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Campaign trail report: Speaking with Jews for Trump

[additional-authors]
November 7, 2016

My ” target=”_blank”>Agudath Achim is not much different from many similar congregations across the US. It is a Conservative congregation, busy with Tikkun Olam. It’s ” target=”_blank”>New Synagogue of Palm Beach, where I spent a wonderful Shabbat) waited a little longer, but not much longer, before they dived into a similar discussion. The debate instantly became intense. A Trump skeptic reminds his friends that there are people on the right who dislike Jews. The response of a Trump supporter is swift: if a Holocaust is to happen in America – God forbid – he’d find refuge “down south, with the Evangelicals,” rather than look for help from the human rights-loving liberals of the north.

Jews who support Trump seem to have several characteristics. They are often Orthodox, like the Jews I spoke to in West Palm Beach. It is known that the Orthodox Jewish community is more prone to support a Republican candidate than other Jewish communities. They often reside in conservative areas, like the Jews of Georgia with whom I spoke. If a state tilts rightward, the Jews of that state might also tilt in the same direction. They are often male, and older. In being that, Jewish supporters of Trump are like non-Jewish supporters of Trump.

And most of them are much too smart to buy Trump’s bombastic propaganda, or to pretend that his denial of misdeeds ought to be believed, or to claim that he is a role model of good behavior. Rather than deny his many flaws, they laugh them away. For some reason, they find his flaws worthy of a humorous push aside, but lose their sense of humor when Hillary Clinton’s flaws come up. He is a naughty talker – she is a criminal. He is funny – she is enraging.

A rabbi from Florida told me last week that his congregation was up in flames when he dared to speak against Trump. He sounded taken aback by the ferocity of the response of congregants who felt that it was not his place to endorse a certain political camp or candidate over the other. For him, this is an issue of morality, not politics. He believes that supporting Trump is not a Jewish thing to do. But in the past week I interviewed several Jews who came close to making the counter argument: that supporting Clinton is not a Jewish thing to do. These Jews are going to go to the polls. They are going to vote for Trump. They are going to make it impossible for other Jews to pretend – as many of them attempt to do – that Trump is beyond the pale. If we end up with a fifth of all Jews supporting him, he is not.  

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