No one wants to stir up controversy regarding an annual gathering meant to unify religious believers, so it’s understandable that press and pundits largely ignored President Obama’s profoundly peculiar remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5th. Nevertheless, his brief prepared talk (the White House released a text of his comments before he spoke) February 5th in the nation’s capital contained so many provocations, contradictions and flat-footed misstatements that they deserve more serious attention than they’ve received.

BIBLICAL MUDDLE

For instance, the President of the United States (and the speechwriters who undoubtedly helped craft and polish his lines) made a glaring mistake of Biblical attribution. At the center of his speech, Mr. Obama declaimed: “We know too that whatever our differences, there is one law that binds all great religions together. Jesus told us to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’” Actually, it was God the Father, or Moses, or the anonymous compilers of the Old Testament who communicated that commandment at least 600 years before Jesus. “Love your neighbor” (Leviticus 19:18) had been identified by Jewish sages as the central instruction of the Torah long before the Nazarene made it the theme of his challenge to corrupt religious officials of his generation.

Moreover, after giving Jesus credit for the most famous passage in the Torah (Five Books of Moses), the President went on to ascribe to the Torah a line that isn’t even there. After explaining what “Jesus told us” Mr. Obama went on: “The Torah commands, ‘That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.’” Actually, these worthy sentiments appear nowhere in the Old Testament. But they do echo a famous passage of the Talmud (Shabbat 31a) in which Rabbi Hillel (who lived in the first century BC) was asked for a quick summary of the Jewish faith and responded: “What is hateful to you do not do to your fellow. This is the whole Law. The rest is explanation; go and study the explanation.”

In any event, he President’s use of the word “Torah” in this context should have raised red flags among his editors and speechwriters. One of the most toxic misunderstandings concerning the relationship between Christianity and Judaism involves the mistaken belief that Christians center their faith on the Bible, while Jews base their belief on a separate book called “the Torah” which, like the Koran, includes a great deal of distinctive, alien, non-Biblical teaching. In fact, the word Torah (as defined by any dictionary) refers in its primary meaning to the Five Books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) rather than any other arcane religious teachings. The Torah scrolls used in worship at all synagogues and temples around the world include the text of those five books, nothing more, nothing less. This is important, because it means that all Bible-believing Christians by definition embrace and revere the Jewish Torah. It’s a point of unity, not division between the two faiths.

Occasionally, Orthodox Jews do use the term “Torah” to refer to the full accumulation of scripture, law, tradition and interpretation – including the Talmudic passage cited by the President- but the Reform and Conservative Jews who constitute Mr. Obama’s most fervent supporters resist and contest that application of the word.

In any event, the President of the United States (and his staff) made a muddle of some of the most basic religious teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition – the sort of confusion that would have brought widespread derision and snickers had the mix-up originated with George W. Bush.

PHONY HISTORY

At another point in his two pages of comments, President Obama provided a patently falsified history of the prayer breakfast itself. At the opening of his remarks, he said, “Michelle and I are honored to join you in prayer this morning….It’s a tradition that I’m told actually began many years ago in the city of Seattle. It was the height of the Great Depression, and most people found themselves out of work.” Obviously, even in the darkest days of the 1930’s most people in fact continued to work – no, the unemployment rate never approached 50% -- but the distortion gets much worse. “Many fell into poverty. Some lost everything. The leaders of the community did all that they could for those who were suffering in their midst. And then they decided to do something more: they prayed. It didn’t matter what party or religious affiliation to which they belonged. They simply gathered one morning as brothers and sisters to share a meal and talk with God.”

In reality, the prayer breakfasts that began in Seattle and ultimately spread across the country (and around the world) from the beginning featured a political and pointedly conservative agenda. The movement originated with a Norwegian immigrant and traveling preacher named Abraham Vereide who battled the influence of socialists and radicals among the city’s poor. He understood that suffering workers who didn’t trust in the big G (God) would come to count on the little g (government) – a formulation originated by a much later Seattle clergyman, my friend Rabbi Daniel Lapin. In 1935, Rev. Vereide organized a group known as “The Family” to help the city’s business elite connect with the downtrodden, while conveying powerful anti-Communist and anti-union messages. He soon launched similar efforts in Chicago and San Francisco, before the organization’s leadership moved to D.C. in 1942. At the urging of Christian conservatives in the GOP (in particular Rep. Frank Carlson of Kansas), President Eisenhower spoke at the prayer breakfast in 1953 and all subsequent presidents have followed his example. In any event, the idea that down-and-out believers “simply gathered one morning as brothers and sisters to share a meal and talk with God” is baseless and false, contradicted by the easily available history of The Fellowship Foundation (the new designation of Vereide’s original “Family”) that still sponsors the yearly event.

“TAKING THE LIFE OF AN INNOCENT HUMAN BEING”

In addition to the odd misstatements and distortions in his remarks, President Obama offered a series of contradictions and platitudes that count as puzzling, if not pernicious. Speaking of himself, he declared “I know this breakfast has a long history in Washington, and faith has always been a guiding force in our family’s life, so we feel very much at home.” A few paragraphs later he provided a more honest summary of his own religious history, explaining, “I was not raised in a particularly religious household. I had a father who was born a Muslim but became an atheist, grandparents who were non-practicing Methodists and Baptists, and a mother who was skeptical of organized religion, even as she was the kindest, most spiritual person I’ve ever known.” Continued...