Jeffrey Goldberg: Obama 'Is the Most Jewish President We've Ever Had'

March 15th, 2012 10:19 AM

Heck with all those people in America that still think the President's a Muslim.

According to a Huffington Post piece by The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, Barack Obama "is the most Jewish president we've ever had":

Two weeks ago, after I finished interviewing President Obama on the subject of Iran and Israel, I handed him a copy of the New American Haggadah, the Passover user's guide edited by Jonathan Safran Foer, which includes commentary by Goldblog. [...]

When I handed him the Haggadah, President Obama, who famously stages his own seders at the White House (which is a very nice philo-Semitic thing to do, IMHO), spent a moment leafing through it and making approving noises. Then he said (as I told the Times): "Does this mean we can't use the Maxwell House Haggadah anymore?"

George W. Bush was, in his own way, a philo-Semite, but he never would have made such an M.O.T. kind of joke (see the end of this post if you're not sure what M.O.T. means). Once again, Barack Obama was riffing off the cosmic joke that he is somehow anti-Semitic, when in fact, as many people understand, he is the most Jewish president we've ever had (except for Rutherford B. Hayes). No president, not even Bill Clinton, has traveled so widely in Jewish circles, been taught by so many Jewish law professors, and had so many Jewish mentors, colleagues, and friends, and advisers as Barack Obama (though it is true that every so often he appoints a gentile to serve as White House chief of staff). And so no president, I'm guessing, would know that the Maxwell House Haggadah -- the flimsy, wine-stained, rote, anti-intellectual Haggadah you get when you buy a can of coffee at Shoprite) -- is the target, alternatively, of great derision and veneration among American Jews (at least, I'm told there are people who venerate it).


In case you didn't know, M.O.T. stands for member of the tribe.

Does this mean that because Obama made a hip Jewish remark to a Jewish writer he's the most Jewish president we've ever had?

Certainly not.

What it really means is that Goldberg is doing his part as an Obama-loving media member to try to mend the rift this President has with the Jewish community over his treatment of Israel and its Prime Minister.

In an election year, every vote counts, and folks like Goldberg are doing whatever they can to help.

Most Jewish president ever - oy vey!

Post facto opining: Given the Democratic Party's position on Israel and Palestinians, it is often asked why most American Jews are Democrats.

Those that are willing to admit it will say it's because of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and eventually Harry Truman defeating Germany in World War II while liberating those still living in concentration camps.

As such, the "most Jewish" president we've ever had is FDR, and for the vast majority of today's American Jews, there will never be a "more Jewish" one until America actually elects a real one.

That anyone would put Obama up in such rarified air is preposterous and frankly disgraceful.