(JTA) — In a 1974 novel by the Jewish writer Wallace Markfield, a character quips, “The time is at hand when the wearing of prayer shawl and skullcap will not bar a man from the White House — unless, of course, the man is Jewish.”
The joke sounded about right until 2000, when Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman as his running mate, making the Connecticut senator the first Jew on a major party’s presidential ticket. Suddenly the country could very well imagine a Jew in the White House — and only a few hundred ballots in Florida kept it from happening.
Fast forward 24 years, and Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden’s heir apparent for the Democratic presidential nomination, is considering Josh Shapiro, the Jewish day school-educated governor of Pennsylvania, as a possible running mate. And if not Shapiro, then perhaps Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator married to former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who is also Jewish.
Even if Harris overlooks both men, there would still be a Jew in the White House were she to win in November: the current second gentleman, Doug Emhoff. I don’t know if any of these politicians or spouses regularly wears a tallit or kippah (although I suspect Shapiro might), but the mere fact of their Jewishness is worth remarking on.
And people already have. On Sunday night, CNN anchor John King was sizing up Shapiro’s strengths and weaknesses as a possible veep candidate. “He’s a first-term governor, he’s Jewish, there could be some risks in putting him on the ticket,” said King, which struck me as a perfectly reasonable assessment. King, who converted to Judaism when he married his colleague Dana Bash, was describing, not prescribing, the pushback that might be faced by a prominent Jewish candidate. Over the past few years, Jewish organizations have regularly reported a rise in antisemitism, both on the left and the right. It follows that such sentiments might extend to the voting booth.
It would be outright weird, in fact, for a group that has been sounding the alarm over antisemitism to criticize King. But that’s exactly what social media activists at StopAntisemitism did, tweeting: “Replace ‘Jewish’ with ‘Muslim’ or ‘Black…’”
I did just that, and King’s comment holds up: It’s not controversial to predict that some voters might not vote for Harris because she is a woman of color, just as some opponents of Barack Obama leaned into the false claim that he was a Muslim. When Shapiro ran for governor, his Republican opponent, Doug Mastriano, railed that Shapiro was “sending his four kids to the same privileged, exclusive, elite school” that Shapiro himself had attended. He didn’t mention that the school happened to be a Jewish day school, but another Jewish CNN anchor, Jake Tapper, heard an antisemitic dog whistle.
“It’s a private Jewish parochial school,” said Tapper, who attended the same Philadelphia day school as Shapiro. “And I suppose, in that sense, it is privileged. But I do not know many people who would describe it the way that Mr. Mastriano did.”
Jews in the state celebrated the fact that Shapiro’s open Jewish identity did not alienate Pennsylvanians; indeed, in winning the race he did well even in the conservative center of the state. That’s a good sign for anyone concerned that Shapiro’s religion might be a drag on the Democrats’ chances in the fall.
There’s also the fact that Shapiro is, like Lieberman, more religious than the average Jewish American. If the Senate met on Friday nights or Saturdays, Lieberman would walk from his home in Georgetown to Capitol Hill to cast his vote; Shapiro has discussed how his Shabbat observance gives him energy for governing and campaigning. Lieberman proved a good liaison with Evangelical Christians, who tend to respect a candidate who is “churched” — even if that church is a synagogue. If anything, it was a certain kind of Jew who resisted Lieberman’s charms, finding him a little too sanctimonious (they might have said “frum”) for his and his party’s own good.
Emhoff and Giffords, by comparison, are probably closer to the majority Jewish demographic: proudly cultural Jews, respectful of the major holidays, intermarried, inclined to support Israel reflexively if not passionately, and, as Emhoff has demonstrated as point man in the Biden administration’s efforts to fight antisemitism, concerned about persistent hatred of Jews. And make no mistake: Spouses may not govern, but they represent. “Joe and I understood that we were not a typical Senate couple,” Hadassah Lieberman, Joe’s wife, wrote in her memoir, referring to their religious identities. “The private went hand in hand with the public.”
Antisemitism turns a happy moment bitter
For many Jews, the success of Jews in government is a source of great pride and validation. Chuck Schumer will frequently note that as the Senate majority leader, he is the highest-ranking Jew in an elected office in American history. Ruth Bader Ginsberg was a Jewish folk hero. Until his death earlier this year, Lieberman was surrounded by an aura of respect because of what he represented as a historical pathbreaker.
In January, a Gallup poll found that 88% of respondents would vote for a Jewish presidential candidate and 7% would not. That 7% is among the lowest figures across the various identities they polled (by contrast, 25% said they would not for a Muslim candidate).
And yet many Jews can’t seem to enjoy their hard-earned acceptance by the mainstream. This week I heard a number of Jews joke-not-joke that the number of Jewish names in the Democratic veepstakes was making them nervous. Some are worried about feeding into tropes about Jewish power. But mainly, these good Democrats didn’t want to cost their party the election, and wondered if such visibility was (here it comes) good for the Jews.
Institutional antisemitism — restricted country clubs, university quotas, unwelcoming law firms — might be a thing of the distant past, but many Jews remain on high alert. The progressive uprising against Israel since Oct. 7 has been a shock to the Jewish nervous system. Losing allies and what Jews came to consider their safe spaces — the college campus, the literary world, even therapy — was devastating for many of them. On the other side of the aisle, they’d seen a president flirt with antisemitic tropes and actual antisemites, while the massacre of 11 Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a troll enraged by immigrants remains an open wound.
Perhaps a Jewish vice presidential candidate — or the spouses celebrating Hanukkah and Passover at the White House — could prove a balm for these anxious times. But Jews as a rule aren’t known for looking on the bright side. A Harris-Shapiro ticket is bound to have Jews feeling both naches — pride — and shpilkes, or anxiety. It’s a political tradition all its own.