These fucking guys:
Mike Pence got a rabbi who is really a Christian to pray for synagogue dead.
On Monday, Vice President Mike Pence led a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan where prayers were said by Rabbi Loren Jacobs, who is affiliated with the Messianic synagogue Shema Yisrael. “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God and Father of my Lord and Savior Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah, and my God and Father too,” Rabbi Jacobs intoned. During the prayer, he also condemned the “hate-inspired shooting in synagogue in Pittsburgh.”
A rabbi referring to Jesus as the Messiah is, of course, an unusual event but Jacobs is no ordinary rabbi. He is, in fact, a Christian. Shema Yisrael is a synagogue devoted to Messianic Judaism, which is to say, towards a faith that mixes Jewish cultural practices with a variation of Christian theology.
Every time I hear of Jews for Jesus I think of Ted Striker knocking the guy out in the airport lobby during Airplane! and the fact that I was only 10-11 and thought he was saying “juice for Jesus.” Which, in fairness, makes about as much sense.
*Joke stolen shamelessly from Molly Jong-Fast
A Ghost To Most
I wish I could still laugh at all this superstitious horseshit.
debbie
To Pence, Jews aren’t really Jews. They’re just misinformed Christians.
PeakVT
Pence should just wear a foam middle finger next time and skip the pretense.
Tom Levenson
Cue Republicans asking why Jews vote D
Mary G
And when he started praying for specific people, he did not mention the innocent people slaughtered at worship, he listed all the Republican candidates in the arena.
Also, too, now that Pence is getting so much blowback on this atrocity, he is blaming a female Jewish candidate for picking the “rabbi.” Party of person responsibility my ass.
TaMara (HFG)
@Mary G: Of course he did.
Chetan Murthy
In this time, I really enjoy the way David Simon (@AoDespair) really brings it to the morons who attempt to do verbal battle. It’s a balm.
Adam L Silverman
seaboogie
All of this, and midterms and Mueller- we haven’t forgot Mueller, have we? Hope the Dems win the house, Mueller brings indictments, and then it’s going to get cray…want Nancy Smash back for the near term…
jl
I also heard on the news that the Jews for Jesus preacher, or rabbi, or whatever he is, spent some time praying for the GOP in the midterms.
Ruckus
Something clicked for me with Adam’s last post.
I’ve reached my limit. I have no idea what that means but I have.
These fucking assholes are just little fucking boys with some idea that they are playing grown up. Fucking stupid, racist, little boys. I’m not sure it’s a game to them, but I don’t think they know that they are playing a very, very dangerous game that never, ever ends well, for anyone. Given life today vs the last time they pulled this shit I’d bet it will go far worse for them than it did last time.
Let’s blue wave them more than their tiny fucking little minds can handle. Vote and vote for real dems. Be adults and do this right, send them to their rooms with no fucking dinner. But don’t bother telling them to think what they’ve done, their thinking days were 150+ yrs ago and they fucking blew that.
Mnemosyne
As far as I can tell, “Messianic Jews” are Christians who like to cosplay as Jews based on the Christian Old Testament. I probably know more about the Torah than they do, and what I know about it would fit on the head of a pin because I was raised Catholic.
I’m having a hard time articulating how bad this was. It’s like putting on blackface and pretending to be an AME minister.
Uncle Cosmo
Was it Ted Stryker (Robert Hays) or the Robert Stack character (Google Search seems to be bustid so I can’t look it up myself)?
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus:
It means you need to take a break and do some self care.
jl
@jl: Sorry, listening to the clip right now. That is some nation unifying praying right there.
jonas
I once had a conversation back in college with a “Jews for Jesus” guy handing out tracts on campus who tried to argue that accepting “Yeshua” (as they called him) as the Jewish messiah didn’t mean they were Christians — per se. If you really want to dig deep into historical Jewish and early Christian messiah-ology and soterology, there’s an argument to be made there, I suppose. But as a practical point, it’s a distinction w/o a difference, and the only people who take them even remotely seriously are — surprise! — evangelical Christians who are invariably excited that “they’re 90% of the way there!” Anyone who is even remotely serious about Judaism wants absofuckinglutely nothing to do with them.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: I once studied with a white guy from Maine who was an AME Archbishop. He was also the only Christian member of the Haganah and was assigned to the Exodus.
http://www.jewishmag.com/134mag/exodus_grauel/exodus_grauel.htm
FlyingToaster
We’re through the Looking Glass, folks.
I was discussing this with some 80+ year old Catholics this past weekend, and we were in agreement: These people are monsters.
A normal human being in Trump’s position, hearing about a mass shooting in synogogue during services, would respond, “Oh no, that could have been my grandkids!”
Instead, he retweets NRA bullshit and blames the victims for not having an armed guard to worship.
If Pence were a competent politician, he’d have called someone from AIPAC and gotten a tame rabbi to give the invocation. Or, fuck, call Adelson; he certainly knows someone amenable. But no, he calls a “Jews for Jesus” “rabbi” and then blames an actual Jew when it backfires on his ass.
And of course, here in Bwahstin, the evil Keebler Elf had an actual Christian minister ejected because he quoted scripture, rather than toeing the “Republican Jesus” line.
Vote like your lives depend on it, guys, because it fucking DOES.
randy khan
I had someone tell me yesterday that the decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and Trump’s embrace of Netanyahu showed that the Administration is friendly to Jews. Outside of how silly that is in the context of Trump constantly using anti-Semitic and white nationalist dog whistles, it also misses entirely why evangelicals in the Republican Party are so fixated on Israel, which is that it’s tied to millenialism and the Book of Revelation. Millenialists support Israel because they want to be sure there are enough Jews there for the End Times to come, not because they like Jews.
jl
@jonas: I think ‘juice for Jesus’, does in fact, make more sense. Fruit juice is healthy in moderation and Jesus spoke many wise sayings that more people should listen to.
Aziz, light!
We Jews will not replace America’s Nazis. We will escort them from the building and leave their positions vacant.
Cheryl Rofer
Related: Jeet Heer assembles administration quotes that de-Judaize Saturday’s massacre. I’m not gonna put the whole thing here – you can click over. It’s a good thread.
Mike in NC
Maybe Mother won’t allow Mike Dense to be alone with actual Jews (like with women); he can only hang out with fellow Talibangelicals.
Sister Golden Bear
Reposting from downstairs, due my talent to posting to almost dead threads…
Adam, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate you highlighting the trans activists at the World Series.
To all, if you know a trans person — and even if you don’t think you do, you probably actually do — please show your support. Many of us are feeling the walls closing in:
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/10/suicide-hotline-calls-quadrupled-trumps-latest-attack-transgender-people/
BTW, I know people are (appropriately) focused on donating to political campaigns at the moment, but if you can spare any extra, please consider giving to Trans Lifeline. They’re a shoe-string operation run for, and by, trans people.
#WontBeErased #StillFuckingHere
(And it seems like my talent for posting to dying threads continues…)
Steeplejack
@Mary G:
He also specifically prayed for “the Republican Party and its candidates.” Video here:
lamh36
I ❤️ ♥️ ?Andrew Gillum!
MattF
And now… Pence turns out to be worse than I imagined. That actually takes some doing.
jonas
IA’s Steve King is pretty much on the verge of straight-up coming out as a KKK Grand Wizard and it doesn’t appear that his party is going to do remotely anything about it. They’re cool with it. Chillin’ with right-wing Holocaust deniers in Austria? Wev.
But hey! Did you know Abraham Lincoln was a Republican? Hey…why aren’t you black folks listening to me? Hey! Come back…..
Kay
They’re all so consistently awful at the ceremonial parts of the job. I feel like random people off the street could handle these events with more class and grace than anyone in the Trump Administration.
They would genuinely be better off not doing anything. You wonder about them in their personal lives- can they attend a funeral and not make asses of themselves? Or are their whole social lives just a series of offensive gaffes, where they make everything worse just by showing up? The Vice President! This is Pence’s WHOLE JOB.
Kay
@lamh36:
Florida is driving Trump CRAZY. He feels he’s being rejected in his fake “2nd home” and it is driving him ’round the bend.
Delicious. Pure pleasure to watch.
Adam L Silverman
@Sister Golden Bear: You are quite welcome. I’m sincerely sorry that even though I saw the reporting about the flag at the World Series this morning, it slipped my mind when doing the first hero post.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
I didn’t think I could get more offended until I saw your post. Like a Jew for Jesus would even know the Kaddish!
Adam L Silverman
@Steeplejack: I posted the embedded video clips in comment # 8.
Chetan Murthy
@Kay:
And that’s the only part of the job they do! They have deplorable minions and lobbyists to do all the rest!
Adam L Silverman
@lamh36: Candidate quality matters. He’s got a lot of it.
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne: Some of them are converts to Christianity, but basically yeah.
As the Tweets Adam embedded note, any normal Jewish service or similar would memorialize the dead with a recitation of the Kaddish. It’s one of the foundational prayers of the Jewish worship service, and to leave it out especially just after this massacre is a massive tell of “not really Jewish”.
Adam L Silverman
@MattF: Jesus tested, Mother approved!
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: What’s even worse is this guy actually grew up Jewish (details in the second image embedded in the tweet):
Kay
She can’t just say something normal. She has to go into this nasty, defensive oddball rant. This isn;t that hard. All they have to do is express sympathy and then shut up, but not one of them has the self control to behave decently. It’s impossible for them- ordinary people are doing it all over the country at memorial events but not one of the low quality Trump hires can pull it off.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
I think you have the wrong acronym. I mean the African Methodist Episcopal church. As far as I can tell from scanning that article, your friend went to the wrong seminary for that, and I didn’t spot other references to the AME church. Did he join in the 1960s or something?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Methodist_Episcopal_Church
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I think it may be worse, the black face was just a light tan. At least black face was a horrible attempt at caricature. This was a really bad attempt at bullshitting the people they were caricaturing.
dmsilev
@Chetan Murthy: I saw an article this morning from I think Politico, where they had gotten ahold of Trump’s private schedule for the past week or so (which is kind of frightening in and of itself), and he was averaging something like 2 or 3 hours of “work” per day plus 7 or so hours of Executive Time.
Adam L Silverman
@Kay:
I think you should just stop here.
Kay
@Chetan Murthy:
They’re having memorials and vigils all over the country. Thousands of people and lower level government officials- they are somehow managing not to act like asses and draw attention to themselves. The President and his team? Can’t manage it. Too difficult for them. All of their ceremonial events end up being ABOUT them.
Amir Khalid
@jonas:
If Abe were starting his political career now, he’d be a Democrat.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Uncle Cosmo: Definitely Robert Stack, making his way through the airport for the emergency. Ted was up in the air, being the emergency.
Sister Golden Bear
@Adam L Silverman: No worries. You ended up giving it more visibility.
And I agree with your point downstairs, the resistance must be intersectional.
As Jose Sarria (legendary activist and first openly gay man to run for office, back in 1961) put it:
BTW, Sarria was not being figurative. At the time, even in San Francisco, raids that randomly threw LGBT people in jail were still common.
#WontBeErased
TS (the original)
@lamh36: Sen Schumer could learn much from Andrew Gillum. I still cannot believe how he is acting as minority leader in the Senate – not to mention how he would appease the GOP if he actually becomes majority leader.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
A good friend’s older brother went all Jew for Jesus. He tried proselytizing all of us, gave up, went to Europe, and ended up with three wives and about a dozen kids he couldn’t take care of.
I hate these people.
randy khan
Well, it’s always good to know your strengths.
On a certain other site, I seemed to have a talent for posting comments that stopped the conversation dead. It was very strange. I couldn’t ever figure out a pattern in what I was saying (and it wasn’t like I was knocking them dead with my profundity).
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: I’m not completely sure that article got it right. Unfortunately my copy of his autobiography is in storage with about 95% of the rest of my stuff, so I can’t check. If I’m recalling correctly he was appointed as the Primate of Jerusalem for the AME despite not being ordained in that denomination. But, it’s been a long time since I was his student, so it might have been just the African Methodist Church, not the AME.
Mary G
@Adam L Silverman: That was a fascinating story about Rev. Graunel and the Exodus. You studied with him?
Adam L Silverman
@Sister Golden Bear: I added the stuff about TransLifeline as an update to that post.
rikyrah
@Cheryl Rofer:
I will remind people that these are the same muthaphuckas ? who
ALL LIVES MATTERED
The HOLOCAUST ?
eemom
Jewish doctors, nurses cared for suspect as he shouted slurs
They’re far better people than I would have been in their position.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t think so. I’ve tried staying away. That did not work. Winning will work. We are being consumed by daft but hateful bullshit. We are seeing all the racist bullshit on display, from the political class “leading” our country. Seeing them removed legally is the only cure. I’ve spent 3 1/2 yrs since they found cancer, that’s less debilitating than this. I’ve been told I may have Parkinson’s. That’s less debilitating than this.
My cure is the same as I’ve told others about cancer. Fight the bastard with all the tools available. You can’t wish it away. You can’t decide you don’t need it. You have to fight it with the proper tools. In the case of cancer that’s radiation, surgery, chemo, depending on what/where/how long you’ve had it. In the case of dangerous, little boy political bullshit, that’s voting and convincing persuadable people of right and wrong. I did radiation, my leading doc thought that surgery was a better answer. I was right, he was wrong. He trusts the knife, I trust the technology. Technology is smarter. I’m using smarter.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
Gotta love how the dude who got his degree in Jewish Studies from Moody Bible College considers himself a rabbi now. ?
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: I did. One summer. I was planning not on going to Emory, but, rather, going to Israel to live and work for him – he was planning on running for Knesset on an anti-Kahane platform – on his campaign and then once he was serving in Knesset. The plan was to attend Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He made it clear he had room to provide me housing. Just as I was starting the university application process he died. He’d had a number of health issues, including cancer, over the years. Not so much the path not taken, but the path permanently blocked. Regardless, studying with him, even for only a few weeks that summer made a huge difference in my life. Part of the reason we got along is, unlike all the other Jewish teens at the intensive Judaic studies and leadership training camp we were attending and he was a guest instructor at, I attended a Jesuit high school. So he shows up, gets introduced to everyone and then starts circulating and when he gets to me, because I know what the purple on the collar and the amethyst ring mean, I hit one knee, kissed the ring, and said Your Eminence out of respect for the office. Everyone was somewhere between startled and freaked except for the program’s director who knew where I went to school. He just smiled.
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: Bless their hearts!
jl
@lamh36: When he’s governor, Gillum should have a weekly feature on ‘stuff’ my grandmother said.
Mary G
The people in this thread are heartbreaking. We need to root out the Republicans and do even more.
Dan B
@Ruckus: I reached my limit with my efforts to stop global warming and just stopped. It took time but now I’ve got a handle on what I’d like to do. I was reminded of how I felt during the AIDS crisis. By the time 30 friends and boyfriends had died I felt like it would never end. And years later we had marriage equality and 8 years of hope. I realized that it may feel like the end of the world but it can get better, sometimes by just hanging in their and not being superhuman.
Healing to you, however you can.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: You have medical marijuana in your state?
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Bless his heart too!
Another Scott
@randy khan: I honestly don’t think that the End Times rationale holds much sway over Donnie and the Teabaggers, or the “fundamentalists”. They don’t care about religious arguments, and many of those religious leaders who claim to believe it probably don’t either.
It’s all about tribalism and sending message that Donnie will do what he wants and nobody can stop him. It’s signaling to their base and their supporters, and sincerity of belief has little or nothing to do with it.
Republicans probably hate baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet no matter how much they put on airs of singing about it… ;-)
The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their capital. The Teabaggers don’t like the Palestinians, and they don’t like liberals who support them, so what better way to send a giant FY!! to them than by moving the US Embassy. What better way to send a giant FY!! to UN and the Europeans who have been trying for decades to get Israel to end its vision of Greater Israel and to give up the lands it has occupied since the 1967 War? What better way to send a giant FY!! to those who argue that less than 4.3% of the world’s population can’t impose its will indefinitely on the rest of the world and that we need to get our views across by persuasion and not Ugly American braggadocio and threats and all the rest?
I would have thought that the turn of the millennium would have shown that the End Times people were a bunch of frauds. I think it did make lots of people realize that the sun will keep coming up in the morning, no matter what some leader says. But it will always be there as a convenient figleaf to try to apply some “religious” rationale for naked political power grabs…
Cui bono?
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I spend 4 1/2 hrs on trains and buses today. Any one of the people on those transportation gizmos would have done a better job. All of them managed to get on the right train/bus, sit or stand as necessary and get off at their stops. None of them dropped trou and slung feces. That alone is better at being human than any political appointee in this WH.
jl
@Cheryl Rofer: I think Heer is being both too harsh and too kind. I can see how a person can argue that a remembrance of a tragic hate-inspired massacre should be universal, though it should be firmly anchored in the particular context, and who the victims were, and why they were targeted.
But he’s being way to kind to the Trumpster re stuff like “the ineffable Kellyanne Conway saying that the synagogue massacre was an example of “anti-religiosity” spurred by late-night comedians”. That is dog whistling, lowered to human hearing range and amplified through a bull horn. It is contemptuous and provocative, clearly pandering to a bigoted rabid base of dupes, and I think they know exactly what they are doing. And it is vile. I hope the voting population firmly rejects it next week.
Dan B
@jl: Real [email protected] skipped juice – water to wine direct, non ah dis healdtee sheet. Nosiree!
But I’m stealing the Juice for Jesus line for the appropriate moment.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
CA? Why yes we do. Actually I believe that we now have open purchase, like CO. At least we voted for it. Not sure if it’s implemented yet.
But I quit drugs decades ago, quit alcohol 15 yrs or so ago. Besides all my docs work for the feds so……..
jl
@Dan B: ‘Juice for Jesus’ has a resonance for those us ‘frozen chosen’ raised as Presbyterians, where grape juice is often substituted for wine at communion.
But, Adam brought it up. It’s on him.
But now that I think about, I wonder if some middle schooler Presby someplace sometime thought it up and cracked it, unknown to the rest of humanity.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: Heeyyyy duuude, when ya comin’ out ta California, myaaan? Really mellow out here.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: Not anytime soon as far as I know. Also, because of work, I couldn’t imbibe anyway. Would invalidate my clearance.
SFAW
One of the great things about the Traitor-in-Chief and his minions is that there is no tragedy so bad, that they can’t make it worse.
And by “great,” I mean “totally fucked up and makes me hope there is a Hell and that they all fucking burn in it.”
piratedan
of all of the slippages of normalcy that we’ve lost and are grasping at holding on to is one of simply not being angry at every fucking thing every fucking day. I almost begin to believe and understand the wingnuts to a small degree because of all of the bullshit that is ongoing, the lawbreaking, the racism, the misogyny, the lying, the faux patriotism and all of the fear mongering is so incredibly wearing and they’re like roaches, fucking up elections, judicial norms, the environment, basic common decency its just numbing and enraging at the same time and the worst thing about all of this shit that is going on…. these bastards STILL aren’t happy… they’ve stolen a couple of supreme court seats, busy stealing our national wealth, on their way to packing the courts and making themselves a nice cozy cabal and THEY ARE STILL NOT HAPPY, not only do they want to tear down everything we believe in, they fucking want us to THANK THEM FOR IT.
sukabi
@Mnemosyne: it looks to me like a very cynical ploy. They look like they are being “thoughtful” to the folks that don’t pay attention, but to everyone else the message is clear. Total disrespect / dismissal of Jewish people.
KSinMA
@jl: Could you be thinking of Thomas Bramwell Welch (Methodist), of Welch’s Grape Juice fame? Interesting guy. Active in the Underground Railroad. Looks like he didn’t invent the use of “unfermented wine” for communion, but did jump into the business of supplying it.
jl
@KSinMA: Maybe. I know other protestant denominations use the juice too, but only know the details of it for my my Presby homies.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
I really have tried to limit my exposure as much as possible. Lots of shit going on in my life and I need to work, to build my SS income and just living. But soon I’m going to have to retire and live on what I can save and what I get with SS and the VA for my healthcare. That’s all I’ve got. That’s the entire pot. I lost every in the recession. When I was first eligible for SS I had to take it. I couldn’t find a job – recession, remember, I had $200 to my name and I lived in a building out back on a friends property it a room with no electricity or water. I had to walk to the main house to go. We ran electricity, so I had light and a small heater in the winter. It was that or my van which of course got 11-12 mpg, so….. I’ve had a good job for almost 6 yrs now, I do OK but not great, I can work 3 days a week with out issue but 4 gets to me after about 5 or 6 weeks. I’m just not able, it takes 2-3 days to recover and start over. Used to take one day. But that’s getting old. I’d like to enjoy the time I have left, however long that may be. I’m not enjoying life right now. I’d bet none of us are. So I can be miserable or I can work at making things better. Tell me what I should do again? All of my working life was working 60 or more hrs a week. I’m tired, I’m old but I’m not dead. I’m going for better. It’s all there is. But the switch has been turned, I’ve got to do my bit for better.
A new slogan – Do Your Bit For A Better Humanity.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: Tracking. And keeping good thoughts.
tobie
I keep thinking about how the families and friends of the victims of Saturday’s attack must be feeling. First the shooting was not acknowledged as a national tragedy, and now the Republicans are trying to use these deaths to advance their agenda, which is specifically the redefinition of the US as a white Christian nation. Having a Christian pose as a rabbi to deliver a Christian prayer for the dead is such an offense. It’s like cursing the souls of the dead. I’ve normally given to rage and this just leaves me speechless it’s so horrible.
Adam L Silverman
@piratedan: Being able to compartmentalize is very important. And it is also, often, not very easy.
Suzanne
There is a vigil at the Temple Emanuel up the street from my house tomorrow evening. My next-door neighbor is a member, and their congregation and my uber-liberal Methodist church are buddies—they usually use our sanctuary during the High Holy Days because it’s larger. I’m going to attend to show whatever support I can. Because, FFS, America’s Jews are certainly not being supported by our leadership.
Pence makes me sick.
Keith P.
@Uncle Cosmo: It was Rex Kramer. (interesting note: “Rex Kramer” was re-used from a vastly different character in “Kentucky Fried Movie”)
Another Scott
@Ruckus:
Excellent. Words to live by. And the great thing is, it actually works and makes a difference.
Hang in there. I think we’ll be on the way to making things better (with a long road ahead of us, but at least we’ll be on the right path again) starting Tuesday.
6 days to go!!
Hang in there, everyone. Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
joel hanes
@jl:
I wonder if some middle schooler Presby someplace sometime thought it up
Dunno about the juice thing, but I was raised Presby, and in middle school we used to sing
“What a friend we have in cheeses!”