He can’t tell us how to be Jewish, they criticize Trump

NY.- Since the beginning of his political career, Donald Trump has played with stereotypes about Jews and politics.

In 2015 he told the Republican Jewish Coalition that “you want to control your politicians” and suggested that the public use money for control. At the White House, he said that Jews who vote Democratic are “very disloyal to Israel.”

Two years ago, the former president hosted two dinner guests at his Florida residence known for their anti-Semitic comments.

And this week, Trump accused Jewish Democrats of being disloyal to their faith and Israel. This caused many American Jews to fall behind familiar political lines. Trump’s opponents accused him of promoting anti-Semitic tropes, while his defenders suggested he was making a legitimate political point in his own right.

Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, said Trump is capitalizing on tensions within the Jewish community.

“For Donald Trump haters in the Jewish community, this statement will undoubtedly reinforce their sense that they want nothing to do with him,” he said. “People who like Donald Trump in the Jewish community are probably nodding in agreement.”

For many Jewish leaders in a demographic that overwhelmingly identifies as Democrats and supports President Joe Biden in 2020, Trump’s recent comments fueled harmful anti-Semitic stereotypes, portraying Jews as having divided loyalties and a one-way street. The right way to be Jewish is religiously.

“This escalation of rhetoric is so dangerous, so divisive and so wrong,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish religious denomination in the United States. “This is a time when Israel needs more bipartisan support.”

But Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said the president’s comments should be heard in the context of the war between Israel and Hamas and democratic criticism of the state of Israel.

“The president was voicing in his unique style things that I get asked many times a day,” Brooks said. “How can Jews be democratic in light of what is happening?” He argued that the Democratic Party “is no longer a pro-Israel bastion.”

More than 31,800 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive since the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, in which the militants killed and took nearly 1,200 hostages. Much of northern Gaza has been devastated and authorities have warned of imminent famine.

Trump’s remarks followed a speech by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the nation’s top Jewish official. Schumer, a Democrat, sharply criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the Gaza war last week. Schumer called for new elections in Israel and warned that the civilian death toll was damaging Israel’s standing in the world.

“Any Jew who votes for a Democrat hates his religion,” Trump responded on a talk show Monday. “They hate everything to do with Israel.”

A cascade of Jewish voices, from Schumer to the Anti-Defamation League to religious leaders, condemned Trump’s statements.

In a statement sent to The Associated Press on Wednesday, the Trump campaign doubled down on its criticism of Schumer, congressional Democrats’ support for the Palestinians and the Biden administration’s policies on aid to Iran and Gaza.

“President Trump is right,” said Carolyn Levitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign.

Jeffrey Hurt, an anti-Semitism expert at the University of Maryland, disagrees with Schumer’s call for a cease-fire in Gaza, but believes most Democrats support Israel, and said a second term of Biden would be better for them than one of Trump.

“If (Trump) loses the 2024 election, his comments will pave the way for Jews to be blamed for his defeat,” Herf said. “The obvious result is to fan the flames of anti-Semitism and claim that, once again, the Jews are to blame.”

Sarna said Trump is trying to appeal to politically conservative Jews, particularly the small but growing Orthodox segment, who see Trump as a defender of Israel.

Additionally, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center report, about 10% of American Jews are immigrants. A significant number are conservative, Sarna said.

At the same time, Democrats face tensions between their predominantly pro-Israel Jewish voters and their more pro-Palestinian progressive wing.

Sarna said that while it may seem odd to focus so much on minority sub-segments of the population, “the election in the United States is very close, and every vote counts.”

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said on his podcast Tuesday that Trump was “raising a point that, frankly, I’ve raised myself, which is that Jews who vote Democratic don’t understand the Democratic Party.” Shapiro, who practices Orthodox Judaism, maintained that the party “overlooked anti-Semitism” in its ranks.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director of Taruah, a rabbinic human rights organization, said Trump does not need to decide who is a good Jew.

“By implying that good Jews will vote for the party that is best for Israel, Trump is evoking the old anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty: the charge that Jews are more loyal to their religion than their country, and therefore you can. Trust them. Don’t,” he said. “Historically, this charge has fueled the worst anti-Semitic violence.”

In his own tenure, Trump’s “policy of supporting Prime Minister Netanyahu and the settlement agenda only puts Palestinians and Israelis at risk and makes peace more difficult to achieve,” Jacobs said.

Pittsburgh-based journalist Beth Kissileff — whose husband, a Conservative rabbi, survived the nation’s deadliest anti-Semitic attack in 2018 — said it was deeply insulting that Trump was the “self-appointed arbiter” of what it means to be Jewish.

“Chuck Schumer had every right to say what he said,” Kieseleff added. “Just because we’re Jewish doesn’t mean we agree with what the (Israeli) government does. We have compassion for innocent Palestinian lives.”

Brooks, of the Republican Jewish Coalition, defended the former president against accusations of anti-Semitism, pointing to his presidential record as evidence.

Trump has adopted policies popular with American Christian Zionists and Israeli religious nationalists, including moving the American embassy to Jerusalem and supporting Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Her daughter Ivanka is a convert to Orthodox Judaism, and her husband and children are Jewish. The couple acted as high-profile surrogates for the Jewish community during the Trump administration.

Among Trump’s biggest supporters are white evangelicals, many of whom believe that the modern state of Israel fulfills Bible prophecy. Even prominent evangelicals who support Zionism have been criticized for inflammatory statements about the Jewish people.

In 2020, 69% of Jewish voters supported Biden, while 30% supported Trump, according to AP Votecast, a poll of voters conducted in collaboration with NORC at the University of Chicago. That made Jewish voters one of the religious groups where support for Biden was strongest. Additionally, 73% of Jewish voters in 2020 said Trump was too tolerant of extremist groups.

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson said Trump’s comments fall “in a difficult middle ground”: They are not overtly anti-Semitic, but they rely on such tropes.

American Jews base their vote on a complex mix of issues and values, “including inclusion, diversity, climate change, civil rights,” said Artson, a leader of Conservative Judaism. “While they love Israel in various ways, many of us also care about the well-being and self-determination of the Palestinians.”