Roland’s not Jewish. He has no religion and in the over 3 decades we’ve been close, I’ve never noticed a spiritual side either. But he loves visiting synagogues in exotic places where you might not expect to find them: Mexico, Singapore, Morocco, India, Myanmar… He had already gone back to the U.S. when I made my spiritualish— not religious— pilgrimage to the Grand Choral Synagogue in St. Petersburg. In the late 18th Century, the only part of the Russian Empire the Jews were allowed to reside in was the Pale, the western reaches of the empire including all or parts of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Poland and Russia. But there were exceptions. The czar— particularly Czar Alexander II— allowed some wealthy, educated Jews, some of whom had been ennobled and some who were military officers, to live beyond the Pale. That ended after Alexander was assassinated in 1881 and there were proposals that all Jews be expelled from the empire entirely. Although all the Jews in Moscow were expelled to the Pale in 1891, there was still a thriving Jewish community in St Petersburg and the Grand Choral Synagogue, allowed by Alexander— at the request of a wealthy Jewish financier and a wealth Jewish railroad developer— was completed in 1888 and consecrated in 1893.
Wealthy Jews who played footsie with the monarchy did fine, even when their co-religionists were suffering and even being murdered. That wasn’t just a Russian thing. It was the nature of things all through Europe for centuries going back to the 12th Century when Issac and Joseph Bacharach were loaning money to Richard the Lionheart, who granted them protection and privileges. At the same time Samuel be Meir served as the vizier to the Muslim ruler of Granada. And in the 1800s, the Rothschilds were financing several European governments, and eventually ennobled by the Holy Roman Empire and by Great Britain. They were the wealthiest family in the world, active in Germany, Austria, Britain, Naples and France.
It was a piece by Philip Bump yesterday that brought this ancient history to mind, a piece about Señor Trumpanzee and his storied relationship with “the Jews,” Trump takes it upon himself to decide who is a proper Jew. Trump has, wrote Bump, “increasingly taken it upon himself to determine who is authentically Jewish and what constitutes authentic Judaism— an obviously fraught enterprise born of his ongoing irritation that there are people out there who don't particularly like him.”
Even though he and his family have been tied to anti-Semitism frequently, Trump has long presented himself as a historically unique champion for Israel, which he equates with Jewish Americans. Jewish Americans don’t like him and have overwhelmingly voted against him each time he ran and are certainly going to again. His “positions on Israel are generally more reflective of the views of evangelical Christians, many of whom view the nation through the lens of Christian prophecy. That he views himself as having delivered on what his Jewish allies want— which isn't necessarily what Jewish Americans want more broadly— without seeing Jewish support surge appears to frustrate him. So he simply writes off those other Jewish Americans as not (or at least insufficiently) Jewish.
Writing on social media hours after Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) spoke at the Democratic convention, Trump illustrated how this works.
“The highly overrated Jewish Governor of the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, made a really bad and poorly delivered speech talking about freedom and fighting for Comrade Kamala Harris for President, yet she hates Israel and will do nothing but make its journey through the complexities of survival as difficult as possible, hoping in the end that it will fail,” Trump wrote. “Judge only by her actions! Yet Shapiro, for strictly political reasons, refused to acknowledge that I am the best friend that Israel, and the Jewish people, ever had. I have done more for Israel than any President, and frankly, I have done more for Israel than any person, and it’s not even close. Shapiro has done nothing for Israel, and never will.”
Trump conflates actions on behalf of Israel with true Jewishness in part because it’s a metric on which he thinks he can make a case. It’s directly comparable to his claims that he’s done more than anyone else for Black Americans because of a short list of cherry-picked things he did as president. The starting point is that everyone should love him, so he builds a path to that point out of whatever he has at hand. In the case of Jewish Americans, it’s often things that were presented to him by conservative Jewish allies.
We can't let the hyperbole here slide, though. Trump claiming that, “frankly, I have done more for Israel than any person, and it’s not even close” is incredible in both the literal and figurative senses of the word. That Trump's been making similar claims for so long that it barely merits a shrug is similarly incredible.
Trump focused on Shapiro in part because of another facet of the effort to turn Jewish Americans against Democrats: suggesting that Shapiro was passed over as Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate specifically because he's Jewish.
Speaking to right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday, Trump said this explicitly.
“They didn’t put him on because he’s Jewish. I think he’s highly overrated, too, by the way, but they didn’t put him on because he’s Jewish,” Trump said, before transitioning back to promoting himself. “And I just can’t believe, when you look at the polls, where I’m probably up to 50 percent, 40 percent, 45 percent, and what I’ve done for Israel, and what I’ve done, I have been the best president by far for the Jewish people. There’s never been anybody like me.”
The argument that Democrats are somehow hostile to Jewish people because Shapiro wasn't selected has been undermined by the positive response to the person Harris did choose as her running mate. Not to mention that it's hypocritical; Trump didn't pick a Jewish running mate either. (He picked Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism as an adult.) Harris, of course, is also married to a Jewish man. The Democratic Party also has a number of Jewish leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
But he doesn't count, Trump told Hewitt.
“Chuck Schumer is a Palestinian, as far as I’m concerned,” Trump said. “And yet, when it comes to elections, for whatever reason, he’ll be supported by Jewish people. He’s Jewish, and yet he’s totally given up on Israel, as far as I’m concerned. It’s shocking.”
Schumer has not “given up on Israel,” except to the extent that Trump gets to define how people view Israel. Nor is Schumer's Jewish identity dependent on his political approach to Israel, except to the extent that Trump gets to decide who counts as Jewish.
Later, when his conversation with Hewitt shifted to the college protests, Trump again disparaged Schumer.
“I’d say 10, 12, 15 years ago, there was no more powerful, call it a lobby, but there was no more powerful lobby than the Israeli lobby, than the Jewish lobby,” Trump said, repeating a long-standing trope about powerful Jewish organizations. “Today, it’s almost the opposite. You have people like me that are big supporters, but we’re in a tremendous minority. When guys like Schumer go for Hamas and Hezbollah, I mean, look at Schumer. Why would a Jewish person be voting for Schumer?”
“It’s pretty incredible,” Hewitt (who is Christian) responded.
“Why would somebody who’s Jewish be voting for these people? If Jewish people vote for her, and I use this expression, they ought to go out,” Trump continued, “because Kamala is a person that is very anti-Israel, and very anti-Jewish. But she solves that problem by saying her husband’s Jewish, okay? But that doesn’t, her actions are the worst that we’ve ever had.”
Trump is deciding that Harris, despite her family, fails to meet his standard of support for Jewish Americans. Just as, last month, he decided that Harris failed to meet his standard of “Black.”
It’s not clear what he meant that Harris-voting Jewish people ought to “go out.” Hewitt didn’t ask. But history does not offer positive stories about political leaders who decide that they can evaluate the legitimacy of Jewish people and their families, suggesting that those who fail the evaluation should be cast out.
This could be said about any comment of TFG’s: he is out of his mind.