RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/brexit-referendum-elites-ig

Elites ignore at their own risk voters who want political accountability and more control over national borders.

Los Angeles — It’s been three years since the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump sent shock waves throughout the world.

Those events in Britain and the U.S. symbolized a broader revolt against elites by frustrated voters in other countries. The populist revolt was a reaction to elites’ reckless and anti-democratic push for ever greater integration. Many critics have tried to paint these uprisings in scary terms by branding them as rooted in racism or xenophobia. I myself part company with the more radical populist movements on some issues — especially those that want to shut down legal as well as illegal immigration.

But it’s unarguable that many populist concerns are rooted in the understandable desire — of people who feel neglected, even held in contempt, by distant, self-interested liberal elites — to have a voice. That is especially true in Europe, where a suffocating European Union bureaucracy threatens both to hold back economic innovation and to trample on many of the continent’s traditions.

Even a neoconservative such as the late Charles Krauthammer recognized the need to rein in a European Union that was trying to absorb or co-opt the key functions of the nation-state. “The task today is to address the sources of Europe’s economic stagnation and social alienation rather than blindly pursue the very drive that led to this precarious moment, he wrote in 2017. “If the populist threat turns out to have frightened the existing powers out of their arrogant complacency, it should be deemed a success.”

The fear of the European Union’s apologists is all too real. In elections to the European Parliament last May, the percentage of seats held by populists of all stripes — whether left-wing populists, right-wing populists, or others who aren’t easily defined, such as the Five Star Movement in Italy — rose to 29 percent of the total vote.

Populists are succeeding in the most unlikely of places. Swedish Democrats, for example, are now tied for first place among all parties in the latest polls in Sweden, with 23 percent of the vote. But even in prosperous Sweden, only 27 percent of voters believe that the country is heading in the right direction, while 50 percent think that it is going in the wrong direction.

A shot across the bow of communal complacency was fired by the Council Against Islamic Religious Hatred (CAIRH) with a powerful ad that ran in the Boston Herald. The ad, which documented the facts about Islamic anti-Semitism, called out Jewish communal complacency by listing the undeniable facts about Islamic anti-Semitism.

The CAIRH ad pointed out that “the world’s 16 most antisemitic countries are all in the Muslim Middle East where 74% to 93% exhibit extreme Antisemitism” and that globally, and in America and Europe, Muslim Antisemitism rates are far higher than average.

It also demonstrated that Islamic Antisemitism is not about politics, but is a religious bigotry that has its origins in the Koran.

This powerful ad will no doubt elicit ugly responses from CAIR, ISNA, and various Islamist groups, and their leftist Jewish allies, who insist that any expose of Islamic Antisemitism is Islamophobia. But the ad’s use of evidence-based statistics demonstrates that the problem of Islamic anti-Semitism is real and inescapable.

As a follow-up to the ad, CAIRH is “encouraging individuals to print out the high quality pdf “tear page” of the ad to present to their Rabbis & Jewish community leaders & ask them if they are familiar with these ADL data, understand how disproportionate the problem of Muslim Jew-hatred is, and, regardless, what they are doing or plan to do about the problem.”

You  can download a copy of the ad to print out and distribute here.

https://cairh.org/index.php/2019/10/05/cairh-follow-up-to-our-boston-herald
-ad-print-present-the-ad-to-your-rabbis-jewish-community-leaders-demand-acti
on-to-combat-islamic-antisemitism/

https://forward.com/opinion/432684/for-gods-sake-stop-preaching-politics-from-the-pulpit/

Let me propose something deceptively simple: that we excise politics from our sermons on Yom Kippur. Let us, for just one deeply holy and meaningful day, find something more inspirational to speak about than whether we should support climate change legislation, strong borders or the President’s impeachment.

America’s partisan divide seems to have reached a new low. Whatever side of the political aisle each of us is on, we can all agree that this is true. Politics are harming relationships to an unprecedented extent, dividing families to the point that they don’t spend holidays together anymore. A just-published study of the emotional and even physical toll of the political environment showed results similar to a public health crisis.

So it should surprise no one that this affects even synagogue attendance. In my work, I speak with Jews of all affiliations, both religious and political. An increasing number of people have told me they no longer feel comfortable praying in their synagogue because they have been so hurt by what the rabbi has to say during the sermon. And no wonder: Rabbis have been increasingly committed to preaching politics from the pulpit. Last year, one rabbi made castigating Stephen Miller a central element of his Rosh Hashanah sermon, because Miller, as a child, was then part of his congregation.

Fortunately, there was no similar incident this year; the acknowledgment of resurgent anti-Semitism forced many to align their messages to address this new reality. But even in this environment, some rabbis injected their own political views.