Rabbi to Donald Trump: “F— you”
In the wake of Donald Trump’s stunning speech today which saw him defending white supremacists, the pushback has come fast and furious from numerous sides. Politicians and public figures alike have told Trump just how little they think of his latest extremist position. But one Rabbi had a more succinct message for Trump: “Fuck you.”
Those were the words of Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, who posted the following message to Twitter this evening: “I’m a rabbi. I believe words have power. I try to choose mine carefully. Fuck you, Trump.” (link). This came after Trump had praised some of the people who joined the Nazi and white supremacist march in Charlottesville, insisting that some of them were good people. The remark played poorly almost across the board, with former KKK Grand Wizard being one of the very few public figures to praise Trump for it.
But Rabbi Ruttenberg had quite a bit to say about the matter beyond her initial F bomb: “Today was the day that I broke, in some ways. I mean, I’ve been breaking on and off for months & months. But I hadn’t yet cried abt C’ville. I was angry, I was worried, I was proud of my friends and colleagues who were there and showed up. But I hadn’t cried. I don’t know what it was about Trump’s speech that broke me today. It’s not like I don’t know who and what he is. But somehow, hearing about it brought the horror of where we are now into my marrow. (Again–neither for the first nor last time.)”
She continued: “I think a lot of us go into this intellectual space for long stretches, as a survival mechanism. Or into our fury. Or denial, obliviousness. We can’t feel the truth all the time. It would burn us alive, and there are kids to care for & jobs to do & people who need us to fight. But we have to feel it sometimes. We need to know where we are. Exactly how bad things have gotten. The castle walls of our democracy have been breeched. More than breeched.” You can read the rest of the Rabbi’s lengthy treatise here.
