(Another Tack: Banana noses and freckles sarahhonig.com) Malia’s dad pulled out all the stops when appearing at the recent Union for Reform Judaism Biennial in Maryland. His cliché-ridden routine wouldn’t have shamed any campy stand-up comedian in the intensely embarrassing era of Catskill overkill. Nonetheless, Obama’s performance, demeaning and hackneyed though it was, went over big. It earned him no fewer than 70 rounds of rapturous applause. It dripped with schmaltz, served up liberally by Jewish speechwriters charged with dishing up smarmy tastelessness.
After effusive “Shabbat shalom” wishes, Obama chitchatted chummily: “My daughter Malia has reached the age where it seems like there’s always a bar or bat mitzvah – every weekend – and there is quite a bit of negotiations around the skirts that she wears at these bat mitzvahs. Do you guys have these conversations as well? All right. I just wanted to be clear it wasn’t just me. As a consequence, she’s become the family expert on Jewish tradition. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from her, it’s that it never hurts to begin a speech by discussing the Torah portion. It doesn’t hurt,” Obama beamed, with a feigned Yiddish intonation.
Taking his daughter’s informed advice, he launched into a d’var Torah (Torah-based lecture), homing in on Joseph (as per that week’s Torah portion) and bizarrely repeating the word hineni (here I am) over and over and over, as if casting some cloying spell.
Other Hebrew words, like tikun olam (repairing the world), followed. That too went over big. Too much is never enough. (MORE)
