TOP STORY: RELIGION AND POLITICS: `Buchanan’s rabbi’ defies the conventional wisdom

c. 1996 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS)-The scene was a news conference called by the Buchanan campaign to rebut media reports linking the Republican presidential hopeful’s traditionalist Catholic upbringing with his alleged hostility toward Jews, blacks and minorities in general. A dozen of Patrick J. Buchanan’s supporters were on hand to defend their candidate-including Rabbi […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)-The scene was a news conference called by the Buchanan campaign to rebut media reports linking the Republican presidential hopeful’s traditionalist Catholic upbringing with his alleged hostility toward Jews, blacks and minorities in general.

A dozen of Patrick J. Buchanan’s supporters were on hand to defend their candidate-including Rabbi Yahuda Levin, a heavy-set, full-bearded man wearing a dark suit and black velvet skullcap, the standard garb of an ultra-Orthodox Jew.


Why, one reporter asked, did conservative stalwart William F. Buckley say he found it”impossible to defend”Buchanan against charges of being an anti-Semite? In a flash, Levin-one of three national co-chairs of the Buchanan for president campaign-was at the mike.

The question’s out-of-bounds, he declared. This news conference is about the”liberal”media’s”shameful”attacks on Buchanan’s Catholic faith, Levin insisted. Next question!

There was none. Levin’s forceful display had shocked the reporters into silence. The question of Buchanan’s tempestuous relations with the Jewish community had been put to rest-at least for this news conference. Levin had done his job.

Mention Buchanan’s quest for the Republican presidential nomination in most Jewish quarters and eyes begin to roll. The great majority of American Jewish leaders have denounced Buchanan as an unabashed anti-Semite prone to defending ex-Nazis, criticizing Israel and even questioning the extent of the Holocaust.

Not Levin, who the New York Jewish Week newspaper called”the loneliest man in Jewish America”because of his willingness to defend Buchanan. Whether that’s true or not, Levin is taking on a growing role in the Buchanan campaign as the battle for the Republican presidential nod goes down to the wire.”Pat-ila is a mentsh,”the 41-year-old Levin said in an interview here, attaching to”Pat”the Yiddish diminutive used to express affection and the Yiddish word for a righteous individual.”Hard-boiled and pugnacious, but a mentsh.” Five years ago, on the eve of the Persian Gulf War, Buchanan said that only Israel and”its amen corner in the United States”favored a U.S. attack on Iraqi forces. But Americans with Christian names such as”McAllister, Murphy, Gonzalez and Leroy Brown”would be the ones who died in such a war, Buchanan later added.

Buchanan has also called Israel”a strategic albatross draped around the neck of the United States.”When Jewish protesters tried to disrupt a Buchanan campaign speech, he dismissed them by saying”this rally is of Americans, for Americans and for the good old USA, my friends.” Such comments have outraged Jewish leaders. But Levin dismissed them and other Buchanan remarks some also have deemed anti-Semitic or racist as”hyperbole”-rhetoric intended to attract media attention.”I understand that. I do it myself,”said Levin, a father of eight who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.”I don’t agree with every word of what he says, but I understand how he operates. We operate in similar ways.”(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

Levin’s own use of what he calls hyperbole includes a controversial 1994 political ad that ran in an Orthodox Jewish weekly newspaper published in Brooklyn. Many of Levin’s numerous critics in the New York Jewish community called the ad racist.


The contest was the race for New York state controller. The candidates were Herb London, a Jewish Republican, and Carl McCall, an African-American Democrat. The ad featured a photo of London with the word”kosher”over it. A photo of McCall ran under the label”non-kosher.”The implication was that observant Jews would be breaking Jewish religious law if they voted for McCall, who eventually won the election.

Asked about the ad this week, Levin defended it, calling it”a typically strong-worded political ad that served its purpose.””Again, it’s hyperbole. But kosher is a term in the jargon. Orthodox Jews know what it means, of course, but, hey, even Italians in New York understand it. I called it like I saw it and I used my witticism to make a point,”he said.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM)

Levin said he has held long discussions with Buchanan and is convinced the former commentator is not anti-Semitic or anti-Israel.”If anything, he’s insensitive and uneducated about Jewish concerns. But anti-Semitic? I promise you I have never heard him or anyone around him say anything that has made me feel uncomfortable as a Jew.”Do I wish he was more sensitive to, say, the Holocaust? Sure. But why should he be any more sensitive to the Holocaust than I am to the Armenian genocide? It’s not his issue and he doesn’t want to have it force-fed to him just as I don’t want to be force-fed by blacks that my grandparents who lived in a ghetto in Europe somehow enslaved their grandparents.” Levin is no stranger to politics-which he proves by pulling out a sheaf of newspaper clippings dating back more than 15 years.”Traditional values”and opposition to abortion and gay rights have been at the top of his political agenda.

Working out of his home-he’s looking for a full-time synagogue position-Levin serves as”national spokesman”for Jews for Morality, an organization he admits consists of little more than a letterhead and the financial support of”a few hundred”families.

Levin has run for public office three times. In 1984 he ran against former Democratic Rep. Stephen Solarz and in 1985 he ran for mayor of New York City against Ed Koch. Two years ago, he ran for a New York City Council seat.

He lost badly each time, but winning was always out of the question. Levin says his real goal was to”get my message across to conservative Christians that the traditional Jewish standpoint is actually in favor of what . . . real Christians are saying, and is, in fact, the source material for what they are saying.” Levin-who insists he’s a”card-carrying”registered Democrat”because that’s where the action is in New York”-ran as the candidate of the New York Conservative Party and Right-to-Life Party, an anti-abortion group. When Pope John Paul II was in New York last October, Levin was among the Jewish leaders invited to meet with the pontiff. Levin said the invite was”a reward for my pro-life activities.” Levin-who first met Buchanan in 1984 at a GOP fundraiser in Morris County, N.J.-said he received a telephone call in May 1995 from Bay Buchanan, the candidate’s sister and campaign chairwoman, who asked him to be one of the campaign’s co-chairs.


He was never”asked outright”to deal with the anti-Semitism issue, Levin said.”That’s just developed organically.””Look, obviously it helps if a rabbi is the one to counter the charges. But do I feel used? Let’s be honest. Everyone uses everyone. My role is to defend Pat when liberal Jews start yelling `anti-Semite, anti-Semite!’ In return I get my message out.” Not until Buchanan captured the New Hampshire primary, however, was there much for Levin to do. Since the upswing in interest in Buchanan, Levin has been on the go, plugging Buchanan on conservative radio talk shows and appearing at news conferences to deflect the anti-Semite charge.

New York Rabbi Avi Weiss, a leading Jewish activist who for years has publicly called Buchanan”a Nazi,”said Levin”is a pathetic character, the latest in a long line of Jews throughout our history who for their own misguided reasons have made excuses for anti-Semites. I feel pity for him.” Rabbi Daniel Lapin, an influential Seattle-based Jewish political conservative, called Levin”courageous and very, very well informed.” The”liberal Jewish establishment,”said Lapin, who directs the organization Toward Tradition,”can’t abide a conservative Jew who offers a sound critique of their willingness to call anyone who they disagree with an anti-Semite.” Levin insists he doesn’t care what others think of him-particularly Jewish liberals.”I’m not looking to win any popularity contests. Just as Pat doesn’t care about answering his Jewish critics, I don’t give a darn about answering mine,”he said.”I’m like a duck. It just rolls off my back.”JC END RIFKIN

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