(JTA) — Americans view Bernie Sanders as the least religious of four Democratic presidential front-runners, a survey released Thursday found.
Sixty percent of the 6,395 respondents to the online poll described the Jewish Vermont senator as “not too religious” or “not at all religious.” according to the Pew Research Center. A subgroup of 303 Jewish respondents viewed Sanders as even less religious, with 75 percent saying he is “not too religious” or “not at all religious.”
The respondents, adults 18 and older, were asked about how they saw the religiosity of Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg. Biden, who is Catholic, was seen as the most religious, with 55 percent of respondents saying the former vice president is “very religious” or “somewhat religious.”
If he is nominated, Sanders would be the first Jewish presidential candidate on a major party ticket. He said in 2016 that he is “not actively involved with organized religion,” but in recent appearances Sanders has spoken about how his Jewish roots shaped him. The senator recently released a campaign video in which he said he is “very proud to be Jewish.”
The Pew survey was conducted Feb. 4-15 and has a margin of error of 1.6 percentage points. The Jewish subgroup has a margin of error of 7.9 percentage points.
The store, which has partially reopened in a new location, still doesn’t have regular hours. But the reopening signals an important moment for Jersey City’s small but growing community of Orthodox Jews.
“Everyone was shocked beyond belief,” said Chesky Deutsch, a member of the local Hasidic community who acts as an informal spokesman, describing the atmosphere following the shooting. “For the first few weeks there was a little paralysis. They lost a friend, the kids were under trauma, the grocery was not open. But now life goes on.”
JC Kosher, which caters to the 100 or so Hasidic families who have moved to the Greenville neighborhood here in recent years, was the site of a shooting on Dec. 10. The two assailants killed a police officer nearby before riding in a van to the store, where they killed Leah Mindel Ferencz, who ran the store with her husband. They also shot dead Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, an employee, and Moshe Deutsch, a customer.
The attackers, who were not from the neighborhood, also died in a shootout with police that lasted for hours. Police discovered a powerful bomb in the shooters’ van and believe they targeted the store in an anti-Semitic attack. JC Kosher was adjacent to a yeshiva for the neighborhood’s Jewish children.
Now the market is beginning to reopen two blocks from its original location on the same side of the same street, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. It’s not fully stocked and caters only to kosher-keeping customers based on necessity. Deutsch said it will be open fully in the coming weeks.
On Monday, the store was bright and clean while still a work in progress. The shelves were stocked with food — with canned goods on one aisle, refrigerated products such as hummus in another and bags of pretzels piled in another display — but open boxes, a ladder and unassembled racks also dotted the space.
Deutsch said that Ferencz had been planning to relocate anyway, squeezed by his original store’s tight quarters. Because he would have needed to do a full renovation after the shooting, he decided it was time to move to a new space, Deutsch said.
While the store opened to customers based on necessity, it’s still a work in progress, Feb. 24, 2020. (Ben Sales)
(Ferencz, who is grieving his wife, asked not to be interviewed or photographed.)
“It’s such a necessity for people over here,” Deutsch said. “They can’t wait until it’s fully, fully stocked. So what he did is he opens it and he’s still unpacking it.”
The original location has been closed since the shooting, its shuttered doors now covered by a mural of a bridge over a heart and three roses. An artist who goes by True Heart Art on Instagram painted the mural shortly after the shooting and titled it “Bridging Worlds.”
At the base of the closed doors are a row of cut-out five-pointed stars featuring a smiley face, an American flag, a heart, a peace sign and an inspirational quote from Albus Dumbledore, the Hogwarts headmaster in the “Harry Potter” series.
While the store was closed, this city’s Hasidic community received twice weekly free deliveries from Peppermint, a kosher grocery store in the upstate New York Hasidic town of Kiryas Joel, more than an hour’s drive away. People also would trek to Brooklyn and other Jewish neighborhoods for food.
Deutsch is happy to have a local grocery and community hub open again.
“You’re used to a lifestyle of buying every day, every few days,” he said. “It’s not like we live in a desert, but we’re spoiled in that way. All of us are used to having our basic necessities handy, close by.”
In parshat Trumah the people of Israel are called upon to contribute to the building of the temple – gold, silver, copper, dyed wool, animal skins, and more. On Mount Sinai, Moses is given detailed instructions on how to construct this Temple. In the Sanctuary’s inner chamber, was the ark, containing the tablets with the Ten Commandments. In the outer chamber stood the seven-branched menorah. Outside the sanctuary stood the copper-plated altar.
In the past few years with hosted no less than six rabbis to speak about this parsha. Each of them offered his unique perspective on the story and its meaning. Here is what they said:
