Rachmanut? Maybe not

Rachmanut is the Hebrew word that means pity.

There’s a well-known figure in our world who needs a lot of it, but I just can’t come up with enough of the commodity to extend it in his direction. He’s built his life to fulfill all his exceedingly selfish dreams, often at the expense of all of ours, and may not even realize exactly how dreadfully unhappy he really is. His dreams typically are our nightmares.

You may wonder how I know he’s sad. Conversely, I wonder how you don’t see it. Tell me, have you ever seen him laugh? I mean a good, solid belly laugh. I’ve never witnessed this. Sure I’ve seen him smirk or sneer or scowl. To him that’s laughter. But it’s really just nastiness and never funny at all. He never even smiles. His fake news grins look really fake, like he’s campaigning for something and wants to soften the blow a bit. I have never seen a truly warm, loving, kind smile on his face. It’s as if he’s just incapable of it.

As a matter of fact, I’ve never observed him gazing affectionately at anyone at all. Maybe his grandchildren are the recipients of occasional tenderness. I don’t know but it is hard to imagine, isn’t it? I firmly believe that he and his wife despise one another. There are plenty of clues to that effect. But I’m no marriage counselor, so I’m not going any further with that thought.

We all know he suffers from dreadful, crippling paranoia. Most of the rest of us, when our feelings are bruised, dwell on them briefly and then move on with our lives. We shake off petty insults and forget lots more than we remember. The little offenses we endure don’t amount to very much and are merely bursts of nothingness. We get over them. They don’t intrude on our every waking moment. And we surely don’t spend our entire lives seeking revenge and retribution. He does.

Our friend truthfully has a very hard time with truth. Most of what he says is deliberately dishonest as well as cruel and callously designed to inflict pain. It is just about impossible to believe anything that he says. We’ve learned not to trust him, ever.

It’s important to know that he is entirely gripped by the sway and leverage of money. He will go to any lengths of deceit to claim more and more and more. As an aside, I wonder why he needs so much. We all know it’s nice to be comfortably fixed, but is there really a difference between being a billionaire and a multi billionaire? When you have enough resources to do absolutely everything, what need is there for infinitely more? Is there time to enjoy the opulence when constantly unprecedentedly grifting, grabbing, and stealing? It remains a fact that none of us takes it with us, not even the most golden, gilded, guilty guy. This I promise you: Although he will certainly have a gold painted coffin, he will still leave this world empty handed. His memory will never be for a blessing.

Few historical figures have risen to such obscene levels of egomania. One must imagine that he spends hours in front of a mirror seeking to guarantee that he is the fairest of them all. His pancake makeup is thickly applied, and his hair…..well, what more can be possibly said about that thick garish mop of straw? His monuments and intended additional monuments to himself are tawdry, overwhelming, in dreadful taste, and endless. He must see his name and image towering above all. In Washington. On the Black Hills of South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore. On U.S. currency and passports, and ballrooms. On the Kennedy Center and the gaudy planned Arch de Trump. His need for self-aggrandizement is without end and clearly beyond any range of normalcy.

What is it like to be a man with power, but without honor or morals? With fame but not respect? With constant use of gutter language, inability to craft a decent sentence, or even read a teleprompter properly? And what is it to invoke fear from colleagues, fear so threatening that the path to righteousness is never the path selected? Simply look at his choices and wince at cabinet personnel chosen for their unsuitability and eagerness to toe his line, follow orders, and treat their fellow human beings as fodder while genuflecting and praising their defective leader.

Have we Jews learned nothing in our many generations of being castigated? Is it even remotely possible that some of our people believe this lying man who claims to love us? Even now, as he betrays Israel? Israel is ours to love, even if it is sometimes less than perfect. Compare it to our children. We will always love them, even if at times we disagree. Similarly, we will never wish evil or pain and suffering to descend on our land, and we will always recognize treachery. That recognition is surely here — now. Our love affair with Israel is now being challenged continuously and it’s up to us to stand up for justice and our right to fulfill the promise.

The so-called progressives should progress no more! Emphatically. But neither should the present powers that be in these United States prevail. He, and they, are forces of evil and destruction. It’s time for us to channel our rachmanut to those we love and love us in return. After all, rachmanut is simply another way of saying rachmonas, a word we learned from our grandparents, and a commodity we must believe in and share with those we respect.

And by the way, have you ever observed him displaying rachmanut?

Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of 12. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com

opinion