Defending Jews from anti-Semitism is necessarily entwined with criticizing some of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, President Barack Obama told a Jewish audience.
Many political organizers talk about themselves as reluctant activists, but when Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg said it wasn’t his intention, initially, to establish the group Rabbis for Romney, it’s hard not to believe him.
For Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. Jewish leaders, their second date featured a little more substance and a little less flirtation. And this time the Palestinian Authority president brought a wing man.
When President Obama took office last year, our country seemed to be teetering. Eight years of war, monstrous deficit spending, a breakdown of diplomacy, and a disdain for science and civil liberties welcomed the new president into office.
A new survey shows President Obama struggling with American Jews — but not on Israel-related matters.\n\nThe American Jewish Committee poll of U.S. Jews found that Obama\’s approval rating is at 57 percent, with 38 percent disapproving. That\’s down from the stratospheric 79 percent approval rating among Jews that Obama enjoyed about a year ago, in May 2009. The AJC poll was conducted March 2-23 and surveyed 800 self-identifying Jewish respondents selected from a consumer mail panel.\n
In the always lively Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, Rabbi Elliot Dorff writes in a cover essay that \”support for universal health care is an imperative in Jewish law.\” Is it now? On health care reform, Rabbi Dorff has his classical sources all lined up — most having to do with obligations on the community to rescue its needy, the captive, and those otherwise endangered. The communal court system can compel a person to give charity in support of the poor. Proper medical services are a necessity in a Jewish community. And so on. Whether through socialized medicine or government health insurance, something must be done: the fact of there being 40 million uninsured Americans is \”intolerable.\”
In response to a sustained GOP campaign to discredit him on Israel, Barack Obama has touted a growing roster of pro-Israel stalwarts who support him, repeatedly insisted that Israel\’s security is \”sacrosanct,\” defended Israeli military maneuvers and vowed to do everything in his power to block Iran\’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.
\” . . . I am just an average person that fits the person you describe in \”Post-Palin Depression.\” I do not have a therapist, but I have been in depression for almost two weeks now . . . \”
For Jews who are not necessarily Israel Firsters, she carries some positives and negatives. Positives: she is a crusader for good government and a fiscal conservative. She is smart and successful and patriotic. Jews like all these things.
Blacks and Jews are back together and working side by side for an Obama victory, JTA reports from Denver.
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