‘Rabbis for Romney’ Founder Extends Invite to Pamela Geller
More: ‘Rabbis for Romney’ Founder Isn’t Saying Which Rabbis Are for Romney
Rabbi Rosenberg of Temple Beth-El in New Jersey invited me to speak on Sunday. I will be there at 7pm - get the word out :) #RT #freedom
— Pamela Geller (@Atlasshrugs) April 11, 2013
The founder of Rabbis for Romney says he won’t divulge the names of its members because he fears they will be criticized for breaking with the majority of Jews who support President Barack Obama.
“I don’t want to happen to them what happened to me,” said Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg of Congregation Beth-El in Edison, N.J. “I’ve been attacked like you’ve never heard — by rabbis, Democrats. I am a registered Democrat. I voted twice for Clinton. I’ve also been a Republican. This has nothing to do with party politics.”
Perhaps, but Rosenberg was among a certain segment of right-leaning Jews put into a bit of panic this summer upon the launch of Rabbis for Obama, a campaign-sponsored alliance that claimed at its inception “over 613 members.” That’s the number of commandments, or mitzvot, derived from the Torah and, the Obama campaign says, more than double the number of rabbis who signed on in 2008.
Conservatives have pounced on the group — which is made up of mostly Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and other non-Orthodox clergy — and have called on the Obama campaign to disown at least one “radical rabbi” on the list. Progressive Jewish groups have protested the attacks as an “unethical smear campaign” designed “to sow divisions in the Jewish community for short-term political gain.”
Rosenberg said at first he didn’t think there should be “rabbis for anybody” but felt compelled to form a “counterweight” to the Obama group. Indeed, some Jewish and other religious leaders have echoed the sentiment of Rabbi David Wolkenfeld, director of the Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus at Princeton University, who wrote in The Huffington Post that such partisan positioning is “unsettling.”
The head of Rabbis for Romney said of his members, “I’m not asking them to do anything” other than spread the word. He said he has no plans to run ads and, “I don’t speak about this from the pulpit.”
