Would You Believe Me If I Told You Orthodox Jews Are More Supportive Of Trump Than Evangelicals Are?

As Yossi Gestetner explained in a Wall Street Journal OpEd last week, Hasidic Jews are much more likely to be living in poverty than other Jews or than most Americans. Gestetner was trying to claim that Hasidics aren't poor because their yeshivas fail to prepare students for life in the real world but are poor because they have much larger families than non-Hasidics. His case is spurious and he failed miserably. Hasidics live in a parallel universe. Just look at the new poll from Ami Magazine, a mouthpiece for far right Jews around the world. In America, Ami is more delusional and Trumpist than Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson combined. I could be wrong about this, but I've been told over and over again that many if not most Hasidics vote for whatever their rabbi tells them to do.

They key findings of the poll of Orthodox Jews in 15 states include.

1- Trump's approval rating is 89%
2- Only 5% said Trump should be impeached; 91% said he should not be impeached
3- 92% said they trusted Trump more than Democrats to fight anti-Semitism
4- When asked which president has "accomplished the most for the security of Israel," over 80 percent said it was Trump, followed by former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Around 10% of American Jews consider themselves Orthodox. Their fanatic adherence to Trump brings back the old question about how many Jews voted for Hitler. Does the Verband Nationaldeutscher Juden (the he Association of German National Jews) sound familiar to you? Founded in 1921, it was a right-wing Jewish organization during the Weimar Republic. It supported the expulsion from Germany of the Jewish immigrants from Poland, Russia, the Baltic counties and the rest of Eastern Europe. After Hitler came to power, they campaigned against the boycott of German products and consistently backed up German propaganda that Jews were being treated fairly in Nazi Germany. The Nazis banned the group by the end of 1935 and arrested and imprisoned the leaders. And it wasn't just the Association of German National Jews that supported Hitler and the Nazi Party. Der Deutsche Vortrupp-- the German Vanguard-- was a Jewish Nazi group, although by 1938 Jews were being routinely sent to concentration camps whether they were Nazis or not, and Joachim Schoeps, their leader fled to Sweden. After the war Schoeps returned to Germany and became a member of the Deutschland-Stiftung, a neo-fascist organization of former Nazi true believers.

Trump serves up a golden turd-- who's biting?

Before anyone takes support for Trump among Orthodox Jews for granted, let’s break down the findings of previous polls to better understand the broader picture. According to a survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee, 54% of Orthodox Jews said that they voted for Trump in 2016. One year into his presidency, 71% of Orthodox Jews supported him, and that was before he commuted the sentence of Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Then in 2018, in a Tri-State-area poll commissioned by Ami Magazine, 82% of respondents said that they would vote for Trump in 2020. And as this year’s Ami poll reveals, support for the president has now hit a whopping 89%. What this upward trajectory makes abundantly clear is that more and more Orthodox Jews are fans of the 45th president of the United States.

Why do Orthodox Jews support Trump? Ask 100 people and you will receive answers as diverse as Orthodox Jews themselves. You might hear about his recognition of Jerusalem, record-high economic numbers, fighting against religious persecution around the world, the eradication of ISIS, decertification of the Iran deal, the release of Mr. Rubashkin, prison reform, standing up to the United Nations, border security, appointment of conservative judges and issuance of executive orders that promote religious liberty-- among other things. The fact that he expelled the last living Nazi from America and was the first president to publicly honor Holocaust survivors at a formal White House event doesn’t seem to have hurt his popularity either.

...What’s the takeaway from all this? That while President Trump enjoys a greater percentage of support among Orthodox Jews than any other religious group, denomination or demographic, it is support that he has rightfully earned because of three years of hard work and genuine results.