Prior to Succos I observed that the world leaders who attended Shimon Peres’s funeral came as much to bludgeon Binyamin Netanyahu as to praise Peres. President Obama’s eulogy was particularly egregious in that regard as Caroline Glick spelled out in the Jerusalem Post.
As is his wont Obama began by lecturing his audience on the true meaning of Judaism. Though he has never been able to abide the notion of “American exceptionalism” he granted “Jewish exceptionalism.” Jews he suggested are the only people destined to care more about advancing their moral and ethical vision than about their own existence. Here’s how he put it: “Shimon believed thatIsrael’s exceptionalism was rooted not only in fidelity to the Jewish people but to the moral and ethical vision the precepts of his Jewish faith.”
But without the Jewish people there is no “light unto the nations.” The Jewish people were chosen as Hashem’s vehicle to reveal Himself to the world. And as long as the Jewish people are downtrodden and how much more so if they would cease to exist chas v’shalom then kavod Shamayim (the honor of Heaven) is absent from the world. We’ll just have to trust the Ramchal over President Obama on the Jewish ethical vision and the preconditions for its realization.
Peres’s opponents said Obama “argued that he refused to see the true wickedness of the world and called him naive.” Well yes Mr. President Jewish history has not exactly been a romp through sunny meadows and if there is one basic lesson for Jewish statesmen it is to take very seriously those who declare their intent to destroy Am Yisrael.
