, one impeachment after another — then Americans will have no one to blame but “The American People” themselves, a people too foolish to know what good times feel like and how to celebrate and enjoy them, and who not only will have killed the goose but also will have given away its golden eggs.
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