Out of touch
In the article “NJ’s ‘Rabbis for Obama’ Invoke ‘Shared Values,’” Elaine Durbach writes that a group of 41 New Jersey rabbis — part of a group of 613 rabbis set up by the Obama campaign for America — represent a broad group of respected Jewish leaders who mirror the diversity of American Jewry. Several local rabbis expressed their belief that President Obama’s values, commitments, and vision for our country most closely reflect their own.
The national debt currently stands at more than 100 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, i.e., it is non-sustainable in macroeconomic jargon.
Every American citizen’s portion of our deficit is approximately $48,000. The unemployment rate is grudgingly holding at 8.3 percent and the U-6 rate, which takes into account those who have been unemployed so long they are no longer considered active job seekers, hovers at 15 percent.
Over 50 percent of Americans receive some form of aid from the federal government and 15 percent of Americans are living at or below the poverty level. Almost 53 percent of new college graduates are unemployed. Illegal immigrants (not like our forefathers who came to these shores seeking a better life legally) cost the United States over $100 billion a year.
The Muslim Brotherhood is assuming power in Egypt as the United States prepares to forgive $1 billion dollars in loans owed us by Egypt. Syria is imploding, Iran gets closer to deploying a nuclear weapon each day, and the Obama administration curtails its scheduled joint military operation with its only ally in the Middle East, refuses to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and continuesto insist that Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli settlements in the “occupied territory” are the source of all conflict in the region.
If this represents the values and vision for our country, I daresay that this group of clergy is out of touch with reality and what concerns the average American Jew on a daily basis.
Jesse M. Cohen, MD, MBA
West Orange
comments