Before Saturday’s attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, the deadliest attack on Jews at worship in US history occurred in March of 1960. In Gadsden, Alabama, a white nationalist Nazi sympathizer named Jerry Hunt threw a bomb into Temple Beth Israel that did not go off — so he waited outside for the congregants to flee, where he shot two of them. Thankfully that attack took place 4 years before there was a commercially available AR-15 style rifle, or it may have been a much bloodier scene that day.
Flash forward 58-½ years, and we saw what Robert Bowers could do with that type of weapon: He killed more than 5 times as many of the faithful — as they prayed — never needing a bomb, simply entering the temple and informing them they were about to die, as he said all Jews must.
Two days later, we can see what the Trump administration intends to do with the pain of American Jews, who have just witnessed the most horrific anti-Semitic attack in the nation’s history. They intend to ignore it.
Vice President Mike Pence held a campaign rally on Monday in Michigan, where he invited a “Rabbi” to deliver a prayer before the event. Why is “Rabbi” in quotation marks? Well, Mike Pence is a born-again evangelical Christian, not a Jew, and he couldn’t very well have a Hebrew prayer before what he intended to be very much a Christian event. After all, like all evangelical conservatives, Pence supports the state of Israel not because he believes as the Jews do, but because the Jews play an important role in his religion’s version of the end times. [Spoiler alert – they do not fare well in Pence’s version]
But so-called “Jews for Jesus” are not actually Jews. They have a very fundamental difference in beliefs which precludes the two religions from coinciding, like if a Christian prayed to Muhammed. And many Jews are outraged:
If you read the killer’s messages on social, he thought Trump was giving into Jews too much, and other white nationalists comforted him that Trump had to string along Jews for a while in order to do it right. This is history again.
— Rafael Shimunov 🔥 (@rafaelshimunov) October 30, 2018
But they really could have done a little better impression of a Jewish Rabbi, who, according to that tweeter, would have opened with a particular kind of prayer:
Normally, a Rabbi would open with Kaddish, a prayer for the dead – and list names of those taken. And blessings to the community at risk, Jews, immigrants, etc. Here, it is instead a prayer for Republican candidates to win on November 6 and a blessing for Mike Pence.
— Rafael Shimunov 🔥 (@rafaelshimunov) October 30, 2018
You read that right. This “Rabbi” didn’t name the victims of the attack in his prayer — but he did specifically name all of the Republicans running for office in Michigan, and ask God to help them win. Watch:
Featured image via screen capture
