WASHINGTON — Dozens of black yarmulkas peppered the White House South Lawn at the September 15 signing of the normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and between Israel and Bahrain. After the historic peace deals were duly signed, the Orthodox witnesses there made fresh history by regathering for a minha afternoon prayer service.
While previous Middle East peace-signing confabs that were hosted by Democratic administrations welcomed similar numbers of Jews, these Modern Orthodox men are arguably an apt representation of the currently COVID-afflicted US President Donald Trump’s Jewish supporters.
Modern Orthodox Jews have outsized visibility not only in pro-Israel crowds at White House events, but also within the administration itself. Members of the community, whose religious orientation falls between the Conservative denomination and the more stringent traditional-Orthodox world, have been appointed to posts such as senior White House adviser, peace envoy and US ambassador to Israel.
Despite the optics, however, those familiar with the small subset of roughly 300,000 US Jews caution against drawing conclusions from the South Lawn crowd regarding the movement’s broader voting patterns. Experts say Modern Orthodox voters are actually far more diverse than those Jews in denominations to the left and right. READ MORE
