"This filthy hippie Pope needs to stop worrying about the poor and the peace and get back to bashing the gays"
-- Said or thought by every RWer, everywhere.
Yes, the Pope prayed at two walls, and RW Jews are predictably torn. On the one hand, they are OH SO HAPPY that Frank leaned on the kotel for a few minutes. On the other, they are OH MY GOD FURIOUS that he went to the separation barrier and said a few words there, too.
Can we get a grip, please? The Pope isn't that important. Not to us, anyway. We're not made whole when he behaves in symbolic pro-Israel ways, and we're not damaged when he acknowledges the Palestinian claim that Jews aren't the only people in the universe who ever had a tough time. Frank is king of a dying empire, and the leader of a church that still isn't all that friendly to Jews or Judaism or humanity. No God I believe in is interested in what the Pope has to say at the Kotel and you guys on the right shouldn't attach so much significance to what he says or does at the barrier.
See, at the end of the day that's the problem. You dopes on the mainstream Orthodox Right have an irrational love affair going with the Vicar of Rome that isn't unlike your unrequited love affair with the Hasidic sects. You performed cartwheels of joy when JP2 glanced in our direction with something other than a sneer. You line up to pay homage to the rebbes without seeming to realize they preach contempt for you, your lifestyle, and your beliefs. For some reason, you think people who dress funny and make barbaric religious pronouncements deserve limitless respect and uncritical admiration and some of you (HI HARRY!) have made it your life long goal to get some love in return.
Well, wake up. The Pope thinks you're going to hell, and its his job to rescue you from eternal slavery in this world and the next by converting you to what is essentially a nonsense ideology, one that has a horrible record on human rights. Anything he does at either Wall needs to be understood in that context.
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