Republicans as Socialists?

Last Thursday morning as I lay in bed looking at the rain coming steadily down on the window pane I thought of Mitt. He’s narrowing the gap. Good for him. In Iowa a full 75% of the Republican voters chose someone else but in New Hampshire it was only 63%. By any measure (“A victory is a victory” he said after winning Iowa by eight votes) this is progress. Whether it’s juggernaut progress remains to be seen. South Carolina looms, though observant Jews are excluded. Its primary is being held tomorrow, on Shabbat. But there’s hope for Jewish participation. The obnoxiously wealthy among us can still try to buy their favorites a few delegates.

Sheldon Adelson, one of the multi-zillionaires, has pledged $5,000,000 to help Newt Gingrich’s Super Pac run anti-Romney ads that would make a socialist proud. For nearly half an hour viewers see how Romney’s Bain Capital would buy up ailing companies, strip them of any latent and residual value, and then through a process of financial reverse peristalsis throw the workers onto the street. It’s capitalism at its worst, Republicans (REPUBLICANS, for crying out loud!) are charging. “You have to ask the question, is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of people and then walk off with the money?” Gingrich asked, ignoring the fact that Adelson is bankrolling him. Griffin Perry, son of Texas Governor Rick Perry, got snide: “Mitt Romney knows how to lead ... Lead people straight out the door with a pink slip.” Père Perry was not shy about entering the verbal jousting contest either. “I am as much of a capitalist and have a record to prove it … by helping create over a million jobs in the state of Texas,” he said in an interview on Fox. “But there’s a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism, and that’s what we’re talking about here.”

Matt Brooks, the director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, isn’t bothered by the attacks. “At some point it’s fairly obvious that the Obama campaign would have raised this issue anyway,” Brooks said. “I’m not sure they’re happy that it’s been taken away from them and is not on their terms.” Matt, you disingenuous spin doctor, of course Democrats are happy, though thrilled may be a better word. It’s usually the job of the Vice Presidential candidate to smear the opposition. Now Joe Biden, the presumptive candidate, will only have to quote Republicans, giving that much more credibility to the anti-Romney barrage. This piling on Mitt will end only when Romney’s finally nominated in August, but as Saul Ricklin, a local contributor to the New York Times letters section wrote, “I can hardly wait for the coming hilarity of hearing all the Republican candidates now denigrating Mitt Romney start to laud him as what this country needs as a president if and when he wins the nomination.” Me, too, Saul, me too.

Of course Romney has his own Jewish money baggers including Mel Sembler, the Florida shopping center magnate, and Fred Zeidman, a Texas lawyer. And so the money flows. At least these guys aren’t also trying to determine Israeli politics the way Adelson does. He’s a major backer of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pouring money into his coffers as well. Well, I suppose that if I’d made my millions by luring people to Las Vegas so they could lose their money in glitzy, gilded, gaucheness while fondling show girls I’d want to make sure my ideas, obviously sanctified by a Higher Power as I’m so successful, become the laws of the lands.

You’ll note, of course that this Republican brouhaha is about capitalism. Romney of the unbridled kind, Gingrich and Perry who would rein it in. But let’s take a look at the founder of capitalism, Adam Smith (1723-1790). His most famous book is the Wealth of Nations which advocates an unregulated market-driven economy. But Smith wasn’t talking about Bain Capital getting wealthy but of the nation. He was as much a moralist as he was an economist. He believed that labor is what gave things value. A cotton seed is worth nothing, but apply labor and eventually you get a shirt. A Jewish economist of the same era, David Ricardo (1772-1823) took this point and extended it. Only labor gives things value. Are Republicans finally giving credence to this perspective which has been with us since the dawn of capitalism? Probably not. Mitt’s got it sewed up so the Bain Capital model will likely be the United States’ given a Romney victory in November. Ah well, people like labor saving devices. But maybe they don’t like labor destroying financial devices as much. We’ll see.

The Haredi bane

The story is by now familiar enough to make grown men gag in disgust. In Israel, the Haredi, the ultra-Orthodox (as opposed to the merely “Orthodox” who are called Dati) have raised their voices and thrown their excrement. One Dati women dared to sit in the front section of a public bus and was abused by Haredi passengers. Students who attend an all-girls school set up by Dati parents near an Haredi neighborhood in Beit Shemesh have to run a gauntlet to get to class. Little girls are called whores and have had eggs and bags of feces thrown at them. Apparently the sleeve and hem lengths the girls don are not long enough for Haredi standards of modesty even though they cover the arms and legs entirely. Oh, wait; examining a photo, I think I can see the stocking-covered ankles of eight year-old Na'ama Margolis, the little girls whose torment finally made the national and international news. Burkas, anyone?

Two weeks ago when city workers tried to remove signs (illegally erected) mandating the separation of the sexes on city streets (this is so familiar isn’t it—think 1938 after the Kristallnacht) new signs went up in defiance of the law. When police showed up to remove those, about 300 Haredi men threw stones at them and burned trash cans creating a foul stench and polluting the air with smoke as a supplement to their verbal outrage at little girls whose ankles show. Television reporters were attacked when they attempted to film these events.

Not surprisingly Israel’s president, Shimon Peres is on the side of the girls. Urging Israelis to attend a rally on their behalf he said, “Today is a test for the nation, not just for the police. All of us, religious, secular, traditional, must as one man defend the character of the State of Israel against a minority which breaks our national solidarity.” Tzipi Livni, formally foreign minister, currently the head of the Kadima Party which holds the largest number of seats in the Knesset, lent her support to the forces of sanity: “We are struggling over Israel's character not only in Beit Shemesh and not only over the exclusion of women but against all the extremists who have come out of the woodwork to try and impose their worldview on us.” Even right-wingers, religious and secular, oppose what the Haredi in their arrogance, their “my way or the highway” do. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on the police to act aggressively against violence aimed at women and urged Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to make certain that laws against excluding women from public spaces are enforced. Moshe Abutbul the mayor of Beit Shemesh, himself Haredi, decried the violence against young girls. “Beit Shemesh denounces such behavior,” he said according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Violent men belong behind bars,” he continued. “I urge the Israel Police to act with a firm hand against all the rioters,” adding that reporters should not make assumptions about all Haredi Orthodox Israelis.

The mayor, however, seems not to speak for the Haredi he claims to represent. Shlomo Fuchs, for one, seems not to have gotten the memo. He was arrested for calling a female soldier, Doron Matalon, who dared to sit in the “men’s section” of a public bus a whore and a shiksa. As she is 19 years old and not a mere eight, as is Na'ama Margolis, she at least knows what a whore is. Fuchs was joined in his insults by other Haredi passengers. The same day that Fuchs was indicted, female members of the Knesset's Committee on the Status of Women rode in the front of a bus Haredi demanded be segregated. They were insulted by male passengers who complained that the women were acting in a provocative fashion by sitting with men. The MK’s were accompanied by television crews. When these were spotted by brave Haredi, they opted not to get on the bus.

Our Father in Heaven, Rock and Redeemer of the People of Israel, bless the State of Israel, dawn of our redemption. Shield it with Your love, spread over it the shelter of Your peace. The rabbis of old believed that the Second Temple was destroyed because of senseless hatred. That was Jerusalem of old. We thought we were over that. Welcome to Jerusalem, 5772. According to Othello, Cyprus was for goats and monkeys. Jerusalem? It has Haredi.