Rahm Emanuel was inaugurated as mayor of Chicago the other day. The Chicago Children's Choir sang Matisyahu's song "One Day" at the inauguration ceremony...

(sefira warning)



And just to add a version that is acapella, the Maccabeats has a video of themselves singing Matisyahu's One Day song...

Will the Jews of Chicago vote en masse for fellow Jewish candidate Rah Emanuel?

The Chicago Tribune is not convinced that this will happen:

Some might assume that the idea of a Rahm Emanuel candidacy for mayor would be cause for celebration along Devon Avenue, the longtime rialto of Chicago's Jewish community.

After all, Emanuel attended an Orthodox synagogue before going from Chicago to the White House, and his family is highly respected in West Rogers Park, where his father, Benjamin, was a pediatrician. The numbers of those who say Dr. Emanuel took care of their kids is roughly similar to the legion that claimed to have witnessed Babe Ruth point to the Wrigley Field bleachers and hit that famed home run.

But Rahm Emanuel, who begins his Chicago "listening tour" this week, is about to discover that all politics aren't local.

In the Jewish neighborhoods on the Far North Side, Rahm Emanuel is more associated with what he did in Washington than what he might do in Chicago's City Hall.

"There are questions about his positions on Israel," said Chesky Montrose, 32, who was wearing a skull cap and pushing one child in a stroller while keeping an eye on two others bicycling down Devon. "It's not logical that international policy would influence a race for mayor. But there is some resentment here, no doubt."

There was rejoicing along Devon on Friday because it was Simchat Torah, a festive celebration of the divine laws Moses received on behalf of the ancient Israelites. But there also were questions about Emanuel timing his White House farewell announcement for that day.

"On yontif?" said Montrose, using the Yiddish for the holiday.

During the run-up to Simchat Torah, it's traditional for Jews to take their meals in a sukkah, an improvised hut like their ancestors dwelled in during their wandering years in the deserts of Sinai. A fast-food restaurant on Devon provides customers with a sukkah.

With rituals marking their forebears' exiles, it's hardly a wonder Jews fret over modern-day Israel. Obama got a huge percent of Jewish voters, many of whom assumed Emanuel would give voice to their concerns as chief of staff, noted Cheryl Jacobs Lewin, Chicago co-chair of Americans for a Safe Israel.

"That has not happened, judging by the White House's heavy-handedness toward Israel," Lewin said in an e-mail.

A spokeswoman for Emanuel said Sunday he is a strong backer of Israel.

"Rahm's support for Israel is well known, and he had many supporters in the Jewish community when he represented a half-million Chicagoans in Congress. But he takes nothing for granted and will work to earn the support of every voter in communities across the city," said Lori Goldberg, Emanuel's spokeswoman.

Another person leery of Emanuel on the Israel issue is Norm Levin, who said, "I used to be a devout Democrat."

Levin is president of the Great Vest Side Club, an alumni association of the West Side neighborhood that was once the epicenter of Chicago's Jewish community. (The pronunciation "vest" commemorates the immigrant accent of members' parents.)

"I like to vote for Jewish people," Levin said. "But if they're sort of negative on Israel, they lose me."

Yet that very quality could be a plus for Emanuel among lakefront liberals, many of them secular Jews uncomfortable with a right-leaning Israeli administration.

"I'm sort of hostile to Israel," said James Alter, a founding father of independent politics in Chicago.

He and his late wife, Joanne Alter, also Jewish and a Metropolitan Water Reclamation District trustee, made their Lakeview home a longtime clubhouse for anti-machine activists.

Even so, there are other issues on which liberals clash with Emanuel, said political consultant Don Rose, who is Jewish, a reigning guru of the independent movement.

"We progressives found him unresponsive as a congressman when we wanted him to speak out against the Iraq war," Rose said.

Then there could be a linguistic problem attached to an Emanuel candidacy. Jews think of a Jew in the public eye as representing all of them with his or her behavior, said Chayim Knobloch, a rabbi and proprietor of the Kol Tuv supermarket on Devon.

Emanuel is famous for peppering his conversations with swearing, while Jews have a longstanding caution: "Don't make a shandah for the goyim" — be aware of your behavior in gentile company.

"So I have a small request," Knobloch said. "Rahm should watch his language."

It's official. Rahm Emanuel has resigned from the White House and will be running for the mayoral seat in Chicago..

(President Obama speaks first, and Rahm starts at about the 8 minute mark)

With White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on the verge of making a decision about whether or not to leave the White House and make a run for the open mayoral position in Chicago, one has to wonder. One has to wonder if Emanuel knew something about the eventual Daley resignation a year in advance.

NRG (Maariv's online edition) says that Rahm Emannuel's son Zach celebrated his bar mitzvah this morning by being called up to the Torah at Park Davidson, very near to the Kotel.

This despite the best efforts of far-right extremists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel to stop the affair from taking place. They had partial success in getting the actual party moved over as it is against the law to have food and music where it was planned, but the aliyah near the Kotel still happened.

Not only did the Emannuel family succeed to circumvent the extremists and have the aliyah, they also circumvented the fact that there is no Torah reading on a Sunday morning...

Hey, maybe that is how they fooled the extremists. Marzel and Ben Gvir never expected the Emannuels would have the aliyah l'Torah on a day when there is no Torah reading, so he fooled them and picked Sunday specifically!

Not really such a big "fashla" by such a leading Israeli paper, but still a journalistic "oops".

I think the Issue of the Week for this week is going to be whether or not Rahm Emmanuel is actually coming for his son's bar mitzvah, and whether or not it will be held at the Kotel.

The whole event has become shrouded in secrecy, and to boot, extreme right-wingers Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir are threatening that if he shows up at the Kotel they will do everything they can to ruin his simcha.

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.

He may have turned out to be a jerk of a court Jew in the White House, but if he is coming to the Kotel for a family simcha maybe there is room for him to get closer to Judaism and change his ways. On the one hand he wants us to give East Jerusalem, possibly including the Kotel and what is on the other side of it, to the Palestinians in an eventual peace agreement, on the other hand he wants to come pray there as if the Jews are the rightful owners. Maybe he will come and have his affair and change his opinion on how things should play out. Maybe people could be instrumental in changing his opinion rather than chasing him away and fortifying that opinion in his head.

I don't know what the right approach is - tell him to get lost because of what he has done, or try to let him be affected by an experience at the Kotel? What do you think?

The US administration is tired of you, the Israelis and Palestinians. You’re wasting precious time and are missing an opportunity to make peace. There is going to be a stage in which we’re simply going to give up on this endless conflict and leave you alone


--- White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel

Emanuel supposedly said this to the Israeli Consul in Los Angeles.

I seem to recall that Bush at a certain point decided he was not having any influence in the Peace Process, and he threw his hands up and kind of let it stagnate. Obama leveled heavy criticism at that policy and spoke about how he would not disengage form the process, but would be more hands on and he would push and get results. looks like he too is figuring out that a few speeches isn't enough to resolve a conflict of 60 years, if not 2000. And from our standpoint, in my opinion, this is a dream come true. He has been heavily one-sided in forcing Israel to continue making concessions and stop construction at levels no president before has ever insisted on.

What do I have in common with US Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel? Aside from both of us being [originally] from Chicago, of course...

We are both making bar mitzvahs in Israel...

The newspaper reported that Rahm Emanuel will soon be coming to Israel - in about 2 months - for his sons bar mitzvah.

Mazel tov

Just how powerful and influential is Rahm Emanuel?

The NY Times thinks he is extremely powerful, with Barack Obama's complete confidence. The NY Times even calls him "arguably the second most powerful man in the country and, just a few days into his tenure, already one of the highest-profile chiefs of staff in recent memory."

There is talk about the possibility of Rahm Emanuel being appointed as the next White House Chief of Staff in a future Obama presidency (if he should win the upcoming elections).

Not only did he serve in the IDF, and not only is his family originally Israeli (I think even originally pre-state Palestinian), but, even more importantly, his father was my pediatrician when I was growing up in Chicago. He was the greatest of doctors, and unfortunately retired a few years ago.

That alone qualifies Rahm Emanuel to be the White House Chief of Staff....