Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah.  It was a fun night.  We attended the Menorah lighting at the nice outdoor mall in Huntsville.  The Rabbi of the Local Chabad gave a speech, the Colonel of garrison at Redstone Arsenal lit the Shamash.

We came home, the boy had another sufganiyot (Jewish jelly donut) and opened presents.

Then I go online and what do I see?  A Rabbi embarrassing me as a Jew.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is clearly a radical Lefty who wandered into the Social Justice wing of the Rabbinate.

This is her bio from The Daily Beast’s list of Rabbis to watch.

Ruttenberg, 38, the campus rabbi at Northwestern University, is liberal Judaism’s resident sexpert. She has edited two provocative anthologies on Judaism and sex, another on Jewish feminism’s new wave, and she wrote a memoir chronicling her own untraditional path to the rabbinate.

Yeah, we all know where this is going.

This is the Tweet that she sent that made me hung my head in shame.

Here's a lil' thread about Hanukah and the Trump Administration. 1/x

In 175 B. C., an insecure, despotic ruler came to power. He was narcissistic and known for a level of extravagance and display that bordered on the bizarre.

— Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (@TheRaDR) December 2, 2018

For the sake of readability, this is that thread, unrolled.

Here’s a lil’ thread about Hanukah and the Trump Administration. 1/x

In 175 B. C., an insecure, despotic ruler came to power. He was narcissistic and known for a level of extravagance and display that bordered on the bizarre.

Despite his occasional ability to captivate his subjects by appearing gracious, he was said to have, in his heart, a cruel tyrant’s contempt for his subjects.

Political positions under him were easily bought; he installed unqualified cronies in high positions and quickly turned on one if another offered him more money for the same job.

He was quick to anger, and it wasn’t long into his reign that he began curtailing civil liberties, restricting the freedom of religion, and pillaging his subjects’ resources for his own profit.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes seized rule illegitimately over the Seleucid Empire, incl Judea; the kingship was to have gone to his nephew, but he took it by force. Bribes drove his appointments of the high priest; he plundered the treasury of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem for its gold.

In a fury about a humiliating loss in Egypt, he cracked down in Judea, outlawing observance of the Sabbath and ritual circumcision and defiling the temple by erecting an altar to Zeus there, complete with pig sacrifice.

He sent his officers to slay and destroy, with an agenda that was less about Hellenism — that is, the demand that the Judeans assimilate into the kingdom’s dominant Greek-influenced culture — than it was about denationalization, a full eradication of their way of life.

The parallels to U.S. politics are hard to ignore. The questions about Trump’s illegal rise to power, stacking the administration with people who benefit his purse; the kleptocracy, collusion with brutal regimes; assaults on civil liberties and human rights.

He has sacked the Temple of our democracy and social safety nets. He’s been trying to destroy us entirely.

Antiochus’s regime was, needless to say, terrifying and devastating for the Judeans, who had to decide whether to be martyred — as many were — or to submit to his demands.

A small handful of zealots chose a third option, however, protesting his decrees and the complicity of some of their fellow Judeans. After an initial skirmish, the Maccabees ran for the hills and, soon, were engaged in all-out warfare with the massive Seleucid army.

They were outmanned and underarmed; many of the Maccabean soldiers didn’t even have swords and armor. But they made use of their superior knowledge of their terrain: They were light, quick and mobile, relying on ambush techniques and superior tactical skill.

Slowly, painstakingly, they beat back the Seleucids and eventually gained their freedom.

They held fast to their ideals and pushed back against the narrative that their faith was a just target for oppression. Their smart thinking and intimate knowledge of their own country was enough to outmaneuver a government bent on maintaining power through force.

This administration has forced us to become smarter and savvier than we had been, to be resourceful and make use of all the assets we have — perhaps not by hiding in caves but by building coalitions, developing protest strategies, creating novel uses for technology.

We have had to become quick, light and strategically flawless, and we have had to settle in for the long haul. We killed the midterms, but we still have Trump in office, a GOP senate and two stolen SCOTUS seats to contend with. We’re not done.

But we have done extraordinary work, and Hanukah is a time to pause and both celebrate the resistance and bravery of the last two years, and to fill up with light as we recommit to the work that lies ahead for us.

We know now, better than ever, that we have to make the miracles ourselves.

What incredible and anti-Jewish horseshit.

The whole beginning was as much fantasy as history.  Antiochus IV was a real Greek leader, but sort of a minor one historically.  As far as I can find, there is one book written about him and it is at least 100 years old.  All that crap about his personality, well… I’m not aware of any texts explaining that.

Then her diatribe really starts to break down.

The parallels to U.S. politics are hard to ignore.

Really?  Has Trump marched troops across America and burned Synagogues?  Has his army stopped anybody from practicing their religion?  Has he tried to force any group to give up their identity?

Take a look at this headline: Antisemitism rises in Canada, Jews remain most targeted minority group.  When did Trump become President of Canada?  Shouldn’t the Lefty hero and “woke Bae” Justin Trudeau have reduced anti-Semitism?

Or maybe this headline: 2015 FBI data: Jews were nearly 3X more likely than blacks, 1.5X more likely than Muslims to be a hate crime victim.  I didn’t know Trump was President in 2015.  Who was President in 2015, and the 7 years before that?

Maybe it’s that most of the Jew hatred we see today come from the work left and their Islamic political pets.

The questions about Trump’s illegal rise to power,

What?  He was the elected President as per the rules set down in our Constitution.  Show me one vote actually altered or illegally cast by the Russian government and I’ll change my mind.

stacking the administration with people who benefit his purse;

So like the Clinton Foundation?  Or maybe Obama’s money grabbing schemes that are so over the top even Liberals are getting pissed about it.

the kleptocracy, collusion with brutal regimes;

Iran Deal anyone?  Also, didn’t North Korea return some prisoners?  If Trump scratches Kim’s back on Twitter and we get our citizens back, I’ll call that a win for the USA.

assaults on civil liberties and human rights.

Which ones?  I know we’ve all seen the cattle cars full of gays heading to Pence’s shock-them-straight camps… oh wait, that never happened.

Or are we talking about tear gassing people throwing chunks of concrete blocks at US law enforcement.

He has sacked the Temple of our democracy and social safety nets. He’s been trying to destroy us entirely.

His party just lost the House of Representatives.  The Democrats took wins in governorship.  How could such as tyrannical dictator let that happen.

Also, did Trump eliminate welfare, because that would be AWESOME!!!  Somebody tell the illegals that that’s no longer available.

They held fast to their ideals and pushed back against the narrative that their faith was a just target for oppression. Their smart thinking and intimate knowledge of their own country was enough to outmaneuver a government bent on maintaining power through force.

This administration has forced us to become smarter and savvier than we had been, to be resourceful and make use of all the assets we have — perhaps not by hiding in caves but by building coalitions, developing protest strategies, creating novel uses for technology.

Please for the love of everything holy, do not try an parallel the Maccabees with ANTIFA.

The Maccabees fought to continue to practice their religion without government oppression.  ANTIFA is all about oppressing people who are to the right of Lenin.  Those are very different things.

We have had to become quick, light and strategically flawless, and we have had to settle in for the long haul. We killed the midterms, but we still have Trump in office, a GOP senate and two stolen SCOTUS seats to contend with. We’re not done.

What stolen SCOTUS seats?  You mean the ones that the Senate confirmed according to the Constitution?  This is more Slate level bullshit.

But we have done extraordinary work, and Hanukah is a time to pause and both celebrate the resistance and bravery of the last two years, and to fill up with light as we recommit to the work that lies ahead for us.

No, the resistance has been a load of shit.  It hasn’t accomplished anything but make Trump supporters more motivated.  The Resistance is why the Senate is still Republican.

We know now, better than ever, that we have to make the miracles ourselves.

No, the miracle was that the little band of Maccabees defeated one of the most disciplined armies of the era.  They did so with God’s help.

The Resistance hasn’t defeated shit.  Crazy women in pussy hats and vagina costumes or Communists in black masks haven’t done anything but ruin business fronts in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco.  That isn’t a brave army, that’s a bunch of tantruming Leftists.

The second miracle was the re-dedication of the Temple and the oil burning for eight days.

This Rabbi managed to leave God entirely out of her little rant.

That, more than anything else, shows you the caliber of Rabbi she really is.  A secular one.

Of course I have one other thought on this.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume the Rabbi here is totally anti-gun.  Call it a hunch.

If she really believed in Hanukkah, shouldn’t she support the idea of Jews – or any other minority – being armed?

Somehow I doubt it.

I know I’m not supposed to police other Jews’ Jewishness, but this was some un-Jewish horseshit and it’s a sad state of affairs that someone this unhinged and un-tethered from her religion could be a Rabbi.