Rabbi Mark Winer gave a long invocation yesterday to kick off a Florida Democratic Party event of Jews for Biden, which included several Congresspeople (Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Ted Deutch, Lois Frankel) and a speech by Douglas Emhoff, husband of Kamala Harris. Winer called the BDS campaign and antizionism an antisemitic “virus” that is knocking off progressives.
Here’s a long excerpt. The virus is in paragraph 2. Note that Winer, 77, an interfaith activist, touches on many progressive anti-racist themes.
Inspire us oh God to fulfill our holy mission as Jews to serve as an or l’goyim, a light unto the nations. Bless us as we unite with our fellow Americans in this epic struggle to secure the soul of America and respond to the higher angels of our American character. Steel our resolve and stiffen our spines to stand up with others for goodness, decency and truth, that justice will roll down its waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Strengthen us oh God to combat the BDS, antizionist and antisemitic virus which infects too many of our erstwhile allies in our battle for the soul of America, without weakening our defense of our own secure Jewish place in this society. May we reach out in fellowship to join with all Americans in fighting the pandemic of racism, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism, which plagues our nation.
Bless the families and friends of Jacob Blake and George Floyd and all of the others victimized by rogue policemen. Kneel with us oh God and with the African American athletes who take to their knees in patriotic devotion to the highest values of our nation, demonstrating the truth that Black Lives Matter.
Bless our beloved Joe Biden and Kamala Harris whom we Jews love to call the mensch and mamala. Grant them health and security, balance and inspiration, that they may lead us in this quest to reclaim the soul of this country. Help us oh God to join with them and to work in partnership with all of the many races and religions which enrich this nation.
The reactionary line on BDS (a nonviolent campaign to gain rights for Palestinians) is consistent with the Biden team’s refusal to move an inch to acknowledge Israeli human rights violations lest Biden alienates donors. On the New Yorker radio hour today, Evan Osnos described the many issues from environment to health care that Biden has gone left on in order to win the Sandersites and solidify the base. Not this one!
On the same Jewish “summit” yesterday Emhoff called Israel “our beloved homeland” but said he’d first visited it in 2017, with his wife, when he was 52 years old. Just my hunch, but I bet the California entertainment lawyer doesn’t really care that much about Israel.
It seems the good Rabbi, like so many other Rabbi’s before him, have no compassion for those who have lived under a brutal occupation, and have their lands and resources stolen. If the side he seems to strongly supports does not have the basic decency to stop the mistreatment of the Palestinians, and stop killing unarmed kids who protest their endless suffering, there is no other choice but to boycott them. There is nothing anti-semitic about that. The world has seen many other boycotts against other nations too, and it has nothing to do with who they were, their religion, or their people. It was all against their vicious policies.
Hope BDS gets stronger and spreads to all parts of the world.
I seriously doubt Biden will be all that progressive on those other issues. He has donors to worry about in many issues. He will claim to shift slightly left, but talk is cheap. Obama fooled a lot of progressives in 2008 and many never seem to learn.
Most likely Democratic voters want to beat Trump most of all, which means he is going to be given the benefit of the doubt by most of his prospective voters.
Meanwhile, there is a much better-written prayer that much more adequately expresses what the good Rabby really feels and thinks, written some 120 years ago:
“O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —
For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”
Twain knew exactly what’s today in the mind and heart of the Zionists, winer or not, and Joes and Kamalas and Trumps and spies and such…
see https://warprayer.org/
“Rabbi” Mark Winer is another BIGOT masquerading as a progressive. Like “rabbi” Jill Jacobs, with this “light unto nations” shining out their backsides. Quite the teachers! Racist defenders of that nation of child killers – Israel.
“Strengthen us oh God to combat the BDS, antizionist and antisemitic virus which infects too many of our erstwhile allies in our battle for the soul of America,…” Patent nonsense!!
Denigrating Jews is most certainly anti-Semitic and must be vigorously opposed. However, criticizing and opposing Zionism and its spawn, racist, expansionist “Israel,” a thoroughly documented serial illegal/brutal occupier of the Palestinians and escalating violator of hard won international humanitarian law is most assuredly not!! Indeed, it is absolutely necessary and explains why ever increasing numbers of people in America and around the world, including Jews, are stepping forth and standing shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians.