Looking Forward to Rosh Hashanah

It seems that the Whitehouse is Jewish community organizing for the high holy days this year. The marching orders have gone out and this year's sermons are to be on the moral urgency of adopting universal health care. Great.

Amy and I go down to her parents' house for services during one of the holy days every year. When we can swing it, it's Rosh Hashanah instead of Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur involves fasting which Amy hates and I mildly dislike. But this is important to her parents so we go and I like Amy's parents. Their synagogue and rabbi? Not so much.

Amy's family's head rabbi gave a sermon on the high holy days in 2004 which I can summarize as "George Bush is evil - Vote Kerry." I find her sermons unenlightening generally. This isn't a Christian/Jew thing. I mean the sermon she preached on matzoh balls missed me culturally, but that isn't her fault. It's mostly a liberal theology thing for me. When any kind of religious instructor preaches a sermon like "Abraham would have been morally right to tell God to go to hell instead of offering up Isaac," I just can't grasp where they are coming from theologically. Actually I can, but I have absolutely no respect for it.

I have no doubt that this year's sermon will focus on the moral imperative that we fold, spindle, and mutilate the Commerce Clause even further to justify more federally run health care. It's for the children. Or not because they already have S-CHIP. The elderly? Medicare. The disabled? Early Medicaid. Hmm... Lazy people who consistently vote Democrat? Is there a program for them yet? Well there soon will be.