Obama’s Passover Message Misses the Message of Passover

Barry Rubin
Rubin Reports
20 April '11

http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/04/20/obamas-passover-message-misses-the-message-of-passover/?singlepage=true

There's some controversy about President Barack Obama's Passover message. The key passage is this:

“The story of Passover…instructs each generation to remember its past, while appreciating the beauty of freedom and the responsibility it entails. This year that ancient instruction is reflected in the daily headlines as we see modern stories of social transformation and liberation unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Ironically, of course, Israelis and Jews who support that country generally see that transformation as being in a negative direction from their standpoint and the forces being liberated involving a good deal of anti-Jewish ones.

I think the greater problem here is the endless universalizing of specifically Jewish experiences that are never seen as sufficient in their own right, as well as the basic opportunism of making Passover into an event backing Obama Administration policy.

But a peculiar personal experience of mine has given this controversy a special meaning for me. Some years ago I attended a dinner in Washington that was one of those endless--and always futile--events bringing together Arabs and Israelis for "dialogue." Since it was during the Passover table, the thoughtful hosts had placed matzo on the table.

One of the Egyptians, a relatively moderate diplomat who had built a whole second career in the peace process industry, said in an annoyed voice something like: "Isn't this a Jewish holiday that celebrates a victory over the Egyptians?"

I had a fraction of a second in which I knew I had to think of the perfect answer. And it came to me. I replied, "That was during Jahiliyya times." He nodded with understanding and the problem was solved.

The Jahiliyya era, for Muslims, was the time of pre-Islamic paganism and ignorance. In the Koran, the pharoah was a villain. So if it happened then he could see the "Egyptians" as having nothing to do with him and accept that the pharoah was a bad guy who deserved to be drowned in the sea.

Here's the problem. When radical Islamists killed President Anwar al-Sadat, they said, "I shot the pharoah." One of the reasons that Sadat was assassinated was because he made peace with Israel. Another reason was that he opposed making Egypt an Islamist state. Now that President Husni Mubarak has been overthrown, he's referred to as the pharoah for reasons including those two.

An important lesson from Jewish experience--for those willing to heed it--is that change is not always good and that some things never change. But after all, the Jews were doing pretty well in ancient Egypt until there came a pharoah who knew not Joseph.

It is also no accident that the Passover seder reminds us: "In every generation, there are those that rise up against us to destroy us...." Wow, does the history of the last few years prove that to be true!

The Last Night Of Passover: An Obama Postscript

Marty Peretz
The New Republic
06 April '10

(When Marty Peretz has something to say, he's real clear. The last couple of paragraphs are about as straightforward as one can get.)
I actually had no intention of writing again about President Obama and his Passover theology. I'd done it once, on the night before the night of the first seder and that, I said to myself, was enough. In any case, my quarrel with him is really about how he treats the idea of the Jewish people today (but not only the idea) and how his politics imperil Jews everywhere, in Israel, primarily, but certainly not only in Israel.

So what changed my mind? Well, I was catching up with Jonathan Chait's blog, a TNR feature that I greatly admire. Somehow, I had missed a posting of his called "How Obama Ruined Passover." Of course, I knew instantly that Obama had ruined nothing for Chait. Obama can't ruin anything for Chait.

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An Unhappy Passover for Hussein Obama

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
03 April '10

Obama delivered the expected Passover greeting in which he informed Jews that our holiday is really about social justice and "our ongoing responsibility to fight against all forms of suffering and discrimination", which sounds a lot more like the job of a Community Organizer or the party platform of the Democratic Party, than the actual Biblical commandment which calls on the Jews to remember when G-d took them out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

But of course it has always been in the interests of the left to reinvent Judaism and Christianity as religions of social justice, and not much else. This conveniently jettisons any actual theology and belief system, replacing it with their own party platform. And in any such arrangement, god becomes the leading social justice campaigner. And who else could Barack Obama could be thinking of in that role of fighting "against all forms of suffering and discrimination", but himself. If he left out any reference to ObamaCare, it was only because it had already become redundant by then.

But let's pause a minute to remember the real message of Passover. It is about a people being redeemed through faith from slavery to freedom. By contrast Barack Hussein Obama would like to take a free people from freedom to slavery, convincing them to have faith in him. The Biblical Pharaoh insisted on his own supremacy, his own godhood, which justified his oppression. Obama's "I Won" serves the same function. His mockery of a Passover message is an echo of that same arrogance. It's not about G-d anymore. It's about Obama and the centrality of his own values, even in a Passover greeting.

The climax of the Passover Seder is the proclamation, "Next Year in Jerusalem". At a pre-election Seder that he hosted, Obama proclaimed, "Next Year in the White House," his own idea of a holy city, because it is the seat of power. Before Passover, Obama conducted a hate campaign against Jews in Israel for daring to realize that old proclamation repeated over thousands of years, "Next Year in Jerusalem." Obama would much rather see it replaced by, "Next Year in Al Quds". But the power of "Next Year in Jerusalem" is that it is a statement of freedom in which we insist that whatever oppression we may be living under, we have faith once again in G-d's redemption, just as our ancestors in Egyptian slavery did. That whatever our circumstances now, whatever temporal rulers may in their arrogance believe in their own omnipotence, if G-d wills, next year we will be in Jerusalem.

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New World’s Record for Chutzpah: Obama’s Seder

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
28 March '10

Some 29 years ago, the first president Bush earned the enmity of American Jews with his rant about being “one lone guy” standing up against the horde of AIPAC activists exercising their constitutional right to petition Congress. Bush’s statement symbolized the intolerance and enmity that his administration felt toward Israel and its American friends. But say one thing for that Bush and his secretary of state, James “f@#$ the Jews” Baker: at least they never pretended to be anything but what they were, country-club establishment Republicans who were not comfortable with Israel or Jewish symbols. Not so Barack Hussein Obama.

After a week spent beating up on Israel, blowing a minor gaffe into an international incident, subjecting Israel’s prime minister to unprecedented insults that Obama would never think of trying on even the most humble Third World leader, and establishing the principle that the Jewish presence in eastern Jerusalem — even in existing Jewish neighborhoods — is illegal and an affront to American interests – after all that, Obama plans on spending Monday night mouthing a few lines from the Passover Haggadah at a Seder held in the White House.

According to the New York Times, Obama will take part in a Seder in the Old Family Dining Room along with a band of court Jews such as David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett. The Seder, as the newspaper notes, will end, according to tradition, with the declaration of “next year in Jerusalem.” (Never mind the current chill in the administration’s relationship with Israel.)

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