The New Anti-Semitic Face of Bernie Sanders’ Presidential Campaign

In a recent speech on behalf of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, the anti-Semitic activist Linda Sarsour declared that “at a time of startling rise in white nationalism and anti-Semitism, I would be so proud to win [the election], but also to make history and elect the first Jewish American president.” Jonathan Tobin comments on the Sanders’ decision to make Sarsour one of his official surrogates:

Sanders . . . is in a fierce competition with Elizabeth Warren and a number of other Democratic contenders for the votes of the party’s left-wing base, which united behind him in opposition to Hillary Clinton four years ago. So it says something important about the tone of the nomination battle that Sanders and his team think that Sarsour will help him more than her baggage will hurt him.

Sarsour and her apologists on the Jewish left claim that she is misunderstood, pointing to gestures like her fundraising to help vandalized Jewish cemeteries even if it is unclear how much, if any, help she has actually given to such causes. They will repeat this line by citing her statement supporting Sanders, in which she spoke of her pride in helping elect a Jew and opposition to anti-Semitism. But Sarsour’s ideas about what constitutes anti-Semitism have nothing to do with the reality of left-wing hatred of Jews and everything to do with the attempt by some to [use concerns over anti-Semitism] against President Trump.

Does Sanders think his Jewish origins give him a pass for employing someone who not only works for Israel’s destruction but has also done much to promote anti-Semitic invective? Jewish or not, he and his trumpeting of Sarsour as a key member of his campaign—who would likely think herself entitled to a significant administration job if he won—makes history in a way that ought to make Jews shudder.

Read more at JNS

More about: 2020 Election, Bernie Sanders, Democrats, Linda Sarsour

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society