A letter recently emailed to 75,000 Pennsylvania Jews compared stopping Obama to stopping Hitler:

“In the 5,769 years of our people, there has never been a more important time for us to take proactive measures in order to stop a second Holocaust.”

It then regurgitates the various McCain campaign smears about Ayers, Wright, Farrakhan, and Ahmadinejad, and concludes:

“Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008. Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let’s not make a similar one this year.”

It was signed by a respected former state Supreme Court judge, Hon. Sandra Schwartz Newman, as well as the incoming chair of the Philadelphia Jewish Federation, Mike Coslov. According to the JTA, “both Coslov and Newman are distancing themselves from the letter, saying they hadn’t actually read its contents before signing on.”

The letter was written by a McCain “political operative” named Bryan Rudnick, specifically brought to Pennsylvania from Florida for this purpose. The New York Times reported that “leaders of the state party repudiated it on Friday. They said it had been released without their authorization and that they had fired the strategist who helped draft it, Bryan Rudnick.” Of course, for his part, Rudnick “disputed the party’s version of events and said he had approval for the letter from officials at several levels.”

The meme associating the election of Obama with another Holocaust is running rampant in Republican Jewish circles. Rabbi Brad Hershfield calls it “a political sickness taking root in the Jewish community, one which threatens the memory of the Holocaust, the integrity of the Jewish people, and the future of this country.”

Even Abe Foxman of the ADL has come out against the GOP’s scare tactic: “We hope that the signatories of this letter and those responsible for its dissemination will repudiate its message and apologize to both the candidate and the Jewish community.”

So far, no apology to the candidate has been forthcoming.

There are so many things wrong with the attacks leveled against Senator Barack Obama because of his relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity Universal Church of Christ that it is hard to know where to begin a discussion of them.

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A response to Leon Weinstein’s “Second Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama“:

Leon Weinstein is a conservative Republican who is obviously experienced in the methods of the Republican smear machine. He would never vote for any Democrat, so his “open letter to Senator Barack Obama” is not so much an effort to explain why he won’t vote for Senator Obama, but rather an effort to smear him so that other Jews won’t vote for him either.

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If you’ve read the “50 Obama Lies and Counting” smear that’s been circulating around the Internet, or one of its variants, then you’re probably wondering whether there’s any truth to it. The fact is, it’s not 50 lies by Obama, it’s 50 lies about him. Read on to find out the truth.

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From The New York Jewish Week, April 2, 2008, by Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, rabbi at Ohev Sholom, the national synagogue in Washington, DC:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama’s longtime pastor, says some things that really offend me. As a passionate Zionist I take offense at his cruel reference to an apartheid regime going on in Israel. As a patriotic American I shake in disgust at the “God Damn America” sermon he gave soon after the tragic events of 9/11. His ongoing association with Louis Farrakhan troubles me deeply, since Farrakhan is a bigot. Indeed, I once led a group of protesters into the office of Anthony Williams, former mayor of Washington, D.C., and begged him not stand with Farrakhan.

At the same time, I do not view Rev. Wright’s remarks as a reason not to vote for Barack Obama. I may or may not decide to vote for him, but not on the basis of his longtime pastor’s politics.

It appears that Obama and Wright share a deep, spiritual relationship. The clergy-congregant relationship is one built upon love. Having had many of those relationships, I can tell you first hand that it is definitely possible to love a religious leader even if you find some of his or her political ideas deeply offensive. (more…)

You might think Obama is secretly allied with Anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, but I can tell you that Obama rejected and denounced Farrakhan’s Anti-semitism, and if this was enough for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), it should be enough for you!