Unlike the ideologically (and theologically) lazy suburban Reform and Conservative rabbis who continue to flak for Obama’s health care bill, the real left – to their great credit — has been far tougher on the fraud that is being shystered as “health care.” The real left cares about the poor and the working class. The rabbinic suburban Guardians of Tikkun Olam (the two most misappropriated words in Judaism), with their exclusionary and regressive $2000 temple membership fees and sheltered communities reeking of conformity, will not have to pick up the shattered pieces of this legislation, they’ll just keep talking like Good Little Democrats. On the other hand, Tikkun magazine, always a provocative read, recently posted some serious objections to the health care bill, Tikkun has allowed that there are two sides to this, and former Dem. National Chairman  Howard Dean has been blasting it, too, saying Congress should throw the bill out and start all over.

That’s why my hunch is that the flogging of the Orthodox Lieberman (but not other senators, such as Nelson of Nebraska) by the  Reform and Conservative rabbis (who won’t criticize the bill whatsoever) has more to do with hating Orthodox Jews (at worst) and resenting Orthodox Jews (at best). These Orthodox haters expose themselves by saying Lieberman is a hypocrite for walking (not driving) to Congress on Shabbos, rather than arguing this out on the issues. Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun and a Jewish Renewal (leftist) rabbi, is someone who himself observes and loves Shabbat, and would never cheap-shot another Jew for loving and keeping Shabbos. That’s why I don’t fully respect many of the ”Tikkun Olam” rabbis who have turned the holy phrase into a cheap slogan for Democrat hacks, but I do fully respect Tikkun’s editor, even if I disagree with him almost always. He’s the real left and a real Jew, and real Jews don’t knock other Jews for walking on Shabbos.

 You can disagree with Lerner and still be his friend. I don’t get that sense from these other mean-spirited rabbis. And I figure most people in Massachusetts figured that if you disagreed with Obama, you were considered an enemy, not a friend who disagrees. Obama goes to Cairo and radical Islam on bended knee, being “conciliatory” to Arabs who listen and swear by the most vile anti-Semitic television and radio, but here in America Obama was so quick to passionately attack and isolate FOX News, and insult listeners to Rush and Hannity, to lump all critics with the worst of the tea partiers (when he himself supported Jeremiah Wright and Acorn, far worse than the regular folks who understood what the tea partiers were getting at). Here in America the president and his party couldn’t be less conciliatory to the pain and problems of fellow Americans. Instead, Obama and his crowd were triumphalist and bullying. Obama created the mood in which Jews attack other Jews for having the nerve to walk on Shabbos, for the sin of not supporting the king. This past Tuesday, on election day in Massachusetts, behind the curtain of a secret ballot, the people – left, right and center — answered back with three words that send shivers down every politician’s spine:  We, the people. We can get rid of senators and presidents, and we can get rid of political hack rabbis, too.