Even Stephen Miller's Childhood Rabbi Is Sick of His Shit
If there’s one small comfort in the fact that the White House’s resident white nationalist Stephen Miller has essentially been given free rein to run roughshod over America’s immigration system, it’s the fact that the more Miller does to maliciously fuck over some of America’s most vulnerable communities, the more people from his past feel comfortable popping up to remind the world that he has been, and will likely always be, a complete piece of shit.
First it was elementary school classmates, then his uncle, and now Miller’s childhood rabbi has publicly taken a stand to call his onetime congregant to task for being one of the most pernicious forces for evil in American politics today.
“Dear Stephen Miller, I was once your rabbi,” Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels began during his Rosh Hashanah sermon on Monday at Beth Shir Shalom, a progressive Reform synagogue where Miller and his family attended in Santa Monica, CA.
He continued:
The actions that you now encourage President Trump to take make it obvious to me that you didn’t get my, or our, Jewish message. I understand that you were a major contributor to the ‘zero tolerance’ policy Attorney General Jeff Sessions initiated to punish and to deter desperate families from coming to the United States by separating children from their parents at the border. That notion is completely antithetical to everything I know about Judaism.
Comess-Daniels continued, calling the policy “cruel” and noting that there are still hundreds of children separated from their families under the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
“Honestly, Mr Miller, you’ve set back the Jewish contribution to making the world spiritually whole through your arbitrary division of these desperate families,” he added.
Comess-Daniels concluded his sermon with a pledge for a fight against—and clean up of—Miller’s harmful agenda, and was met with a surge of applause from his congregation.
As The Guardian—which first reported on the high holiday sermon—pointed out, this is not the first time Rabbi Comess-Daniels has spoken out against his former congregant, although Miller’s family themselves haven’t been synagogue members for several years.
You can watch Comess-Daniels’ complete sermon at the two and a half hour mark, below:
So shanah tovah, happy Jewish new year, to everyone celebrating Rosh Hashanah this week. Everyone except Stephen Miller.