Shabbos Kestenbaum is a self-proclaimed lifelong Democrat who’s become the face of the crusade against Harvard’s treatment of its Jewish students.
On Thursday, in front of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual Las Vegas leadership summit, Kestenbaum announced his endorsement of former President Donald Trump.
Kestenbaum told the crowd he had held out hope for the Democratic party after October 7 to create change from within.
The Democratic National Convention is the straw that broke the camel’s back, Kestenbaum told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday night, several hours after his endorsement speech.
Kestenbaum said he went to the DNC last month “in total good faith.”
“I came looking for answers, and I did not receive a single answer that would alleviate any of my concerns,” Kestenbaum said. “And that’s when it occurred to me I couldn’t support the Democratic nominee for president.”
Kestenbaum said the Trump campaign has been actively courting Jewish students and Jewish Americans, doing what he said campaigns are supposed to do to earn his vote.
It’s pretty obvious at this point that the Jewish community’s interests are more aligned with the current Republican nominee for president than it is with the Democratic nominee for president, according to Kestenbaum.
Valuing bipartisanship
On Wednesday, ahead of his speech before the RJC, Kestenbaum told the Post he wasn’t sure he wanted to publicly endorse Trump because he values the bipartisan nature of his work and he worried a public endorsement could jeopardize that.
“My activism forces me to work with Democrats and Republicans, and I myself am a Democrat, and I hope to maybe run for office someday as a Democrat,” Kestenbaum said. “I don’t want to alienate half the country, especially with someone like Trump, who is so toxic for so many people.”
Kestenbaum said he kept his mouth shut for the past 10 months, but he felt the importance of speaking out now given the imminence of the election.
“I felt that I’m privileged and fortunate to be given a platform. I have a responsibility to state how I feel about this issue,” he said.
Kestenbaum has 17.9k followers on X and more than 16k followers on Instagram.
“If people disagree, that’s fine, but at least I put my policies on the table,” he said.
One person who disagrees with Kestenbaum most is his mother.
“Well, my mom’s really unhappy,” Kestenbaum said. “My mom loves me, she supports me, but she could not disagree with me more.”
It’s not a shock to Kestenbaum that so many people are upset with him, but he thinks if people listen to what he has said they at least can understand why he came to his decision.
“I don’t think they can credibly call me a partisan hack or even a Republican, because I’m not either of those things,” Kestenbaum said. “And yeah, they’ll disagree with my voting preference, but it’s hard to challenge my lived experience, and it’s a damning indictment on my party, the Democratic Party, who forced me into this situation.”
Kestenbaum said he’d ask those who are upset or disappointed in him to focus more on the Democratic Party and the ways they can fix it.
He said that while people can disagree with his policies and politics, people should have these conversations in good faith and do so knowing that we’re all on the same team.
“We all want a strong State of Israel, we all want the hostages to be released, we all want campus antisemitism to be confronted in a real way,” Kestenbaum said.
Kestenbaum is the plaintiff in what could become the first case in American history pertaining to civil rights violations of Jewish students to go to trial.
Last month, Kestenbaum’s attorney’s defeated Harvard’s motion to dismiss Kestenbaum’s claims for violations of the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and breach of contract arising from the “antisemitic hostile educational environment generated by Harvard’s deliberate indifference to harassment and discrimination against Jewish students by pro-Hamas demonstrators on its campus,” according to a statement from attorneys Kasowitz Benson Torres.
The plaintiff’s claims have now proceeded to fact.
“I have total confidence in our case, total confidence in the facts as pleaded because they are, in fact, the facts, and Harvard will be held responsible,” Kestenbaum said. “I have no doubt about that at all.”