Soccer Dad

Redneck orthodox jews

Rabbi Reuven Tradburks as "Are we Jewish rednecks?" - referring to the Orthodox Jewish community - and effectively answers "yes." His point is that Orthodox Jews, overall, did not vote for President-elect Obama and he attributes that to a simplistic world view.

Gary Rosenblatt addressed an issue in his column in the Jewish Week, which we don't like to admit. In both the lead up to the election and the aftermath of the election of Barack Obama, orthodox Jews expressed opposition to Obama that had little to do with his policies or his political ability. He is a muslim, he will be terrible for Israel, he doesn't like Jews, I am suspicious, who knows what he will do.

I reject this premise. Yes there were e-mails that President-elect Obama was a Muslim, but how many people in the Orthodox Jewish community didn't support him on that basis? From what I can tell not many. For the most part Orthodox Jews are politically conservative and President-elect Obama is, perhaps the most liberal - or leftist - politician to run for President.

There is a tendency, I believe, in our world to paint the world in the paradigms of Yaakov and Esav - good versus evil. But we often paint the wrong people with the Esav label.

There are Esavs in the world. There are people who display principles and attitudes that are dark and evil. Arafat, Hamas, Hizbulla, Aryan Nation, Ahmenidijad.

But Obama is not one of them.

I'll agree with that. But I also see that President-elect Obama doesn't quite see 4 of those 5 in through the same prism as Rabbi Tradburks. For example he was quoted as referring to the "legitimate claims" of Hamas and Hezboallah. Did he mean that? Or is it just reflective of his thinking that there might be reasonable elements in either organization? Even if the latter, such thinking indicates that he would not oppose these terrorists with the necessary toughness that I think is required.

"I am concerned about a leader with insufficient experience". That is a fair statement. "He will be terrible for Israel" is totally speculative and unjustified.

Why is the latter unjustified? I am familiar enough with periodicals like "The Nation" or "The New York Review of Books." It's pretty clear that President-elect Obama's worldview is consistent with the one presented in those publications. Those publications are relentlessly critical of Israel. I would go so far as to call them hostile to the Zionist enterprise. So yes, while it's speculative, I believe that the available evidence shows that President-elect Obama would not be very sympathetic to Israel. Taken together with his statement in Cleveland that he doesn't see being pro-Israel as being the same thing as being pro-Likud - using a code word that Israel's critics use - and advisers who have been hostile to Israel in the past and I think a pretty strong case can be made that Israel is in for a rocky relationship with the United States for the next four or eight years. That's especially true if Binyamin Netanyahu is elected PM and isn't as flexible in making what the Obama administration considers to be reasonable compromises.

Obviously we can't know the future, but we make our decisions to vote based on the best available evidence and that tells me and apparently many in the Orthodox Jewish community that John McCain was the better choice for President if the standard was which candidate would be better for Israel.

I am not going to address other issues but on an issue by issue basis, I can think of few if any that I preferred the views of President-elect Obama to those of Sen. McCain. I know I wasn't a redneck. And from conversations with similarly minded friends, I found their opposition to President-elect Obama to be based on being informed on the issues not based on some simplistic notion of good and evil in which he ended up on the side of evil.

Finally, there's something about the historic nature of President-elect Obama's win that's troubling. Well I can tell you that I proudly voted for the first female governor of the state of Maryland twice - in 1994 and 1998 - and the first African American senator from the state two years ago. The problem was the historic nature of their candidacies were barely mentioned in the media. It certainly wasn't a major part of the media coverage of those campaigns. That's because Ellen Sauerbrey and Michael Steele are Republicans and, so, it seems, the former isn't really female and the latter not really a minority, at least not for electoral purposes. There's something perverse about the idea that only Democrats can be pioneers.

Throughout the campaign I've seen statements from Obama's supporters or in the media suggesting that only someone who's mentally deficient or bigoted could possibly consider not voting for Barack Obama. Unfortunately, I don't find Rabbi Tradburks' analysis was any more convincing than those dubious charges.

I see from Dr. Helen, that the urge to marginalize those who did not support President-elect Obama, is not limited to Orthodox Jews. (via memeorandum)

Crossposted on Yourish.