Binyamin Rose and Orthodox Jews Supporting Trump
An open letter to Binyamin Rose, pursuant to his recent post about Orthodox Jews supporting Donald Trump.
Mr. Rose, I believe that as an editor for an active news medium you are doing a disservice to your readership by purveying falsehoods. You are elevating for your readers vague promises of policy above the full story on the person at hand. You suggest that the Orthodox trust blindly in promises made. You are advocating casting a vote based on some notion of forcing your religious beliefs into our court system and civil laws (in that backward order). You state that we must fear a “breakdown of law and order, and rising anti-Semitism,” and therefore vote for the person who is fanning those flames. You want us to vote for a power-hungry egotist without a shred of morality, and you claim that many Orthodox Jews will be doing just that.
Shame on you!
Donald Trump is himself a racist and a bigot, and in fact hates everyone who is not kowtowing to him at this moment. He is in this journey that he calls a Presidency for his own power and glory. He loves himself, not the United States. He uses the military to show his personal power within his own country against his countrypersons while belittling those who have fought for us outside the country. He uses the Bible as a prop, thus furthering the intermixing of church and state solely because he knows that ultra-religious folks like that sort of image. He tear-gassed citizens to get a photo-op of himself at a church! If he went to church regularly, there would be no problem getting such a picture.
There are plenty of pictures of me at my shul, many in happy times but more in the aftermath of being shot at by a Trump supporter who was spouting Trump’s words of hate as he mowed down our congregants. Then Trump imposed himself on us during our week of funerals and mourning. Why? Because it was a good photo-op for getting Jews to vote for him.
Appointing judges with their heads up their briefs eager to stop people from being people rather than to promote the freedom and liberty that this country promises under its already standing laws is not a good reason to support a person who rallies White Supremacists, makes pacts with Putin and Kim Jung Un, and pretends to do good things for Israel but essentially accomplishes only getting you to vote for him.
(Joe Biden has been and is now a far more efficacious supporter of Israel than is Trump. Joe Biden is farther to the right than many Democrats, possibly farther right than was the late Senator H. John Heinz, a Republican. Joe Biden has a record of supporting Israel. You must stop listening to the lies paid for by the monied class that supports Republican candidates solely because it brings them tax reductions and the ability to rape the earth for their own gain, which by the way is forbidden at least three times in Tanakh but you overlook that as well.)
Moreover, your premise for your discussion and presumably for those for whom you purport to speak is rather unholy. Your job as a Jew is to welcome the stranger, to accept his ways. Yours is not to condemn gay rights, Black rights, women’s rights, religious freedom, and the right not to get shot at. You may not sell out the rest of us because you feel that we are wrong in the way we live our lives. How dare you mix religion – any religion – into civil law!
Your stated fears have been elevated during the administration of Donald Trump, not during that of his predecessor. Donald Trump has brought us at least one step closer to annihilation. You are dead wrong to want to re-elect him.
