Orthodox Jews Celebrate as Trump Wins Back the White House – The Forward

A delightful surprise awaited people who showed up for midday prayer services at Rabbi Gil Student’s office building in Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon: a festive chocolate cake with “Trump” written on it in white icing. It was devoured before the rabbi could take a photo.

“I have to admit it,” Rabbi Student wrote in a post on X. “It felt weird to say tachanun‘ – the supplication on weekdays that is skipped on holidays – ‘given the jubilant mood.’

American Jews have overwhelmingly voted for Democrats for president for decades, and Tuesday was no exception, with several exit polls showing that between 66% and 79% endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. But Orthodox Jews like Student have long bucked that trend. Three-quarters support the Republican partyaccording to a 2020 study from Pew Research. And when polls showed former President Donald Trump returning to the White House for a historic second term, some took to social media to gloat.

The posts on “Frum Twitter” – the nickname for the Orthodox Jewish discourse on X – reflected feelings of joy and vindication. She addressed their comments to the grieving Democrats, mocked liberal talking points, succinct advice given or conveyed pure schadenfreude. After all, Trump hadn’t just been concerned with election math; he also won the popular vote, by about 5 million votes, the first Republican to do so in twenty years. Conventional wisdom was wrong. Keep the memes coming.

“We screwed up, Joe.” pic.twitter.com/9nnDPKTkA4

— David/Dovid Bashevkin (@DBashIdeas) November 6, 2024

Trump’s comeback had become a sweeping response to Orthodox grievances. It was the rejection of Democrats’ insistence that Trump was an anti-Semite that Jews would be crazy to support. It was a rebuke of the wokeness they believe is spreading anti-Semitism on college campuses and threatening religious freedom. It was the ultimate revelation of the mainstream media’s liberal biases – that in contrast to the prescient orthodox commentarycouldn’t place Trump’s broad resonance staring them in the face.

“We have become accustomed to what seemed like a new normal, and we feared that this is what America has become, this is what the country is comfortable with,” said Eli Steinberg, a commentator for the Charedi Orthodox community. “It’s very reassuring to see that America is looking at that and saying ‘no’.”

Representation is important

Trump’s approach to the Middle East during his presidency won him many supporters in the Orthodox world. He appointed an Orthodox ambassador to Israel, moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and helped Israel normalize relations with several Gulf states in the Abraham Accords. He also gave access to Orthodox leaders: he has a daughter and son-in-law who are Orthodox, and played a key role in his first government. And before he left office, Trump commuted the imprisonment of Sholom Rubashkin – a kosher food magnate convicted of bank fraud and who had become a cause celebre in the Orthodox world – and forgive the Israeli handler of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.

“You get a lot of this feedback from people saying some variation of, ‘How on earth could you support this guy?’ Where it stands now, 51% of the country said, “Yes, I can support this guy.” So who is out of line now?”

Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin, an Orthodox podcaster who teaches at Yeshiva University, said this record made Democrats’ characterization of Trump as a Nazi sympathizer difficult for Orthodox Jews. Trump’s personal shortcomings – his foul language, even sexual improprieties dining with outspoken anti-Semites like Ye and Nick Fuentes – were beside the point.

Orthodox Jews tend to have a “utilitarian, transactional” view of politics, Bashevkin said, seeing elections less as a way to discover or express values ​​than as a tool to protect them.

“We don’t have to fall in love with our candidates,” he explained. “We don’t need to deify our candidates. We have our role models within our community. And because of that, if we think politically, a lot of the arguments against Trump fell apart.”

So when Trump’s former chief of staff said the former president met the definition of fascist and had said admiring things about Hitler, many Orthodox voters viewed the subsequent reporting and Democratic attacks on him as unfair and even hypocritical.

Steinberg, the Orthodox commentator, said Tuesday’s results showed it wasn’t just Jews who weren’t buying. It was the most Americans, from all demographic groups.

“You get a lot of this feedback from people saying some variation of, ‘How could you possibly support this guy?’” he said. “As it stands now, 51% of the country says, ‘Yes, I can support this guy.’ So who is out of line now?”

The fight against anti-Semitism

Many Orthodox Jews were also deeply frustrated by Harris’ sympathy for pro-Palestinian protesters who they said were peddling anti-Semitism.

For example, Steinberg said that even Hasidic Jews who are anti-Zionist found the treatment of Jewish students over the past year appalling.

“Every Orthodox Jew when he sees that thinks, ‘These are people attacking Jews,’” he said. “And it doesn’t matter what your position on Zionism is. You see something that was made possible by the Biden/Harris administration.”

While Orthodox Jews had sent thousands of postcards to the White House last fall to thank President Joe Biden for his strong support for Israel, sentiments changed over the year, especially as Biden – and Harris – became openly critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tactics in Gaza, and as protests against the war increased. here in the US

Rabbi Bashevkin, the YU teacher and podcaster, remembered seeing it “Hamas is coming” sprayed on a monument in Washington, and pro-Palestinian protesters close highways during rush hour. People involved in these actions, he said, should have been prosecuted with the same fury as those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“I think people were tired of being blinded by the political establishment about what reality is,” he said. “I didn’t see the media or our country holding our political leaders accountable for what we saw.”

Anti-woke response

More than anything else, the issue of “wokeness” seems to be the point where the Orthodox broke with the rest of the Jewish fabric. Most mainstream liberal Jews have supported diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives, marriage equality and trans rights. In contrast, one of the leading voices of anti-wokeness is TikTok’s Libs, a Twitter account run by an Orthodox Jew named Chaya Raichik.

Viewing Trump’s victory as a major rejection of wokeness seemed to fuel much of the Orthodox Jews’ post-election gloating. “Wake up, go bankrupt,” read one of Rabbi Student’s tweets.

Wokeness can mean different things to different people, but critics portray it as a performative expression of left-wing values, rooted in the idea that the world is essentially divided into categories of oppressors and oppressed.

“The woke agenda is in direct conflict with our timeless religious values,” Steinberg said, adding: “Where that agenda comes into conflict with religious issues, we are constantly told to take a back seat.”

As an example, he cited New York State’s secular education requirements for private schools, including Orthodox yeshivas. Also abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights: Wokeness, Steinberg said, would compel Yeshiva University will fund a club for gay studentsor requiring an Orthodox doctor to perform an abortion.

Bashevkin said the past year had exposed the empty rhetoric of wokeness for Orthodox Jews. He pointed Khymani Jamesa Columbia student activist who was suspended for saying, “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” and noted that James had begun those comments by using his pronouns.

“There was a real awakening of identity in this country and the need to preserve and center marginalized groups,” Bashevkin said. “And I think there is no demographic group or society that feels the double standard of those efforts for inclusivity more than the Orthodox community.”