Trump motives: fighting antisemitism? Or won’t be shown up by Joe Biden!

President Donald Trump wound up proceeding with his scheduled campaign stop Saturday on behalf of Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., even though it had been contemplated to cancel the event at the Southern Illinois Airport in Murphysboro out of respect for the incident that morning where people were killed while attending Shabbat services at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

TRUMP: Answering back before attacked?

Trump, the tough-talker who’s particularly vehement when communicating via Twitter, said he ventured to the land of Little Egypt (how the locals think of themselves) because, “we can’t let evil change our life and change our schedule.”

NOW THERE MAY be an element of truth that Trump wouldn’t want to cancel out on his appearance meant to bolster the re-election bid of Bost just because some bigot decided to bust into a synagogue armed with a rifle and pistols and start shooting the place up.

Some 11 were killed, others were wounded, and it is being called one of the bloodiest attacks on Jewish people in this country. Even Trump is calling it an “antisemitic attack at its worst.”

But I can’t help but think of more crass motivations in play for why Trump felt a flight on Air Force One to a remote part of Illinois was so important to make.

It will be just a few days before none-other-than Joe Biden, the former Vice President under the chief executive whose memory Trump would love to erase from the history books, will take place.

BOST: Beneficiary of Trump goodwill?

FOR BOST IS the guy being challenged by St. Clair County Brendan Kelly, who is the Democrat seeking to knock Bost from the House of Representatives, and one of some two-dozen Republican members of Congress whom Democrats think might be vulnerable on Election Day.

Personally, I’m inclined to think that Southern Illinois has changed significantly since the days when it was a working-class region (with many union member coal miners living there). Bost (whose moment of national prominence came back six years ago when he shouted, screamed and threw documents around during a session of the Illinois House of Representatives) may well be safe politically – particularly since that region is the lone part of Illinois where Trump is taken seriously.

HULTGREN: Will he get Trump help?

I have no doubt that Trump on Saturday was in a place where he felt much political love. Reinforcing his belief that he really does represent what this country is about.

Exactly the kind of sentiment that could be threatened if the perception got out there that Trump somehow got scared off, intimidated of sorts, into not showing up in Illinois.

JUST THINK OF how much trash talk Biden could spew come Wednesday when he appears on behalf of Kelly at a union hall in East St. Louis.

Which will come a few hours after Biden appears in suburban St. Charles to campaign for Lauren Underwood, who’s the nurse with political aspirations challenging Rep. Randy Hultgren, R-Ill., for his congressional seat.

He’s probably more vulnerable than is Bost, but you can be sure Biden will go out of his way on Halloween to bash both congress members by tying them as closely as possible in every possible way to Trump.

BIDEN: Dumping on Trump come Wednesday?

I don’t doubt Trump would not like the notion of Biden appearing in Illinois twice while Donald himself would not at all. It would probably seem to him like he’s surrendering to the former Vice President. And I suspect an unanswered taunt is the biggest evidence of political cowardice that exists in Trump’s mentality.

SO I SEE a touch of self-righteousness in Trump, feeling the need to answer back Saturday in anticipation of the Illinois-oriented insults he’s likely to get on Tuesday.

He may actually feel a touch of sympathy for Jewish people, although I suspect that’s largely because daughter Ivanka likely would read him the riot act in private if he didn’t (she did convert her religious faith when she married Jared Kushner).

If anything, I wonder if he’ll try to squeeze in a last-minute campaign stop this week in Kane County to benefit Hultgren. Anything is possible, I suppose.

One can talk about high-minded ideals as much as they want. But when it comes to political people, there’s usually a selfish motive behind anything they say or do – particularly when it comes to “the Donald.”

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Not exactly a father/son experience; I helped my father prepare for Bar Mitzvah

I’m partaking of an experience on Saturday that I suspect most people would never get the opportunity to do – my father is becoming a Bar Mitzvah.

There are slim pickings for Bar Mitzvah holiday cards

Considering that most people who are Jewish engage in this experience around age 13 when their children are some future experience whose conception hasn’t even been thought about yet, I wouldn’t be surprised at how unique this opportunity was.

IN MY CASE, my father is 72. While he and my step-mother, Cathy, have been married for 31 years, it was only about five years ago that my father converted to Judaism.

With my own niece being 13 and going through her Bat Mitzvah, the fact that my father is doing the male equivalent was seen as a gesture of support for his grand-daughter, and also a way of affirming his new identity.

So on Saturday, both my father and niece are affirming that they’re now adults, insofar as the church is concerned. They’re now fully capable of participating in their synagogue’s activities. They can no longer claim to be too young to comprehend what is taking place about them.

Which is why I actually spent some time earlier this week reviewing the speech that my father will present on Saturday to the synagogue, one in which he explains how he gradually fell away from the Catholic faith in which he was born (and which I was baptized as a mere baby and have never formally done anything to renounce).

BUT ALSO HOW he feels there are similarities to what he was taught as a boy by his grandfather so that the jump doesn’t feel like a massive earth-shattering moment.

How many people can claim to have copy-edited their father’s statement; touching up his grammar just a bit? One which I felt contained a certain honesty about his thoughts while also stating where he stands in life.

Not that I expect him to recite a batch of Hebrew on Saturday. My understanding is that the rabbi assigned him to English-speaking parts (and even a bit in Spanish). While my niece, Meira, is the one who will take on the challenge of showing she can read from the Torah and actually comprehend its meaning.

I HAVE TO admit that shopping for a Bar Mitzvah gift for one’s father is an odd experience. Even trying to pick out a card for the occasion was unique, although mostly because I came to realize how many stores that overly stock every stupid expression of holiday joy in greeting cards usually have, at most, a card or two for the Jewish holidays.

One store I stumbled into literally had only two options – one for Bar Mitzvah and one for Bat Mitzvah, and of the types of cards that were specifically designed to stuff cash into. Which strikes me as a tacky stereotype.

Although my father, himself, jokes that he expects to clean up financially at his Bar Mitzvah, perhaps regaining a share of all the cash he had to spend on me during my lifetime. A part of me is inclined to give him a card with a note in it saying I’ll try not to cost him so much money in the future.

But on a more serious note, I have to admit to trying to think about the experience from his perspective. I have to admit that the statement behind doing a Bar Mitzvah at his age is quite a commitment – particularly since I saw the amount of time he had to spend with a rabbi in preparation.

TIME THAT I’M sure he would have preferred to spend elsewhere.

I’m not sure I’d be capable of taking on such a commitment. In fact, I’m sure I wouldn’t be capable of doing this. I have to admit to having some respect bordering on pride for the man for being willing, and able, to do this.

Considering that this also is a big day for my niece, I’m sure this will be one of those days in the family history that will long be etched in our memories

It definitely will be one I will remember for the rest of my life when I think of my father. To whom I wonder if “L’chaim” is the all-too-appropriate toast for this day.

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How clueless can some people be?

Dan Piraro's 'Bizarro' strips occasionally hit too close to home

Admittedly, I have a bias – I spent my time in college studying history (that is, when I wasn’t writing copy for assorted newspapers) and got my B.A. degree studying the foreign policy of the United States.

But it always manages to amaze me when the historical cluelessness of the masses is exposed.

WE LITERALLY ARE in danger of being sentenced to relive our mistakes because we didn’t study our history. Or so said the Italian philosopher George Santayana.

Take WGN-TV, which earlier this week wrote up some copy for a news anchor to read about the start of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

Rather typical coverage that would fill a few seconds of airtime. The presentation was supposed to be enhanced by an on-screen graphic beside the news anchor’s head depicting the Star of David – the universal symbol of the Jewish religious faith.

Except that someone, in picking through assorted stars of David to find one to use on-air, managed to screw up by picking out an illustration of a yellow piece of felt cut into the shape of the Jewish star, with the German word “Jude” on it.

IN SHORT, THE badge that the Nazi-era German government used to require Jewish people to wear so as to make them stand out in the general public – and therefore more open to harassment from what that government considered to be the “real” people.

What WGN-TV intended

Not exactly the symbol that Jewish people want to be reminded of on one of the holiest of holidays in all of Judaism, although the resulting WGN apology was certainly an act of atonement.

Now I don’t think that WGN-TV is employing anyone with neo-Nazi sympathies or who is interested in pushing the idea of an Aryan master race. No one there is pledging allegiance to Adolf Hitler (or not even propagandist Josef Goebbels).

It’s someone who was vacuous enough to think that anything connected to a six-point star somehow is symbolic of Judaism. By that line of logic, many law enforcement officers are Jewish.

What WGN-TV gave us

ADMITTEDLY, THIS IS a symbol of Jewish harassment. But once again, not the concept that was meant to be pushed. All because someone probably took as few history courses as possible while being educated, and probably thought even those were too many.



Of course, this kind of vacuous thought isn’t a one-time incident.

I still recall a moment from a couple of decades ago when the Northwest Herald newspaper in suburban Crystal Lake ran a story about an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., about the use of the atomic bomb to bring an end to the Second World War.

The first of those bombs was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan by an Army Air Corps bomber called the Enola Gay – named as a tribute to the pilot’s mother.

BUT SOME COPY editor had no clue what Enola Gay was, and the resulting headline referred to the “Enola Homosexual.” Probably based on some higher-up’s editorial decision that gay people aren’t gay, they’re homosexual. Or a whole bunch other pejorative slurs too crass to put in the newspaper.

The reality that somebody forgot

Aside from the fact that it was intended to not put a positive spin on gay people, it bothers me that someone was so unaware of what brought that world war to an end. A little more attention to our past would have allowed for better comprehension.

The sad part of all this is that I fully comprehend that such gaffes are going to occur again. Our attitude toward the past – many think something happening in 2001 is ancient – can be downright depressing.

We’re in for a lot of misery as a result, all because too many people think we, ourselves (that is what history is about) are too boring to study in depth.

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It’s the guns, stupid!

President Barack Obama is the master orator whose words this week helped soothe the tensions caused by weekend shootings in Tuscon, Ariz., while presidential  dreamer Sarah Palin is the feisty dame whose words know how to fire up her segment of supporters.

DALEY: Getting to the point



Yet leave it to one of the biggest rhetorical stumblebums of the contemporary political scene to get straight to the point of what matters when it comes to the aftermath of those shootings of nearly 20 people, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., that left six dead.

I’M TALKING, OF course, about Richard M. Daley, our long-time mayor who goes off into retirement come May 15.

On the same day that Obama traveled to Tuscon to deliver an address at a memorial service that is being praised for offering comfort to the afflicted and that Palin managed to afflict the comfortable with her mention of the phrase “blood libel” (she doesn’t like all the people who imply her nasty rhetoric has anything to do with the angry mood of our nation these days), Daley had his own thoughts about the issue.

Daley went straight to the point in refusing to blame Palin, or anyone else. For Daley – whose city is actively resisting efforts to make it easy for any resident to purchase a firearm – it’s all about the guns.

“People can shout and say anything they want,” Daley told reporter-types at City Hall. “But they have no right to buy a gun … that has a clip of 15 rounds.”

THAT WAS JUST part of his rant against people who are trying to assess blame against Palin, or other conservative commentators, or any other individual. The man whose home city for nearly 30 years banned possession of firearms by anyone within city limits wants to ignore the commentators who say nasty things and focus on the people in our society who probably should not have access to firearms.

“It’s not the rhetoric,” Daley said. “It’s the right to carry these guns or have guns like this that kill people, and that’s what that individual did.”

PALIN: Get her a better speechwriter



For once in his professional lifetime, Daley hit the hammer on the head – rather than give us a rhetorical stumble (Remember the ‘rat in the sandwich’ line when he was talking about unsanitary restaurants?) that leaves us scratching our heads trying to figure out “What did he mean?”

Perhaps there is something about our local politicos that makes them perceive this issue more clearly. For I couldn’t help but notice that in the initial spurt of public dialogue on Sunday, while many other people were talking about restricting Internet discourse or talk radio rabble, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., was the one person who publicly noted that the gunman in this particular incident had ammunition clips giving him access to 90 rounds – far more than was necessary for anyone to seriously say the pistol was for self-defense.

WE OUGHT TO be having a serious discussion in this country about firearms. But I am aware of the realities of some people in our society who are determined to think that somehow, the ability of a rural man to have a rifle that he uses to hunt will somehow be impeded by restricting the use of a firearm best suited for combat.

I’m also aware that many of those people are in the small segment of the population that takes kindly to the image that the former Alaska governor has crafted for herself. I’m also sure they are the ones who are outraged that the majority of people are now condemning her for her “blood libel” trash talk.

She is trying to claim that people are libeling her with the blood of those killed and wounded in Tuscon – which is a gross overstatement, while also playing off the original use of the phrase. It ties into the old anti-Semitic rants and tales that claimed Jewish people literally dipped their matzos into the blood of dead Christian children on Passover and other significant holidays.

I’m willing to give Palin the benefit of the doubt that she didn’t know that original meaning of the phrase. I know she went to college (several of them, as a matter of fact) and isn’t the stupidest person on the planet, but she also doesn’t strike me as one who has much curiosity about life beyond her specific segment of society – and I don’t expect she knew many Jewish people while living in Alaska.

SHE PROBABLY JUST thought it was a nasty-sounding line she could toss out to get her backers excited.

Considering that her original intent in scheduling an address of any kind on Wednesday (even a video post on Facebook) was to cut into the coverage of Obama trying to calm the nation by appearing at the primary memorial service in Tuscon, I think it only appropriate that her rhetoric backfired on her – and now she gets to take a few hits in return for trying to feed her public persona off the pain being experienced by those in Tuscon.

OBAMA: Did he bring us together?


You just know that in some peoples’ minds, Wednesday set the tone for a potential Obama/Palin presidential campaign in 2012. Obama brings us together, while Palin divides us.

Like I have already written, Daley has zeroed in on the practical reality that this incident ought to be a call for gun control measures to be reviewed. Although I feel I must credit Obama for one moment of inspiration in his own rhetoric.

CITING CHRISTINA TAYLOR Green, the 9-year-old granddaughter of former Chicago Cubs general manager Dallas Green, the president pointed out the accomplishments she achieved in her short life, then said, “I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it.”

That is an inspirational goal we should all strive for.

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Judge’s ruling exposing child to religions too theoretical to work in real world

When I was a student at a college loosely affiliated with the United Methodist Church, I had a “religion” requirement to fulfill. I chose Religion 105: Introduction to Judaism.

It is a course I remember fondly. The reform rabbi who was imported from an area synagogue to teach the course had a humorous personality that could get serious when appropriate (such as joking about the holiday Tu B’Shevat, while becoming more solemn with regards to persecution throughout the centuries). I REMEMBER ONE issue where he got serious – the whole issue of inter-faith relationships and how they affect children. I specifically remember him saying that the idea of a Jewish parent and a non-Jewish parent saying they will expose their children to both faiths, then someday let them decide what they want to believe, just doesn’t work.

Too often, it becomes a choice of a child being made to feel like they have to “pick” a parent to respect – at the expense of the other. Despite anyone’s best intentions, that is what the situation ultimately becomes.

So Rabbi Jerry Stone, wherever you happen to be today (I haven’t heard from him in over 25 years), I only wish you could have somehow been in a Chicago courtroom this week when a Cook County judge issued what I’m sure she thinks is a “common sense” ruling that a father who nominally is Catholic can take his young daughter to Mass – even though the girl’s mother who is Jewish has the legal custody of the girl and is trying to raise her in that religious faith.

This ruling has the potential to create one very messed up young girl – who right now is only 3 and likely doesn’t have the comprehension level required to truly understand what is being put forth before her.

THIS IS A case where adults are supposed to look out for a child’s best interests. All I can see is that they are failing her, big time!

Based on news reports that have come out of this particular case, the couple in question were married for four years before splitting up. It also seems that her Jewish faith was much more important to her than Catholicism was to him.

He went through the motions of converting to Judaism so they could have the Jewish wedding service she wanted. In accordance with Jewish teachings, a child’s primary religious influence is the mother, which means I am sure she is convinced it is only natural her daughter should be raised Jewish.

When she got primary custody (with the father getting occasional visits), that would seem to make it clear this particular girl was going to be raised in the Jewish faith.

BUT AS OFTEN happens with divorce proceedings, bitter feelings can result in actions that can be perceived as hostile.

At least that is how the mother took it when she learned that her daughter was taken by her father to a church and was baptized. She learned about it because the father took pictures of the act (that is meant to cleanse the soul of sin) and made sure that she saw them.

I’m sorry, but that just strikes me as being spiteful. It strikes me as being an un-Christian act to want to rub this issue in her face, even though I’m sure the father will say publicly he merely wants to share his religious beliefs (the ones he nominally gave up in order to be married to a Jewish woman) with his daughter.

It strikes me as a father trying to stake his claim on a girl who will be spending the bulk of her life with her mother. When you think about it rationally, that’s just mean.

WHICH IS WHY I can’t help but think that Judge Renee Goldfarb this week reinforced that meanness by overturning an order that prevented the father from taking his daughter to church any longer. That order is the only thing that kept the girl from attending an Easter Mass.

Goldfarb gave permission for the father to take his daughter to church when she visits him, and also put in stipulations that she must visit him on Christmas and Easter. Of course, the judge also wrote in provisions giving the daughter to her mother on Rosh Hoshanah, Yom Kippur and Passover.

That is going to be one extremely-holiday-ed kid, being bounced back and forth like a yo-yo by parents who seem to want to gain the upper hand over the girl.

Now I’m not writing this out of any sense that the child is better off being Jewish (although I’m sure my step-mother, Cathy, would disagree – many of my nephews and nieces are being raised as Jewish). If the situation were reversed and the Catholic parent were the one with custody, I’d be as concerned about a Jewish parent trying to use religion to gain an upper hand.

BUT THAT IS the bottom line.

We have two people who have issues with each other, and in their attempt to one-up each other, they’re taking it out on their daughter. So much for the idea that a parent is supposed to protect their child from such mind-games. And for the idea that the courts are supposed to intervene when things get out of hand in our society.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: A part of me wonders if it is appropriate for us to pray, regardless of our religious denomination, for the girl (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/04/judge-rules-that-dad-can-take-daughter-to-catholic-church.html) whose life is likely to become chaotic being bounced back and forth between religious faiths.

Mezuzah at center of court fight

My stepmother, Cathy, is Jewish. If one were to visit the home in south suburban Homewood where she and my father live, they would see to the upper right of the front door a mezuzah.

The point of the mezuzah is that it is stuck to the doorframe of a residence where a Jewish person lives. It is a simple gesture that allows someone to let the world know that Jewish people live in that particular home, apartment or condominium.

YET THE THING about every single mezuzah I have ever seen is that they are small. They don’t draw a lot of attention to themselves. One literally has to walk up to within a couple feet of the front door of my parents’ house in order to notice the mezuzah off to the right.

Even then, I could picture some oblivious people not noticing it (on account of the big brass door knocker with the engraved slogan “Casa Tejeda” on the middle of the front door that tends to draw attention).

So when I learn that a mezuzah is at the center of a legal battle currently pending in the federal courts based in Chicago, I have to conclude that someone has way too much free time on their hands to be making an issue out of this.

Either that, or there is some sort of anti-semitism at stake. Although considering that we’re talking about a board that governs a condominium near the Lake Michigan shoreline (which means they think of themselves as an elite address), it’s probably more the former than the latter.

THESE ASSOCIATIONS HAVE developed a reputation (perhaps unfairly) for being willing to nit-pick every little detail of the physical appearance of someone’s property – out of the belief that every unit in the overall complex ought to live up to someone’s idea of pristine.

In the case of the Shoreline Towers on Sheridan Road (which means the city’s north lakefront, but not quite as elitist as the Gold Coast), one resident was told that her placing a mezuzah on her front door marred the overall appearance of the structure.

That particular condominium association had a rule ready – religious symbols are banned. In theory, someone wishing to erect a crucifix on their front door (or even just a cross symbol) would also be in violation of “the rules.”

So Lynne Bloch was forced to remove her mezuzah.

THIS HAPPENED FIVE years ago. She filed a lawsuit that has been working its way through the court system. On Wednesday, eight judges who sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals based in Chicago had to spend their day hearing “expert” testimony about the appropriateness of a mezuzah, or other symbols of religion.

Aside from the fact that five years after the original incident, this case has yet to be settled, I can’t help but be troubled by the events being heard in the courtroom.

I can’t envision a mezuzah that would seriously be large enough to attract significant attention, or detract from the physical appearance of the condominium unit in question.

Seriously, the mezuzah at my parents’ house is about three inches long and about a half-inch wide. It’s tiny. Like I wrote earlier in this commentary, one has to literally get up the steps right to the doorway in order to notice it.

IN ALL OTHER cases where I have seen Jewish people display mezuzahs, they are about the same size and displayed in the same low-key way.

So either someone on a condominium association is being overly anal retentive, or Bloch came up with some super-sized mezuzah that was designed in a way meant to draw attention to it.

I haven’t heard any evidence indicating that to be the case, and I have never met a Jewish person who would try to turn their religious faith into a tacky display (unlike a few Christians I have met throughout the years).

I don’t know this for a fact, but I sense someone in the past was so upset they couldn’t erect some huge crucifix so they got the condominium association to implement a rule banning all symbols that could be perceived as religious.

IF THEY CAN’T shove their faith in everyone’s face, than no one else can either. So would seem to be the “logic” involved in this case.

What gives me a hint that this might be the case is the portion of reports about Wednesday’s court hearing at the Dirksen Building where we learn the condominium association has filed its own counter-lawsuit against Bloch – challenging the degree of her religious faith.

They cite instances where Bloch used the condo’s hospitality room to hold Jewish-related celebrations, without following all the strict rules involved with Orthodox Judaism. Only I haven’t heard anyone indicate Bloch is Orthodox. She may very well be Reform. There is a significant difference.

When I was in college, I once took a religion course taught by a rabbi who described the difference between the two types of Judaism (there’s actually a third form called Conservative) as, “one group (Reform) welcomes the 20th Century, the other (Orthodox) isn’t too thrilled with it.”

IT ALMOST WOULD be like claiming someone isn’t Catholic enough because they ate something other than fish on a Friday (which once was a part of the religious faith, but has withered away to modern life – even though one can find a few Catholics who will angrily denounce the loss of the old ways).

I’m not comfortable with someone claiming someone else isn’t Jewish enough to be able to put up a mezuzah, particularly since the larger point they are trying to make is to eliminate the mezuzah altogether.

Bloch herself on Wednesday told the Chicago Tribune she thinks this particular case is “much ado about nothing.” She’s probably right, and there’s a sense in which I can respect her willingness to endure a court fight that has lasted for so many years for a principle.

But if this situation had involved me, I probably would have just moved. After all, I don’t think I’d want to live in a complex with neighbors petty and ridiculous enough to get worked up over something as tiny as a mezuzah.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Perhaps Wednesday’s court hearing related to mezuzahs provided some relief (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2009/05/court-mulls-religious-freedom-among-neighbors.html) at the federal courts from the Blagojevich saga or any of the other white collar crime being pondered there.

A mezuzah is a specific object meant to show one’s religious faith (http://www.beingjewish.com/mitzvos/mezuzah.html) without being obnoxiously flashy about it.