RUTHFULLY YOURS

A few months ago, I popped into a Winnebago parked at the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, right across from Tiffany and Bergdorf Goodman. This was the Mitzvah Tank, a roving synagogue on wheels operated by the Chabad Lubavitch movement. The “tank” brings old-school Judaism to high-traffic parts of New York. In five minutes or less, anyone can drop by for a quick blessing and some Talmudic wisdom.

I wanted to honor my dad—it would have been his 98th birthday—by putting on tefillin, the miniature black box containing verses of Torah that observant Jews attach to their forehead to be physically closer to God. As a child, I had watched him go through the ritual with his father and found it spellbinding, though I always need a tutorial.

Stepping into the tank was like entering a rabbi’s study, with biblical texts on the table and laminated prayers taped to the cabinets. Also displayed were portraits of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late, charismatic leader of the Lubavitchers known as the Grand Rebbe. Versions of the tank have been driving around New York since 1974.

The tefillin part was over in a flash, including a reciting of “Hear O Israel” and a rousing cheer for the imminent arrival of the Messiah—whom many Lubavitchers believe was personified by the Grand Rebbe.

“So, what’s going on?” asked the cheerful Chabad rabbi who helped me through the prayer, including wrapping my arm seven times with the long leather strap.

I told him that my daughter was getting married in a few weeks, immediately regretting it, knowing what the response would be. “Mazel Tov!” he announced, before asking me if the man was Jewish.

I had to admit he was not, which drew stern clucking from the rabbi. “It could be worse,” he said. But will he convert? Highly unlikely, I told him. The rabbi reassured me that at least my grandchildren would be Jewish, then a look of urgency came over him.

“Does your daughter have a Mezuzah?” he asked, referring to the sealed parchment of Torah portions that Jews traditionally affix to their doorjambs—the universal sign of a Jewish household. I meekly shook my head.

He asked for her cellphone number, offering to go put one up for her. I wasn’t used to such personal attention from a rabbi. In 20 years of attending a shul on the Upper West Side, none of the rabbis ever offered a house call. I doubt they would consider a missing Mezuzah grounds for an emergency visit. I politely demurred.

Yet I kept visiting the tank for more tefillin and schmoozing. Lest I forget, I received regular text and phone messages from my new friend Rabbi Stone reminding me that it was Wednesday—the tank’s regular day on Fifth Avenue. Sometimes he was out making office visits when I came, so I went through paces with Rabbi Baumgarten, a youthful father of eight who’s been running the tank since 1989. His son Avi also helped me enunciate every word of the bracha. CONTINUE AT SITE

One thing the election of Donald Trump has spared us of is Hillary-style censorship à la the European Union, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Organization of Islamic Conference (née Cooperation). Huma Abedin, a card-carrying member of the Muslim Sisterhood, ever since high school, will not be appointed Hillary’s Speech Czarina or anything else. It’s over for her. It’s back to Riyadh with you, middle-aged lady, where you can conform to Sharia and where a burqa all day long.

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While it claims not to be a terrorist organization, a document found during a 2004 FBI raid of a Brotherhood safe house reads that they believe “work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack.”

It’s mourning in leftist-crazy Fashionworld — Hillary Clinton lost — and black crepe is the new black. The New York Times may well have included a question mark in the headline — “Is Fashion’s Love Affair with Washington Over?” — but there is zero doubt. So nutsy-cuckoo are these creative critters that they are convinced that the election of Donald Trump, which brings to the White House a handsome family of gorgeous fashion models and fashion brands, is the end of Everything Fashion.

The thought of not having to come up with four years’ worth of jewel-tone pant suits, Mao jackets and oven mitts actually has them blubbering into their schmatas. Why? Because the Left lost power.

All they have left are their barbs.

Thus, beneath the headline of a striking photo of the Trump family on Election Night — with Melania Trump, draped in floor-length ivory something, the focal point of the group shot — the caption, so help me:

On election night, Melania Trump wore Ralph Lauren (a white jumpsuit). The outfit was, according to the brand, one she had bought off the rack, as opposed to one that she had worked with the designer create.

Dab of South American frog poison optional.

In case a reader missed it, the text of the story also flails former international fashion model and jewelry designer Melania Trump for general non-fashionness in buying her election night outfit “off the rack [sniff]” — more evidence of “her distance from the industry.”

The ridiculousness is just so much hissy-fitting over the end of the fashion titans sewn-at-the-hip political relationship with Democrat Inc.

More than any other industry, fashion had pledged its troth to Mrs. Clinton. Vogue magazine formally endorsed her, the first time it had taken a public stand in a presidential election. The W magazine editor, Stefano Tonchi, declared his allegiance in an editor’s letter.

Anti-Trump protests are ongoing, with hundreds still gathering around the country to denounce the results of the 2016 election. This may just be the beginning: The Daily Mail reports that a “women’s march on Washington” is being planned to coincide with the inauguration in January. Within 24 hours of the announcement of the effort, more than 35,000 people had signed on to participate.

Protests and demonstrations have a noble history in the United States, and have been used effectively to awaken people to worthy causes and issues. When done right, they can encourage others who share the protesters’ concerns, but who are reticent to speak up, to join them, thereby building momentum for action.

The Americans planning to march on Washington to protest the incoming president must be hoping to build on this tradition. Yet strategic thinkers on the left ought to consider what these protests will accomplish, and whether they are likely to advance — or might actually hinder — their larger cause.

After all, protests have become increasingly common in recent years. Students on college campuses now regularly stage demonstrations. Many of these protests seem to be an end in themselves, with students rallying against innocuous administration policies or for higher wages on campus, but mostly seeming to enjoy the experience and camaraderie of the protest itself. Yes, some protests are seriously undertaken with the intention of bringing about results: Take the 2015 protests — which include a student hunger strike — at the University of Missouri against the university’s policies related to race and their response to racial incidents on campus, which resulted in both the president and chancellor stepping down.

While that protest succeeded in bringing about changes that the protesters were calling for, they failed to build support among the public. In fact, a poll taken in Missouri after the protest found that “by a fairly wide margin, the state’s public does not view the University of Missouri’s recent protests and associated events very favorably.” Twice as many Missourians disagreed with student protesters’ message as agreed with them. Sixty-two percent disagreed with student protesters’ actions, while just 20 percent agreed.

The Democratic party handed Donald Trump a rare opportunity to make radical changes to the electoral map that could last for years to come.

First, the Democrats gave Trump a great gift by completing the ongoing radicalization of their party under President Obama. After 2008, it was no longer a party of the working and middle classes, but a lopsided political pyramid.

On top were the cynical elites who turned up in the WikiLeaks John Podesta e-mail trove: self-important media members, Ivy League grandees, Silicon Valley billionaires, Wall Street plutocrats, and coastal-corridor snobs. They talk left-wing but live royally. They court minorities to vote in lockstep, then deride them in private. The vast lower tier of the party comprises government employees, the poor, minorities, and the millions dependent on state and federal assistance. The Democrats in between were ignored, and so they kept fleeing the party. Look at the red/blue map of the election. Democratic strength retreated to the inner cities and the rich coastal suburbs.

The Democrats also, in suicidal fashion, stoked racial chauvinism, or the notion that one’s tribe should transcend all other affiliations. After pandering to various minority groups, Hillary Clinton apparently believed that they suddenly would forget her emphasis on race and ethnicity to vote for her, a 69-year-old white multimillionaire.

But the Democrats learned a bitter lesson in 2016: Obama’s left-wing, rich/poor ideological agendas do not appeal to most of the country. Despite a hard progressive agenda, Obama was able to win two terms by relying on racial and ethnic solidarity, earning record numbers of Latino and black votes.

The logic of such a formula could not be easily transferred to a non-minority Democratic candidate. So Clinton lost key blue states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because minority turnout in cities such as Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee fell off from 2008 and 2012.

Worse for Democrats, by pandering to tribal solidarity, they polarized the white working classes. When physical similarity is touted as the best argument to vote for someone, it green-lights everybody to do the same — including huge numbers of less affluent whites who voted for Trump.

Trump took advantage of these openings. By reformulating the old Republican messages to include so-called fair (rather than free) trade, by leaving Social Security alone, and by promising to create more jobs, Trump plucked millions of lower- and middle-class voters from the Democratic party.

Republican elites may have been appalled that Trump blasted global trade agreements and promised to punish corporations that outsourced jobs overseas. But those who have been left out of the globalized economy flocked to that message after not warming up to John McCain and Mitt Romney in earlier presidential elections.