And so it came to pass that as the celebration of Chanukah arrived, the Moores of Alabama offered to the Jews of America our first gifts of this season of miracles: their unanticipated friendship, and their political doom.

It was Roy Moore who lost Tuesday’s bid for a U.S. Senate seat from Alabama, but it was the Republican candidate’s wife, Kayla, who bequeathed their last-minute offerings for the Jews. They injected a little religious divide into a campaign that had already made most of the nation utterly nauseous.

“Fake news would tell you we don’t care for the Jews,” Mrs. Moore declared at a last-minute campaign rally for her husband. “I tell you all this because I’ve seen it all and I just want to set the record straight while they’re all here.” Then, after a momentary pause for dramatic effect, she proudly went on, “One of our attorneys is a Jew.”

Go figure – a Jewish attorney! What are the odds on that one?

“We have very close friends that are Jewish, and rabbis,” said Mrs. Moore, “and we also fellowship with them.”

The bad news for the Moores is that now they won’t get to meet a whole bunch of Jews, some of whom are lawyers and all of whom happen to work in Washington. Roy and Kayla, wave bye-bye to Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and Russ Feingold and Chuck Schumer, and Bernie Sanders and Richard Blumenthal, and, not to be overlooked, Maryland’s Ben Cardin.

Not a Republican among them – which may be why the Moores have never met them. And not a rabbi among them, either – at a time when Roy Moore hasn’t got a prayer, anyway.

Despite President Trump’s support, Moore was beaten by Democrat Doug Jones in a race that stunned everybody since Alabamians have disdained Democrats for decades. That’s why Moore was favored to win, despite multiple allegations that as a man (and an assistant district attorney) in his 30s, he was a sexual stalker of teenage girls.

In fact, his sexual record was so unsettling that it almost made voters forget some other stuff about Moore, such as his scurrilous remarks about gays and Muslims – and a remark about George Soros.

Soros is the 87-year-old billionaire and Holocaust survivor whose apparent crime is that he donates huge money to liberal charities and whose apparent curse (in Roy Moore’s mind) is that Soros is Jewish.

“No matter how much money he’s got,” Moore said of Soros, “he’s still going to the same place that people who don’t recognize God and morality and accept his salvation are going. And that’s not a good place.”

Those words prompted scores of stories with headlines like, “Roy Moore Battles Bigotry Claims on Eve of Alabama Vote.” Which, in turn, prompted Kayla Moore’s remarks about their Jewish friends.

Nice try, friend.

As the Washington Post reported, response to her words was huge: “A Google search using only the words ‘our attorney’ automatically produced the phrase ‘is Jewish.’ Twitter erupted … Kayla Moore dominated in not one but two categories: ‘Kayla Moore’ and ‘One of Our Attorneys Is a Jew.”

That’s some lucky attorney. As Democratic strategist David Axelrod put it, “Happy Chanukah, counselor. You could be in for a lot of work.”

A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” has just been re-issued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.