By Melanie Phillips
(AUGUST 12, 2021 / JNS) The latest move by President Joe Biden to appall many American Jews as an act of wanton hostility is his appointment of the progressive rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum, to the U.S. commission on International Religious Freedom.
Kleinbaum has been accused of repeatedly using her pulpit at New York’s Beit Simchat Torah—the world’s largest LGBTQ congregation—to demonize Israel.
During Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” in Gaza in 2014, Kleinbaum read a list of Palestinian and Israeli casualties, including the names of Hamas terrorists, in special prayers during her synagogue’s services. A number of members quit the synagogue in protest.
Her other half, Randi Weingarten, who is president of the American Federation of Teachers, distinguished herself in turn by saying in April that American Jews were part of an “ownership class” in the United States who want to take opportunities away from others.
Kleinbaum is but the latest in a series of anti-Israel appointees by the Biden administration. The twist in the knife is that she is a Jew and even boasts the title of rabbi.
Such Jewish individuals are routinely used as human shields by Jew-bashers on the left. In Britain, the former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who presided over an eruption of Jew-baiting and Israel-bashing in his party, boasted as his friends certain anti-Israel Jews—particularly if they were religious—in order to rebut accusations that he was an anti-Semite.
