Washington – President Barack Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel announced with great fanfare at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington last year that he would come to Israel on America’s Memorial Day Weekend at the end of May to celebrate the bar mitzvas of his son Zach and a nephew.
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“This memorial break, I am taking my son, my nephew Noah with Ari my brother, so they can have their bar mitzva in Israel,” Emanuel boasted in the November 10 speech, winning cheers from the crowd. “Not to add humor to this moment, but that’s cheap applause. I’ll take an $18 check on behalf of him if you like. That’s obviously illegal as a public servant. That was a joke.”
But as the bar mitzva date approaches, the White House, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Ministry have declined to give any details whatsoever about the event. A White House representative said Emanuel’s visit to Israel was “a private trip” and diplomatic officials in Jerusalem said they also didn’t provide details when National Security Council official Dennis Ross came for his son’s wedding.
The lack of information has led to speculation in the Hebrew press, with Haaretz reporting incorrectly that Emanuel would arrive in Israel this week and Ma’ariv suggesting that he had moved the bar mitzva away from the Western Wall, either because of threats from right-wingers or because the Obama administration considered the wall in the territory of a future Palestinian capital.
Neither Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitz nor Rabbi Jay Karzen, who has conducted more than 2,000 bar mitzvas at the site, was contacted by Emanuel’s family or his office.
“We would have known about it if they inquired about it, so I don’t think they canceled a bar mitzva at the Wall or planned one,” Rabinovitz’s spokesman said.
But an official close to the Emanuel family insisted that the bar mitzva would indeed take place at the Western Wall, while another family friend hinted it was scheduled for Saturday, May 29.
Rahm Emanuel’s father, the Jerusalem-born Benjamin M. Emanuel, reached at his home in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette, told The Jerusalem Post that he “cannot make any statement” about the bar mitzva.
Far-right activists Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir have tried everything possible to obtain information about the event so they could come and heckle a man they consider a traitor to Israel and the Jewish people. They compared him to UN Human Rights Council Gaza investigator Richard Goldstone, whom the Johannesburg Jewish community recently considered barring from attending his grandson’s bar mitzva.
“To our sorrow, you have worked against the State of Israel and the Jewish People,” Marzel and Ben-Gvir wrote Emanuel in January. “You are not the first Jew in history trying to advance himself at the expense of his people.
“There were traitors before you such as Josephus Flavius and others, who in all likelihood also celebrated their bar mitzva but we remember them as traitors, seeking riches and honor, at the expense of their people. Unlike the government of Israel, we will not bow and participate with all those seeking to hurt the Jewish People.”
Ben-Gvir said it would be a smart decision by the Emanuels to not have the bar mitzva at the Wall. He stressed that he had nothing against Zach, who attended Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School in Chicago before the move to Washington.
“For the People of Israel, the anger against Emanuel is significant,”
Ben-Gvir said. “I think he is worse than Hamas. If the kid would come alone to the Wall without his father, we would be happy and we wouldn’t complain. But with all that Rahm Emanuel has done against the People of Israel and Land of Israel, we would have no choice but to demonstrate.”
This is his family simcha and is no one else’s business. He can celebrate at the kosel or anywhere else. Leave him alone just as you wouldn’t want your own family’s simcha disrupted by the media or lunatics on the political fringe.
Marzel and and Ben-Gvir are known kooks who disagree with just about everyone in the government on security issues and peace policy and have shown disregard for the law and common derech eretz. If they go anywhere near the Emanuael family, they will be throwon into jail and they can rot there until the celebration is over.
why are punishing an inocent child…
As much as some Jews detest his politics, he has right to have a private family life. Why are the yentas in the Jewish media interested about this?
Groseh Gadeiah! He should pay more attention to his Yiddishkeit and his administration’s attitude towards Eretz HaKodesh instead of being an Obamination puppet and tuchas lekker.
why punish the kid for his father’s sins? You will certainly make Emanuel him more of a sone yisrael. Better to take him around and let him see the reailites we face every day and hope the pintele yid is aroused and he goes back to DC and tells Obama to bug off Jerusalem and the Holy Sites in Bais Lechem and Chevron.
The man who wants to take the Kotel from the Jewish people and give it to the goyim has no right to celebrate there. Its time Jews stuck up for their rights.
zack is good boy why should the extremist ruin his bar mitzvah
for the sake of the children can we put asside our difrenceess
Anyone who believes Emanuel has a “right” to have his son Bar Mitzvahed at the Kotel is devoid of any common sense or rationale. This man is a TRAITOR!! to the Jewish people and should be shunned. To even THINK that the obama administration believes the Kotel “territory” belongs to those killers at the PLO is the absolute fault of this bully Emanuel. To H— with him. Let him get Bar Mitzvahed in Chicago.
I would not let that self hating Jew anywhere near the Kosel. Let him bar mitzvah his kid in Ramallah. On second thought, why should the son be banned from Israel. Let the son get bar mitzvahed in Israel and ship that sonei Yisroel to Gaza. Let him roll around in the underground tunnels with the donkeys and the arabs.
Why do all you geniuses who are so sure about what is good for the medina’s future think that others can’t believe that they are equally mentally endowed and have other opinions. Many capable military people in the state support the same policies as Rahm. If your opinion is a valid and pure toradik opinion then fine. If not, then you’re in the same category as Rahm
If Rahm’s father, who served in the Irgun to help found Israel, were alive today, he’d be turning over in his grave, at how Rahm has stabbed Israel in the back (and front)
Of course, his father did leave Israel, and then married a Chicago union organizer and civil rights leader, and Rahm did attend Conservative in his youth, so the old adage, what you sow is what you reap, applies.
History will show that Obaman, with the advice of Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration have done more for the long-term security of EY than any other president. In the interim, Obama et. al. could care less about their detractors in the jewish community who want EY to walk off a cliff and isolate itself in the world.
Rahm is a sham
A traitor to his brothers
A disgrace to his forefathers
Arrogant and full of pride
His politics divide
He serves Israel on a platter
And shakes it up like batter
Rahm is a sham
Self-serving smart pants
Given to nose-thumbs and rants
The world is about Rahm and Rahm alone
He turns away while Israel they stone
Selfish and pompous – it is all about him
Turns on on his people on a whim
Rahm is sham
Nothing of which to be proud
He is so obnoxious and loud
Just a spoiled Jewish rich boy
To him – everything is a toy
Climbing up the ladder to success
He kicks his brothers in distress
Rahm is a sham
Spare me the religious talk
Let him walk the walk
Israel lives in fear
Pressure mounting each year
Rahm created the club
That handed Bibi the White House snub
Rahm is a sham
Turning up the pressure
Measure after measure
Trying to play a game
with 6 million – to earn a name
So tired of that nasty smirk
That seems to really irk
That Rahm, he is such a sham.
The boy’s mother isn’t Jewish k’halacha. Any Rabbi who would Bar Mitzvah him is the REAL traitor to Judaism and our Torah.
Have lots of orthodox rabbis supported giving up part of Jerusalem?
He is doing it, before they give all the country away.