An Unhappy Passover for Hussein Obama

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 Organier 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 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 by 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.

And then there is the Prophet Elijah, that harbinger of the divine will. Elijah the Tishbite, the Bible calls him. אֵלִיָּהוּ הַתִּשְׁבִּי מִתֹּשָׁבֵי גִלְעָד Eliyahu HaTishbi MeToshvei Gilead, in Hebrew. Elijah you see bore a terrible secret that would have made him unwelcome at Obama's White House, as he was so often unwelcome among kings. Elijah you see was a settler, from among the settlers of Gilead. These were the Jewish residents of the area living there in defiance of the King of Aram (now in modern day Jordan) who claimed the land.

The Obama Administration rails constantly against West Bank settlers, insisting that but for them there would be peace. The actual territory of the West Bank is named Judea and Samaria. Back then the King of Aram wanted to conquer Samaria as well. And when the King of Aram, Ben Haddad, sent a message to the King of Israel, saying, "Thy silver and thy gold is mine; thy wives also and thy children, even the goodliest, are mine", and the King of Israel replied, "It is according to thy saying, my lord, O king: I am thine, and all that I have", Obama would have approved of this diplomatic peace process. And all would have gone well, had one of those meddling Prophets of the Lord not come by, and told the King of Israel to fight instead.

But Prophets have a way of interfering with what Islamists and Marxists fancy is social justice. And the Seder, with its call of "Next Year in Jerusalem", its flat statement of "In every generation they strive to exterminate us, and only the Lord God saves us from their hands", the visit by the Prophet Elijah, the opening of the door to the poor to eat with us (rather than turning over that responsibility to the government) does not fit well with the Obama Administration, which demands that faith be placed in it, not in G-d.

And so Passover can be only be an unhappy time for the Obama Administration, because it is not about empowering Community Organizers to fight discrimination, it is about remembering that the difference between slavery and freedom rests not in Pharaohs, but in faith.