Biden, the truck-driving Greek Puerto Rican Catholic who attended Black churches and was front and center at Ground Zero the day after 9/11, has decided that claiming a Jewish experience is a great addition to his ever-expanding book of lies.
President Biden’s recent assertion of being “brought up in the synagogues” of Delaware continues a longstanding pattern of the elderly president’s embellishments of his cultural heritage to establish connections with his audience.
“I, you might say, was raised in the synagogues of my state. You think I’m kidding, I’m not,” Biden shared with a group of rabbis during a pre-Rosh Hashanah call, preceding the Jewish New Year holiday that commenced on Friday.
Despite identifying as a devout Catholic, the president has made this assertion in the past, although there’s scant evidence to substantiate it.
“I probably went to shul more than many of you did,” Biden declared during a speech marking Rosh Hashanah last year. “You might think I’m jesting, but I’m completely serious. I truly am.” At that time, he went on to add that he received his education at Delaware’s Beth Shalom.
It’s a cool, completely unsubstantiated story. A closer look at his memoirs reveals an interesting discrepancy. In his 2007 book, “Promises to Keep,” the word “synagogue” doesn’t appear at all, and his use of the words “Jews” and “Jewish” (seven times in total) is solely in the context of discussing history or politics. Notably, Beth Shalom is never mentioned in the text. Similarly, his 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad,” offers very few references to Judaism.
It’s not the first time Biden has made false claims at the expense of the Jewish community. In 2021, President Biden recounted his recollection of “spending time at” and “going to” Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 following the tragic anti-Semitic attack that claimed the lives of 11 individuals, marking it as the deadliest such incident in U.S. history. However, the synagogue itself asserted that there was no record of his visit, and subsequently, the White House clarified that the President was referring to a phone call he made to the synagogue’s rabbi in 2019.
Biden must have been quite involved with churches spanning all religions during his teenage years. While simultaneously attending synagogue and Mass, the devout Catholic also claims to have attended a Black church as a teen. He can add “invisibility” to his long list of appropriate superpowers; longtime congregants insist that they never saw him at their church.
Last year, Biden faced scrutiny in Puerto Rico when he stated, “I was sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically,” even though only a small number of Puerto Ricans lived in Delaware during his early political career, and he had not previously emphasized any significant connection to that community. Earlier this year, during a visit to Poland, he emphasized that he was raised in a Polish community.
In 2009, he celebrated Greek Independence Day by claiming to be “an honorary Greek.” He doubled down on that falsehood, stating, “We haven’t had a Greek in the White House, but now we have Joe Bidenopoulos.”
Biden’s visit to scorched and devastated Hawaii last month prompted a comparison to his own experience with a horrific fire incident. He regaled his audience with his tales of heroic firefighters rushing into his blazing house to rescue First Lady Jill Biden from the jaws of death during a kitchen fire that the local fire department categorized as “insignificant.” During that “raging inferno,” Biden vividly recalls his house was on the verge of collapse.
His recent speech commemorating 9/11 recounted both his visit to Manhattan the day after the initial attacks and his witnessing of a jet’s collision with the Pentagon on 9/11. It would have been an inspirational speech had either event occurred. Similarly, Biden’s claim to have witnessed a Pittsburgh bridge collapse in 2022 was as false as his presidential promises. The bridge collapsed hours prior to his visit to the city.
Whether these are genuine and innocent memory blips or just a sign of his brain cells playing hide-and-seek as he ungracefully navigates his way through the octogenarian club, one thing’s for sure: Biden just can’t help himself.
