Israel Matzav

'Clint Eastwood talked to an empty chair while Wolpe talked to 10,000 empty chairs'

Spengler (David Goldman) hit this one on the head.

Let's go to the videotape. More to follow.

The Democratic Party didn’t quite succeed in banning God from its platform, but it did its best to ensure that no-one would listen to him by putting a liberal clergyman who talks about anything except God in front of a deserted stadium. That checked the God box without allowing the Maker of Heaven to get a word in edgewise.

Rabbis from the wrongly named Conservative movement are used to preaching to empty rooms, but there was something surreal in the image of the Los Angeles Sinai Temple’s Rabbi David Wolpe blessing a deserted stadium late Wednesday night long after the Democrats had departed. Named by Newsweek the most influential American rabbi, Wolpe beamed empathy and gestured eloquently to the vacant stadium. After the last-minute vote by acclamation to return God to the party platform, Wolpe’s benediction had deep symbolic overtones. Clint Eastwood talked to an empty chair, while Wolpe talked to ten thousand empty chairs.

...

The whole of the Republican convention delegates remained in place to hear Cardinal Dolan after Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech, unlike their Democratic counterparts, who walked out on Rabbi Wolpe. Viewers of CNN, though, did not hear Cardinal Dolan, because Wolf Blitzer was too busy trolling the punditeska for instant comments on the Romney speech to allow Dolan to be heard. Fox News carried the cardinal’s benediction rather than the pundits.

The opening invocation at the Republican convention came from the Orthodox Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, before whom the whole mass of delegates stood with bowed heads.

...

One difference between the two addresses is the fact that the whole Republican convention heard Rabbi Soloveichik, while no-one but the cleaning crew was there for Rabbi Wolpe. There was a also a world of difference in the content. Rabbi Wild and Wonderful preached social work and psychobabble, while Rabbi Soloveitchik linked God’s revelation to Moses and the American founding, much closer in spirit to Cardinal Dolan than to the progressive Rabbi Wolpe.

It’s no surprise that progressive Judaism is imploding. In the past decade, the Reform and (poorly named) Conservative movements have lost 30% to 40% of their members by various estimates. If Judaism boils down to social work, why not do the social work, rather than bother with the laborious practices of an ancient religion? Progressive Jews have the lowest fertility rate of any identifiable (heterosexual) segment of the United States population, and half of their children intermarry. The American Jews will be a smaller, but far more devout, community a generation hence.

It is perhaps indicative of how seriously 'progressive Jews' take their religion that an image search for "Wolpe benediction" in Google turns up more pictures of his most famous congregant - Monica Lewinsky - than of the 'most influential rabbi in America,' Rabbi Wolpe himself. Pretty sad.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Judaism, liberal Jews, National Democratic Party, Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik, Republican party

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:19 AM