[9mm_fan]

As has become its annual practice, the Obama administration on Thursday convened a conference call with several hundred rabbis and Jewish leaders. According to a participant on the call, President Obama promoted his jobs bill—noting that those who have been more blessed should pay their fair share—and briefed the rabbis on U.S. efforts to counter the push for a declaration of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

I was on another such call recently, the purpose of which—according to the Jewish rabbinical group that invited me—was to help listeners "understand the current state of the economy; learn about the impact of the proposed budget cuts on the poor and disenfranchised; consider the consequences of the increasing gap between the rich and poor in America; and, glean homiletic and textual background to help prepare their High Holiday sermons on this timely topic."

The agenda of the call organizers was clear. Two speakers, one of whom was a (non-Jewish) Democratic senator, spoke of our country's need for "raising revenue," the new code phrase for tax increases. When I suggested that we separate politics from spirituality, a third participant pushed back, saying "the Torah is a political document." A curious assertion in a crowd that would quickly denounce any invocation of the Bible in political discussions.

Of course the Obama administration didn't invent the politicized sermon. In the Conservative temple in which I was raised, the joke (not an original one) was that the rabbi would take homiletic guidance from the New York Times editorial page. In his memoir, former Nixon speechwriter William Safire told of his displeasure with a Yom Kippur sermon in which the rabbi warned "not to let our country be divided and polarized by those who use the technique of alliteration"—referring to Vice President Spiro Agnew's critique of "nattering nabobs of negativism."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...203548716.html

[brraverishhh]

Something similar happened in England in or around 1290. The Jews were taxed out of existence to finance overseas wars. When eventually, in the 14th century all the Jews were driven broke and no longer of any use they were banned from practicing their religeon and forced to convert or leave .
Just a slight similarity?