Hanukkah With The Donald

By Tom Mountain | December 13, 2018, 8:28 EST

There are those times in one’s public life when the joy of the moment transcends all, to the point where there is nowhere you’d rather be at that time and place.

Such as …

The White House Hanukkah Celebration last Thursday, hosted by Donald J. Trump, President of the United States.

To be invited to any White House event, presumably in recognition of one’s devotion to the campaign that brought the candidate to the presidency, is an honor in itself. There is nothing in politics more gratifying than basking in the aura of the very president for whom you played a modest part in his getting there.

Yet taken a step further, to be one of the few Jewish Republicans invited to the White House Hanukkah event emceed by the most pro-Israel president in history is, to borrow from another important world figure, the stuff dreams are made of.

Hanukkah with The Donald. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Maybe at last they recognized my tedious role as the 2016 Massachusetts and New Hampshire Trump Campaign Director for Jewish Outreach, in which it seemed that a third of New Hampshire rabbis told me flat out No, while another third lost my phone number? Or perhaps it’s just because I’m one of only two Jews on the Massachusetts Republican State Committee? (Marty Lamb of Holliston being the other.)

Whatever the reason for the suitable-for-framing-invitation, I strode past the Christmas decor into a White House replete with a big Menorah, a military band playing Yiddish music, a kosher banquet table longer than my house, and a crowd made up exclusively of Trump Republican Jews, the likes of which I hadn’t commingled with since the Republican Jewish Coalition bash at 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Coming from Newton, with lots of Jews but few Republicans, and even fewer Trump fans, the White House was a kosher Republican paradise, if only for an evening.

The President and First Lady couldn’t have been more gracious. And yes, up close and personal, she really is that stunning, and classy, and charming. Sort of like Jackie Kennedy with an accent.

And The Donald? He was at his best.

After all, this was his crowd. These were his Jews. The virtuous third of American Jewry that has been in the trenches with him since day one. Orthodox Jews, conservative Jews, Israelis, some Russian Jews, rich L.A. Jews with diamonds that rival the Smithsonian’s, and those lovable Chassidic Rabbis from Brooklyn who still sport Yiddish accents, all brought together for a single purpose — to celebrate the Festival of Lights with their candidate, their President, Donald Trump of Queens, New York.

They treasure the man. To the point that there was more of a melee for the front row of his speech than the buffet table with kosher lamb chops, sushi, and chocolate marshmallows. (And for a Jewish event, that’s saying a lot.)

The Donald spoke of moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, shelving the disastrous Iran deal, and defeating ISIS, and of his partnership with Benjamin Netanyahu, all of which led to a round of applause, then another, then many more, culminating in a deafening crescendo that would probably have shattered the mirrors if it had continued.

If everyone in the crowd had had a rose, or thought to grab holly from the surrounding Christmas trees, the President would have been covered in red, a fitting tribute to the many attendees from such not-so-red-states as New York, New Jersey, and California. So great is the affection which the conservative Jewish one-third have for Donald Trump.

As for the other two-thirds of American Jewry? They want to banish him to Antarctica.

Liberals that they are, nothing he can do will sway them. Nothing at all. Not the thriving economy, record low unemployment, or a booming stock market. Nothing will bring them to support Mr. Trump. If tomorrow he moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem … oh wait, he’s already done that.

They’re little more than dogmatic lemmings devoted to their religion of liberalism.

Michael Savage, who was at the Hannukah celebration, wrote the book Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder. His follow-up book ought to be Jewish Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.

Yet at least for one night I was among the sane — the Republican Jews.

It’s no wonder that Jared Kushner smiled the whole evening. So did Ben Shapiro, who took a night off from campus police shielding him from riotous college brats, to be embraced by an appreciative crowd. For one brief shining Hanukkah moment we were together as one, with our leader, President Trump, just a handshake away.

And as we parted, the joy of the holiday could not dampen the reality that many of us had to return to such misfit liberal Jewish enclaves as Manhattan or Boca Raton. Or Newton.

Yet challenges lie ahead. The Democrats will soon be running Congress, under the cynical tutelage of Jewish apostates with names like Schiff, Nadler, and Cohen vying to impeach the President. And for what?

Whatever they can make up.

In the meantime, as vice chairman of the newly formed Massachusetts Republican Jewish Committee, admittedly, it will be a hard sell trying to bring more Jews into the Republican fold, and further, to bring them into the Trump camp. But try, we will. We must. Since the start of the re-election is just around the corner.

I already have my Trump 2020 red yarmulke.

 

Tom Mountain is a Massachusetts Republican State Committeeman.