People assume that as a rabbi, I am against Christmas. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is a holy time and a sacred holiday for all of my Christian brothers and sisters. I appreciate the love and teachings and celebrate with them on this sacred day.
This is why I was so deeply disturbed when the Vatican had one of its Nativity scenes portraying the baby Jesus laying in a keffiyeh — a symbol of the terrorism, hate, and evil of Hamas and “Palestinians” (especially given that there is no such thing as a historical nation of “Palestine”).
It is also why I'm so grateful to the Pope and the Vatican for their removal of this degradation of the Nativity scene. It's a removal that says tremendous things about how the world is changing back to sanity, in great part due to the election of President Trump.
For decades, there has been a war by the cultural Marxists against religion. Because religion guides people to be responsive to something greater than themselves and certainly something greater than any government, it is a basic tenet of Marxism that religion should be destroyed and replaced by the government. People who are committed to their faith tradition place God higher than any governmental organization, and that is a problem for these Marxists.
For years they have been attacking religion as well as the basic family unit, hoping to supplant these core values with a worship of a Marxist government. We have seen it progress to a point where parents no longer have control of the education of their children in many states, where standard sexual and gender norms are ostracized, and where the evil of organizations like Hamas is celebrated. American society, as defined by the left, has been stretching farther and farther into the Marxist values of atheism, gender dysphoria, and support of terrorist organizations that want to destroy freedom.
The placing of that scarf under Jesus was not a religious statement but a political one. The entire scene was paid for by the Palestinian Authority, and as is typical for the P.A., they used it as an opportunity to promote their fictional history of the region. Rather than embracing the reality that Jesus was born, lived, and died as a Jew; they paid to have a scene at the Vatican trying to portray the fiction of Jesus being connected with Palestinian terrorists. What was shocking was not that they attempted to continue to perpetrate this fiction, but that the Vatican even allowed it.
But to their credit, the Pope and Vatican leaders recognized the disgrace that they were bringing upon themselves and upon their religion. They removed the scarf and in doing so made a clear statement that religion trumps politics.
By supporting faith and removing the keffiyeh, they exemplified in action the philosophy of Martin Luther King, who said, “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.” Removing the scarf demonstrates the Vatican’s recapturing of its prophetic zeal, and should be commended by all people of faith.
But let's also be clear. Does anyone think that they would have removed this symbol of war during the administrations of Joe Biden or Barack Obama? Donald Trump has inspired the world to step back up and embrace the traditional values of religion, family, and ethics. Because he has been committed to supporting religious rights and freedoms over the leftist values of cultural Marxism, millions of people of faith around the world are against stepping up to fight for what is right and righteous.
And we are winning!
Since the election only a month ago, more and more schools are rejecting male athletes who want to compete as women. Since the day that Kamala Harris was so soundly defeated, churches and synagogues are breathing more freely as we feel safe from the persecutions that so many of our houses of worship experienced over the last four years. With Trump's win, the craziness of the left is already being shut down and replaced with the sanity of common sense, and the values that have supported civilization for thousands of years.
So as we approach Christmas (and Hanukkah, a holiday that is theologically about religious forces standing up against the tyranny of a government), we all have a lot to be grateful for: the wisdom and courage of the Vatican in removing this symbol of hate, the inspiration of our president-elect to fight the righteous fights and not quit, and the gratitude of remembering that religious holidays are actually holy days and should be celebrated as such.
Once again, we can be comfortable that Christmas will be celebrated as a holy day about the birth of Jesus, not a secular holiday. Easter will be about the resurrection, not a day to glorify gender dysphoria. And once again in this country, we can all say with authenticity, "May God Bless America."
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