Braving 80 degree temperatures and mild sunshine, about 130 people turned out Thursday afternoon, September 9, for a Bush-Cheney '04 California Jewish Coalition rally.
I spot the husband of Temple Sinai rabbi Sherre Hirsch.
Republican Jewish Coalition CA President Bruce Bialovsky, Dennis Prager and secretary Connie Friedman.
Dennis Prager (fighting off an insect on his face) and the charismatic Bruce Bialovsky
The crowd pays close attention to Prager's words
Bush supporter
Rabbi Joel Geitlin, who's forming rabbis for Bush
Two generations support Bush
This was the most fun I've had covering an event since Jill's tupperware party with 25 of her closest friends in the summer of '99. What a time that was.
I spotted three black people in the crowd. One appeared to be a pastor, another a reporter and another was a woman. I spotted a couple of asians and exactly 13 homosexuals (I have excellent gaydar and can sniff out these types from a mile away). Five people wore yarmulkes. The median age (not counting the infants) was early 40s.
I did not know about 80% of the crowd. And there was only one person there who I've dated.
There were Dennis Prager bumper stickers and Republicans for Bush stickers. I am above all that stuff. I am a non-partisan servant of the truth. I have to live like a monk, as Forward editor J.J. Goldberg enjoins. I've spent years making deposits in my moral bank account, building up my credibility, and I can't just throw it away for the fleeting pleasure of holding a placard or pasting on a sticker.
Bruce Bialovsky kicks the event off at 1:15 p.m. Then RJC secretary Connie Friedman has her two minutes. She wears a t-shirt with a big W on the back. "Bush is for women," she says. Not as much as I am, I think.
Bruce says he took Prager to Minnesota senator Norm Coleman's party last Wednesday night at the Republican convention. It was like he'd brought Bon Jovi. Norm's wife (an actress who lives in Los Angeles) was ga ga with delight to meet Dennis.
"I was stunned how many people did not know Dennis Prager and had not met him before.
"He is the single best spokesman for the Jewish community in the United States."
Prager wears a long-sleeve white dress shirt and tie.
Thursday morning, Bruce went on Prager's radio show.
Dennis addresses one enthusiastic woman in particular: "Jewish women Republicans. That's even more remarkable. Whoever is married to a Jewish woman Republican."
The woman says she is single.
"Then you should be grabbed up. If you are single, then you should be taken within a week. It's a healthy choice. I think it is deeper than politics, why people vote the way they do, especially Jews.
"Because you are standing in the sun, I will have rachmones on you, and I won't be long.
"There's a possibility of a revolution in Jewish life. I think it's a matter of the survival of Jews and of Jewish values for Jews to rethink their social, moral, and political orientation.
"Many Jews use the Democratic party and their liberalism as their religion. It is the source of meaning in their life.
"A woman in Denver wrote to me (I read it on the air yesterday) that she hates my show because I have changed her mind. She is now confused. Being a Democratic gave my life meaning.
"I don't think that for any of you being a Republican gives your life meaning. I have meaning in my life. I don't seek it in politics. I am politically involved because I don't want America to come crashing down. I want to fight bad people on this planet.
"But I don't walk around thinking, I am a Republican, that is my identity. But for Jews on the left, that is their identity. It has been true for hundreds of years.
"The most angry letters I get, filled with expletives, are from Jews. They call me a Hitler and a Nazi and that I am for Jewish destruction. I often write them back and ask what they have done for the Jewish people and I give a little resume of my work for Israel, for Soviet Jews, how many people I've brought from assimilation into a Jewish identity. What did you do so that you can call me Hitler?
"But they have to call me Hitler. They have to call George Bush Hitler. That's the only way to explain how deeply hated a conservative ought to be.
"I don't know a lot of you but I am convinced that none of you hate the Democrats as much as the Democrats hate you. We feel for them benigh contempt. You haven't thought clearly and therefore you are a Democrat.
"There's not a far gap between the way you Jewish Republicans are viewed and [the way apostates are viewed].
"You are at the cusp of a revolution within Jewish life. You are supporting a party that says many abortions are morally questionable.
"I argued on television with the former editor [Gene Lichtenstein] of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles on television about ten years ago. I said, when you say things about abortion, it sounds like you regard the human fetus as no more valuable than a decayed tooth. He said, Dennis, that is exactly how I view the human fetus, as a decayed tooth.
"We who introduced into the world the seminal idea of the infinite value of human life are now in the vanguard of the idea that if a woman wants it, it is infinitely precious, and if she doesn’t want it, it is infinitely unprecious.
"What does compassion for the poor have to do with Democratic party policies? If you have compassion for the poor, you give them standards. You give them something to shoot for. The New York Times Sunday magazine had a story on how good welfare reform has been for people who work. They now have dignity. Isn’t dignity a Jewish value? Is it a Jewish value to take away 50% of people’s money that they honestly earn? When Jews adopted Marx rather than the Torah. That’s when it became a Jewish value.
"If giving half your money away is Jewish, than John Edwards and John Kerry should lead the way and give half of their money away. I get $1.3 billion from my wife but I pay $65,000 in taxes. I paid more money in taxes last year than John Edwards. And he has a plane and I have to fly coach. That's not fair. For me, the greatest day is to go business class. And he paid half of what I did in federal income taxes. And he is calling for an increase in my taxes. That's noble and Jewish according to Jewish Democrats. You could go berserk.
"Why is redefining marriage a Jewish position? The head of the Reform rabbinate, and I attend a Reform synagogue, and he said at Harvard last year that he supported same-sex marriage but I have to acknowledge that there is nothing in 3000 years of Jewish writing to support it. That's honest. It's the Jews who say it is a Jewish value to redefine marriage.
"It is precisely my Judaism that informs my values, that leads me to this moment.
"I was on Dennis Miller two days ago. I had this dialogue with this liberal comedian. She won't use the word 'evil' for the people who shot up children in Russia last week. She used 'whacked.'
"It's in the Garden of Eden, in the liberal translation of the Torah: The Tree of Good and Whacked.
"I just had a major liberal writer on my show for an hour. He wrote a book that religion is unnecessary for morality. Needless to say, he's a Jew.
[Sam Harris, philosopher and author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason. August 16.]
"He wrote a big piece on this for The LA Times. Frankly, I so demolished his arguments that he wants to come back on. He feels he didn't do well. Well, he didn't do well. And he won't do well the second trip. It's not because he's not bright. It's because you can't have his views and have them thought through.
"If you say that religion is the problem because of [Islamic terrorism], you might as well say that medicine is the problem because of all the German doctors at Auschwitz [performing inhumane experiments].
"If Jews in America change, America will change. You don't have to anti-Semitic to say that Jews have disproportionate influence in this country. Unfortunately. It's not the Jewish Jew but the non-Jewish Jew who has disproportionate influence. That's the tragedy.
"Every so often I have a dream that all Jewish college professors will take their values from the Torah rather than The New York Times."
Black man in the audience: "Black preachers too...get their values from the Bible rather than The LA Times."
Dennis: "[In New York], I was like the comedian who goes on as the warm-up act. After me it was three senators, a governor and the Vice President. I said it is time for us to acknowledge that Franklin Roosevelt can't run for a 17th term. That's why the toughest Jew to convince is the old Jew. They are still voting for Roosevelt. It doesn't matter if the guy's name is Clinton or Kerry. They're still fighting Hitler. They still think right-wing means Nazi and Christian means anti-Semite.
"My parents are now Republicans. It took them a lifetime.
"Why do they hate George Bush? Because he's a devout Christian. There's an anti-Christian bias among liberal Jews. It is a bigotry. Christians are at best morons and at worst they are racist bigoted anti-Semitic dangerous fascist morons.
"Do you think Jews put Bush in office in 2000? He owes the Jews bupkus [zilch]. Dick Cheney. It must be the Wyoming Jewish community's big effect in his life. Condoleeza Rice must be responding to the awesome pro-Israel currents in black life.
"They are pro-Israel precisely because of their conservative and Christian values."
