Political mavens urge Jews to break Dem tie

Two political operatives told a Jewish political gathering in North Woodmere on Sunday that Jews should move past a traditional communal allegiance to the Democratic Party and its liberal politics.

Support should go to whoever supports Israel, said Jeff Wiesenfeld, a resident of Great Neck, former aide to Senator Al D’Amato, and a City University of New York trustee.

Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant who estimates he’s worked on 700 political campaigns in 44 states and 14 foreign nations over 35 years, said he’s found that “the 10th  commandment for Jews was you must vote, and 10A was you must vote Democratic.” 

This puzzled him.

“I remember people talking to me as a youth about what a wonderful man President Roosevelt was,” he said. “It is hard to imagine crying about somebody who stood by and watched six million of your brothers and sister go up chimneys and did nothing.”

Both Sheinkopf and Wiesenfeld explored the roots of the Jewish Democratic connection, and suggested that times have changed.

They spoke, along with several Long Island elected officials, at a symposium titled “The Future of the Jewish Vote: A Bi-Partisan Grassroots Forum,” hosted by Temple Hillel as part of its ongoing 60th anniversary celebration.

Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century were working class people who “became Democrats because they were involved in bettering their lives and the lives of those around them,” Sheinkopf said.

Wiesenfeld referred to these immigrants as “Mayflower Jews” who established communal norms including the belief “that liberalism and communism would be the cure-all to the anti-Semitism they experienced in eastern Europe.” Before World War II, “it wasn’t the rabbanim who dominated, it was the secular Jews,” he said.

Those who arrived after the Shoah — including concentration camp survivors and their children — were of a different mindset, he said.