Your email is not valid
Recipient's email is not valid
Submit Close

Your email has been sent.

Click here to send another

United States

The Gentleman From Virginia

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history, hails not from the urban melting pot but from a Southern, explicitly Christian America

By Allison Hoffman|February 8, 2011 3:00 PM|69comments
Print Email
(Alex Nabaum)

Representative Eric Cantor, the six-term Virginia congressman, is not a brilliant strategist or a visionary policymaker. He is, however, a very good politician. At 47, he cuts a trim figure in his dark two-button suits, with a full head of black hair and a strong jaw line that comes across well on camera. He speaks in calm, measured tones with a butterscotch lilt that makes him sound extremely reasonable when he talks about contentious subjects, like repealing health-care reform or slashing the federal budget. When he wants to seem conspiratorial—I’m on your side—his left eyebrow goes up behind his thin black wire-frame glasses; when he wants to seem sincere, both eyebrows rise in unison, and three deep grooves appear on his forehead. When he wants to make it clear he really, really means what he’s saying, the ghost of a fourth line appears just below his hairline, and he chops at the air in front of him for added effect. His default setting is “serious.”

Last month, when the Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives and John Boehner was elected speaker, Cantor became majority leader, the second most powerful person in the chamber and the one tasked with driving the partisan agenda heading into the 2012 presidential campaign cycle. Cantor’s elevation, from minority whip, makes him the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history. As a Jewish politician, he is an anomaly: a Southern conservative and the sole Jewish Republican to be seated in Congress. (Indeed, he has held that distinction since April 2009, when former Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter defected to the Democratic Party.) Unlike other moderate and conservative Jewish legislators—Specter, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, or even former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman—Cantor was raised far outside the urban, liberal milieu familiar to most American Jews. His congressional district, Virginia’s 7th, once belonged to Absalom Robertson, the father of televangelist Pat Robertson, and his hometown, Richmond, was once the capital of the Confederacy. In a place where religion permeates the public sphere, Cantor has succeeded by turning his Jewish identity from an ethnic distinction into a signal of the values and civic commitment he shares with his gentile constituents.

Cantor often describes himself as “a minority within a minority”—a Jew from the South, and a conservative Republican whose views are sharply at odds with those of the predominantly Democratic Jewish electorate—and this allows him to occasionally affect a self-deprecating, and sympathetic, underdog quality. He grew up in Richmond’s historic but tiny Jewish community, and in a solidly Republican household when Virginia was still Yellow Dog Democrat country. His parents sent him and his two brothers to the Collegiate School, a prestigious private academy that featured annual Christmas pageants, but they kept a kosher home. He was bar mitzvahed at the city’s main Conservative synagogue, where his own children also had their bar and bat mitzvahs. Cantor keeps kosher at work—his Democratic predecessor, Steny Hoyer, got him egg-salad sandwiches when they met for a rare bipartisan lunch in late January—and at home, where his mother-in-law supervises the kitchen. When I met Cantor in his new, eggnog-yellow office late last month, I asked him whether he would have preferred to grow up in a place where being Jewish wasn’t quite so exotic. “I think it’s given me a real appreciation—” he began, and then he paused. He looked directly at me and started again: “You know, we live in a Christian country.”

Since the beginning of the year, Cantor has become the de facto public face of a party that has grown steadily more religious and more suburban in the two decades since he began working his way up its ranks. In Young Guns, the conservative manifesto Cantor co-wrote last year with his House colleagues Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan, the congressman drew an explicit analogy between their churchgoing and his own synagogue attendance. “I pray on Saturday with a Southern accent,” Cantor wrote. “Paul and Kevin go to church on Sunday and talk to God without dropping their Gs.” What set him apart growing up—his distance from the heavily Jewish cities that now serve as metonyms for liberal elitism, his native ease with the Christian references so many Republican partisans use to define their political values—has become his passport into the heart of the GOP establishment. His position has been cemented by his reputation as a rainmaker for his colleagues and his party—$60 million in the 2008 election cycle, an estimated $10 million of which came from heavy-hitting Jewish donors across the country. His own campaign included donations from Republican casino mogul Sheldon Adelson to Chicago magnate Lester Crown, who was also a key Obama supporter the same year.

“A Jewish politician from Richmond is very different from a Jewish politician from the Upper West Side of Manhattan,” explained Fred Barnes, the Weekly Standard editor who invented the “Young Guns” appellation. But there have been Jewish politicians from the South before—Democrats like Ben Erdreich, who was elected to Congress from Birmingham, Alabama, in 1982, and Norman Sisisky, who joined Virginia’s congressional delegation almost two decades before Cantor. Cantor is the first to emerge from a generation that grew up weaned on the red-blooded Republicanism of Reagan’s successful implementation of Nixon’s Southern Strategy. “Eric is certainly able to connect to a national Republican audience more than most Jewish politicians,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public-policy arm. “He’s a social conservative, a traditional Jewish person with conservative social mores.”

In a sense, Cantor is following a model successfully pioneered by earlier generations of Southern Jews who achieved prominence in city and state politics—men like Emanuel J. Evans, known as “Mutt,” who as mayor of Durham, North Carolina, from 1951 to 1963, took pains to make sure his campaign posters noted his synagogue presidency and his work on behalf of Israel bonds. “My father said, ‘People down here respect church work,’ ” explained Evans’ son, Eli, author of The Provincials: A History of Jews in the South. “This is the tone for really successful Southern politicians, and Cantor has that one down pat.”

***

The history of Jews in Richmond stretches back to the colonial era. The city had a small but well-rooted Sephardic community; its first synagogue, Kahal Kadosh Beth Shalome, was established in 1789, the year George Washington was sworn in as president. As the city grew, it attracted an increasing number of Jews, including German Jews like Samuel and Judith Myers, whose son, Gustavus Myers, a lawyer and a trustee of the Reform Temple Beth Ahabah, served nearly 30 years on the city council, including 12 terms as mayor in the mid-19th century. Myers also played an instrumental role in encouraging his friend, the Louisiana senator Judah Benjamin, to take a prominent role in Jefferson Davis’ Confederate government—advice Myers gave because he believed that “Jews of high station reflected well in the eyes of both the Gentiles and other Jews by serving in visible office,” as Evans wrote in his biography of Benjamin. After the Civil War, it was a Jewish former cadet from Richmond, Moses Ezekiel, who won the commission to design the Confederate Soldiers’ Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Cantor’s family arrived in Richmond from Eastern Europe in the wave of Jewish immigration around the turn of the 20th century. His father, Eddie, grew up in downtown Jackson Ward, a predominantly black neighborhood known as “the Harlem of the South,” living above the grocery run by his widowed mother, Frances. Eddie was an overachiever determined to make his way up the civic ladder. He graduated from John Marshall, one of the city’s best public high schools, at 15, and went on to Virginia Tech and the University of Richmond law school before going into practice with his older brother, Robert. He met Mary Lee Hudes, a schoolteacher from Baltimore, on a blind date set up by one of her University of Maryland sorority sisters. “They needed short dates—Eddie was short, and so was I,” explained Mary Lee, whose Romanian-born father, an ardent Zionist, ran a furniture store. Eddie impressed her as a real Southern gentleman. (Eddie, now 78, is ill and wasn’t available for interviews.) “I had to go to the restroom, and this guy got up—he was like a jumping jack,” Mary Lee told me. “I had never seen such manners.”

Continue reading: Richmond Republicans, a mentor, and the youngest member of the state assembly. Or view as a single page.

1 2 3 4View as single page

Allison Hoffman is a senior writer for Tablet Magazine.
More In:
  • N.zuckerman

    Which goes to show that you can be Jewish and still be a putz.

  • Avi Crane

    As a Republican Jew, Congressman Cantor represents my ideology more than any Democratic Jew ever did.

  • Gordon Schochet

    To use my grandmother’s worldview — which I enthusiastically share — a Jewish Republican is a shande. Whatever happened to the world captured in Milton Himmelfarb’s pithy observation that we “live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans”?

  • K Roseman

    I am registered in Maryland as “Green.” I will not support anyone just because they are Jewish and will never vote Republican.

  • Notta Putz

    As someone who was raised Christian, I respectfully disagree with Mr. Cantor. This is NOT a “Christian country.” This is the United States of America. Anyone in search of a “Christian country” should relocate to the Vatican.

  • M. Burgh

    From Richmond perhaps this looks like a Christian nation, but from most of the world, the view is quite different. Cantor brings no credit to us. Give me Ruth Ginsberg.

  • Hersh Adlerstein

    The highest ranking what? The highest ranking Jewish Republican from Virginia, maybe, but did you forget that New York had a Jewish governor, Herbert Lehman, over 70 years ago? Surely nobody but a Republican flack would consider a backwoods congressman has having a “higher ranked electoral position” than the governor of New York, or Illinois for that matter, and doubtfully a less important job than most of the dozen or more Jews serving in the US Senate today. A shmucvk is a shmuck even if he did have a briss.

  • cdk

    Gordon Schochet: your grandmother’s Democratic Party no longer exists

    N Zuckerman: you can still be a Jew and commit the sin of “lashon hara”. Name calling and ad hominem responses show a certain emptiness and anxious desperation on the part of the one doing the name calling. Instead of calling Mr. Cantor (and I presume other Republicans) names, why not just articulate WHY you disagree with their positions?

  • Marty Janner

    I respect Eric, In no way agree with with his politics! Being a product of Brooklyn, and have experienced the Republicans who were fortunate enough to attain various political offices, they had one commonality which is not found in Eric”s MDA, they represented a liberal stance relative to the Little Guy!

    There is no question in my mind that he is a major proponent for Israel. however someway he has forgotten, or perhaps never learned the values of the faith we so adore!

    In terms of his voting in the Congress, it has been entirely along the lines of what his party represents, never once deviating, this, to me
    is not representative of greatness, but rather indicative of weakness!

    I would strongly suggest that the Forward, in the future exemplify individuals for all attributes they stand for, rather than the specious ones of the moment!

  • jerry s.

    Eric Cantor – house jew. Perfect.

  • Steve Siporin

    Wow. What a catalog of self-stereotypes. Who needs enemies when we’ve got ourselves?

  • Will Edwards

    Hon. Eric Cantor is not a Jew representing his constituents or his people. He is another under the table lackey of the Insurance, Oil, and ETC lobbies. He talks in terms of emotional horror at the audacity of his opponents,though he talks as a wolf in the hen house. As an American he is as callous and traitorous as Cheney, the Bushes, Nixon, DeLay, and etc… its a really long list. While there are democrats and independents on this list (such as that famous collaborator Hon. Senator Lieberman), but it is overwhelmingly republican and not for any true conviction except personal greed. Therefore it is prudent to assess the republican philosophy is plunder and consume at the cost of everyone else. Hmmm use that template to look at history!

    As a Jew I am expected to take the Torah viewpoint, which is in direct contradiction to the general philosophy and behavior of the republican party and its loud mouthed spokesmen.

    Life, liberty, and the pursuit of …everything for a profit!

  • Will Edwards

    That, by the way, is what is meant by boiling a kid in his own milk.

  • Peter W.

    I’m a Jew who will never vote for a political party, i.e., the Democrat Party, which believes the government should discriminate against my child just because she’s white.

  • Occam’s Tool

    As a Jew myself, I fail to see why Jews continue to support the party of Dennis Kucinich, Jesse Jackson, Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, John Conyers, Pete Stark, etc. Ron Paul is an anomaly in the Republican Party for his views on Israel—he’s in the mainstream of the Democrats.

    Tell me ONE thing Barack Obama has done as President to make things safer for Jews in America and the world. The answer is: less than NOTHING. The bombs to Chicago synagogues attempt happened on HIS watch.

  • Pete

    The lockstep support of the Democrats blows my mind. The Republicans have a far better record on Israel than the Democrats. Obama’s callous treatment of Israel is only the latest in a long list of examples. When will we wake up and realize that just because (the majority of) our grandparents voted for FDR, the Republicans now represent ideals like individual responsibility and respect for belief in G-d, that are much closer to Jewish values than the Democrats vision of the nanny state. A nanny state completely devoid of the Judeo-Christian values that this country was founded on. Wake up-more and more Jews are realizing this and are becoming Republican (I was a lifelong Democrat until about 15 years ago, and most of my family now votes Republican even though they cannot bring themselves to register with the GOP, old habits die hard). And Hersh, the highest ranking political elected to national office my friend. The “backwoods congressman” is the leader of the majority party in Congress. That makes him #2….not bad for a Jewish kid.

  • http://emizruc1@twcny.rr.com Hal Mizruchi

    Interesting article but Cantor has yet to challenge the “real power” in the Republican Party. Do Jews, these days, read Feuchtwanger’s Jude Suess, translated as Power? “Jerry,” above, seems to have it right. A Court Jew, soon to face reality. That’s the Republican Party most of us have come to know.

  • Val

    An embarrassment, not just to Jews, but to politics, as well.

  • http://ianthal.blogspot.com Ian Thal

    Without getting into any argument of which party best represents Jewish values, anyone looking at the actual data would see that the over-all trend is that Republicans have largely failed in their attempt to make inroads into the Jewish electorate:

    http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/jewvote.html

    In fact, Jews are more solidly Democratic for the last two decades than they have been since the 1964 election.

  • Brian Kaye

    I’m not sure where Ms Hoffman hails from but her article is written with very little knowledge of Southern Jews and their relationships with their neighbors – the attitude that comes through is that of a Northern, or more likely New York, Jew, who finds it strange how Jews in the South relate to their Southern culture. I’m a Southern Jew, who has lived in New York City for almost 35 years and fail to see the need to exhalt in Mr Cantor’s position in the government simply because he is Jewish. In the South, the fact that Judah Benjamin was the Attorney General for the Confederacy, is a footnote to history. I find Mr Cantor’s political positions extremely distasteful and lacking in the compassion for our fellow citizens that is a fundamental of our religion. His right wing politics is of more concern to me than the fact that he is a practicsing Jew.

  • Popescu

    Amazing how many of the people leaving comments just march in lockstep and hurl invective. One would think Cantor was a pedophile, a mass murderer, or a self-hating quisling from the way they refer to him. He’s only a Jew who happens to hold views different from theirs, and they can’t accept that. Whatever their affiliation, it’s seems obvious that they do not really believe in free speech and democracy, except of course for themselves.

  • A.Zelikovitch

    Nice article- I respect Congressman Cantor very much…As for this comment:

    Whatever happened to the world captured in Milton Himmelfarb’s pithy observation that we “live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans”?

    Well, in the half-century or so since those dusty words were muttered, Milton Himmelfarb has gone to olam haba, and the “progressive” left has dumped the Jews for an Arabian Nights noble savage fantasy.

    How about this for an observation: being Jewish doesn’t mean living above the mason dixon line, whining about everything and always taking a “liberal” position, and then still expecting people to like you. I for one don’t, and I’m a proud Jew of the South. It was U.S. Grant who put us in prison – Robert E. Lee kept Shabbes.

  • Scott B in DC

    Ok, @Popescu, here is a different perspective on what is wrong with Eric Cantor:

    When the GOP was whipping up the Tea Party to do their bidding to in their opposition to the Health Care Reform bill, Cantor did not protest against the those who were using Nazi references out of context to attack the president and congressional Democrats for their stance. Rather than showing outrage at the insipid references or explaining how hateful and insulting these references are, Cantor issues a tepid response on his official House website without drawing any attention to it.

    Here was an opportunity to practice inclusiveness and show these people who hurtful and hateful they are acting. When running for congress in 2000, Cantor was attacked for being Jewish. In the article, it said that when he was interviewed about the attacks, Cantor was quoted as saying, “That whole issue is just repugnant.” In this case, Cantor tacitly accepts the opposition to the Democrats even if it insults his heritage. In other words, Cantor sold his soul for political gain.

    I am not a religious person and do not condemn anyone who is. However, I condemn anyone who shows this type of hypocrisy without comment. I condemn Eric Cantor for not standing up to the Tea Partiers who insisted on using Nazi references as an incendiary argument rather than engage in reasonable discussion.

  • http://jewishdefense.org A. J. Weberman

    Better him than some whiny liberal from the Upper West Side of NYC who wants to appease the Muslims. Jews from the South are a whole different story than elitists like Bloomberg.

  • Georg von Starkermann

    Judah P Benjamin was a USSenator from Louisiana, then became Secretary of War, of the United Confederacy. David Yulee was a US Senator from Florida. Both men were Jewish and both were elected by the people. I believe that Senators hold a higher ranking than Congressmen?

    Make no bones about anything…the USA is a Christian Country. It started off as such and continues to this day. If you don’t believe me, then why is Christmas Day a national holiday? In fact, why is New Years Day a national holiday as well. Aren’t we celebrating so many years from the time of Jesus Christ in celebrating New Years Day?

  • Dorothy Wachsstock

    Reading all the horrible comments from Jews from the North tell me, as a conservative republican Jew, recently moved down from the suburbs of New York City, that we jews do not need any enemies. We have our own within our midst.

    The so called “Liberal” Jews from wherever they come from, do not believe in tolerance. You must do as they say and believe in what they believe in or they tear you apart. No acceptance for their own kind unless you bow down to their beliefs. If you don’t, you can read what they say.

    Farrakhan is a very smart person. He said to his following..join each party and then you have a block on both sides and you own Congress.

    I do not think that Cong. Cantor had that in mind, but I would like to tell my fellow Jews, think twice before you eat your own. There aren’t many of us left but there are more and more Jews who are voting republican who do not watch your liberal newscasts and get propagandized.

    Instead, we watch what New York Democrat Elected officials tell their constituents and then how they vote.

    My father’s democrat party no longer exists. It went by the way of socialism. My husband and myself were discussing at lunch that maybe we should go back to Russia where the Soviet Union is supposedly no longer there. It certainly is coming here piece by piece.

    Wait till you liberal Jews who put down one Jewish republican try to see a doctor if Obamacare is not put down. There will be no more for what you have now.

    Insurance companys will go out of business..your temp at home will be shut off during the day..this is Jimmy Carter and his sweater time coming after the 2012 elecition if Obama wins..your freedom on the internet is now being overlooked to see if it is all right to be allowed. Ah!

    Bet you didn’t know that the FCC is now in charge of the internet, did you? Soon, your electricity will be too expensive and you will go back to candles to save money. How many fires will that bring about.

    Wait and see what is ahead of you.

  • Archie1954

    No one really cares except maybe Some Jewish people that Mr. Cantor could become the president, but many people care if he is also a Zionist.

  • http://www.bejohngalt.com Eph

    I am registered in Arizona as “Indie.” I will not support anyone just because they are Jewish and will never vote Democrat.

  • http://www.bejohngalt.com Eph

    Torah says: VOTE PRO-LIFE !!!

    Thank you Eric Cantor for knowing that

  • Jay Levenberg

    You can certainly respect Mr. Cantor without agreeing with his politics. I am amazed how far up in the Republican Party Mr. Cantor has gone and at least his presence tells Americans that not all Jews are liberals from New York. I certainly agree and respect his position on Israel. I wish I could say the same about the so called “progressive wing” of the Democratic Party. As long as Cantor is in a position of authority, he will be the voice for supporters of Israel in the Republican Party especially when some more of the radical tea-baggers start to form alliances with ultra-progressive Democrats to cut-off funding for all foreign aid. As I said, I don’t agree with much of his politics but I am nevertheless very happy he is in the position as Majority Leader.

  • http://www.brightorangeadv.com bruce goldman

    ‘Whatever happened to the world captured in Milton Himmelfarb’s pithy observation that we “live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans”?’

    It got mugged and raped by reality.

  • BH in Iowa

    Rep Cantor represents me more a thousand miles away than the Leftist atheist moonbat from my district. He’s the future of the Republican Party and hopefully the future of American Jewish political identity.

    Jews have been brought up in a tradition which strongly promotes empathy for others and helping those in need. Dems have taken advantage of this by making government the default medium for helping others. Jews have bought in. Now government is big and broke. As a Jewish Republican I disagree. I’m no less passionate about tikkun olam, I just believe it should be done at a community level – voluntarily – through shuls and private organzations. Helping the needy shouldn’t be a condition or pretext for increasing government power. Welfare didn’t make the US the strongest, most prosperous nation in the world – freedom, opportunity and innovation did.

    On foreign affairs, the Dems are a trainwreck. The centrist wing believes in appeasing our enemies while the progressive wing promotes explicit support of our enemies. The current administration has stabbed our allies in the back, while their every “mistake” has consistantly been to the benefit of the most radical Islamist extremists involved. The party of RFK is now the party of Sirhan Sirhan.

    It’s not just Christians who “cling to thier guns and religion.”

  • BH in Iowa

    A. J. Weberman: “Better him than some whiny liberal from the Upper West Side of NYC who wants to appease the Muslims. Jews from the South are a whole different story than elitists like Bloomberg.”

    The (non-Chicago) midwest as well. This Bible Belt Jew owns more guns than suits.

  • http://facebook Dianne Jarreau

    “Instead of calling Mr. Cantor (and I presume other Republicans) names, why not just articulate WHY you disagree with their positions?”

    Because they are not charitable?

  • http://facebook Dianne Jarreau

    I agree with Will Edwards Feb 8, 2011 at 2:15 PM

  • JJ

    Wow, these comments are a real lesson in “liberal” intolerance

  • Mel Harrison

    Val,You got got it 110% right..Kantor is too cowardly to stand up to the anti semitic tea party

  • Vulcan Alex

    From my location in the south being a republican conservative is being on the side of the little guy. Being a liberal democrat is wanting them to be like a slave to government (nanny state). We care so much for them that we want them to be successful and independent. Just my view from the very Christian south.

  • wp

    Cantor’s statement that this is a Christian country, despite his proclaimed reverence for Jefferson and religious freedom, show’s that his primary goal is self promotion. He is a political pander.

  • Georg von Starkermann

    Times change and people change. At one time the Democratic Party was the party that lynched Negros in the American South. Today it is a Liberal Party protecting Black People and every other minority. When the Democratic Party was chiefly supported by the KU KLUX KLAN, how did the Jews of New York vote? Mostly for the Liberal Party and the Communist Party. Now the Republican Party and the Democratic Party switched sides and all of the Jews switched as well. They became Democrats in the likes of Harry Truman who for a time was a member of the KU KLUX KLAN, and let’s not forget every Jew’s hero, Harry Byrd of West Virginia. Byrd was the typical anti semite as he too was a member of the KU KLUX KLAN. As a German, I can assure you all that the Jews in America would have voted for Adolf Hitler had he ran on the Democratic Ticket, simply because he was on the ticket. After all the Jews voted for Obama, who we all know simply is an old fashioned anti semite (Against the Jews only). Reading the posts on this site filled with Liberal Jewish voters, when begins to realize just how prejudiced and closed minded the Jews really are, especially to their own people.

  • chumpsky

    He looks good and he talks nice…I don’t know what all the kvetching is about, it worked to get our president into the White House.

    A

  • Stanley Crouch

    This article shows, once again, how far behind American reality and the nuances of its unpredictable complexity domestic fiction remains. Eric Cantor could not be convincingly imagined or the basis of a variation made by Philip Roth or, in film by Woody Allen. Were Saul Bellow still with us, I am almost sure that he would have been thinking about Cantor and what his very existence says about the mysteriousness of Jewish or human probability. As Ralph Ellison was given to observing, “Americans have a stubborn habit of surprising you if you pay close enough attention. I also agree with this because Marianne Williamson, who is now a homemade version of a faith healer, was a shock to west coast, midwestern, and eastern seaboard Jewish students when I was teaching in California because Marianne was from Texas, a southern belle to the gills, and was always glad to say, “I went to temple, too.” As always, American humanity is the true source of vanguard realization in all of our arts, which are too often dominated by well-meaning or simple-minded cliches.
    STANLEY CROUCH

  • Jeroen Reuven Bours

    Rep. Eric Cantor probably represents half of my core values. Being Jewish and American and European does not put you in a box. This is further proof that this country should have more than just two (counting) parties; A truly right wing conservative, a middle-of-the-road and a truly left wing party. You know where most of us would find each other. (well-written Allison Hoffman!)

  • Dana

    The article does not include information about the Richmond Jewish Community as being majority Republican. I am from the midwest and moved to Richmond, VA seven years ago. The biggest culture shock was meeting so many Jewish Republicans! I have to search for Jewish Democrats here. I’m wondering if any studies have been done of the current Jewish population of smaller communities and their politics. If it’s like Richmond then the Democrats like me are in the minority.

  • Benjamin

    American Jews are left wing but the rest of the world Jews, Israelis first, French and Russian Jews next, are right wing and usually very right wing.
    Liberal Jews are the anomaly, not the norm.

  • Gibson Block

    Someone who is kosher doesn’t eat an egg salad sandwich from a regular restaurant.

    When Joe Lieberman ran with Al Gore he was touted as being orthodox. Then I saw a picture of his wife jogging in gym shorts and a t-shirt and I knew it wasn’t true.

    This is kosher and orthodox according to people who don’t know what it means.

  • http://keshertalk.com Yehudit

    “…..Feb 8, 2011 at 11:13 AM
    To use my grandmother’s worldview — which I enthusiastically share — a Jewish Republican is a shande. Whatever happened to the world captured in Milton Himmelfarb’s pithy observation that we “live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans”?….”

    So Jews are not supposed to be individuals, but must all have the same ideology. I live in NYC and think Eric Cantor is great, and I know other Jews like me.

    And you know, some Puerto Ricans don’t vote the way you think they should either. I met them while campaigning for McCain in 2008. Blacks too – there were over 30 black GOP candidates for office in 2010, although some lost their primaries, some were elected, mostly by whites who truly judge people by the content of their character – and their ideas – rather than the color of their skin. We’re all leaving the Democratic plantation – the world is a bigger place than you are comfortable with.

  • http://www. Fake History

    Yes, almost all the U.S. Presidents had provable Jewish ancestry. The reason why they concealed their Jewish ancestry is obvious, however one must understand the entire origins of the cabal that declared the independence of the U.S. and among whom many served as President. The founding fathers were not Christians, they were crypto-Jews who concealed their true religion by posing as Deists and organizing others under their yoke through the crypto-Jewish cabal known as the Freemasons. Freemasonry was invented by crypto-Jewish members of the Knights Templar who had fled France and other parts of Europe after being tipped off of the planned executions of the Knights Templar on Friday the 13th of October 1307 a day which has since resulted in the stigma of bad luck of on Friday the 13th of October. The crypto-Jewish Knights Templar fled with the treasures they had accumulated through their monopoly over European usury granted by special favors by the Pope through the threat of exposing secrets learned through the Knight’s Templar’s expeditions to the Holy Land during the Crusades that would delegitimize the power of the Pope.
    Source(s):
    “Rule by Secrecy” by Jim Marrs, and various other sources that I don’t recall at the moment

  • http://@tampabay.rr.com Roberta Gerlach

    Cannot tolerate a politician who uses his Jewishness, (certainly not his faith!), to lobby for attention, and who cowtows to what he assumes is a “Christian country”, ignoring all the other minority faiths and religious practices. Try a review of the Bill of Rights to recognize what the US stands for, which you swore to uphold. Keeping Kosher does not make a person Jewish in faith and in conduct.

  • Nachum

    I’d be interested in the level of Jewish education of all of those here saying that Cantor doesn’t represent “true Jewish values.” These people wouldn’t know “true Jewish values” if someone opened a Torah and read it to them.

    Georg von Starkermann is funny. He says parties change and then clings to outdated stereotypes of Democrats and Republicans that probably were never true in the first place.

    Gibson Block, Cantor doesn’t claim to be Orthodox.

  • Barry

    Can’t wait for the American Muslim community to finally gets its way and violently impose the shari’ah. We’ll see how far all that liberalism and sympathy for the devil gets those liberal Jews who voted for Rev. Wright’s disciple.

    How’s that alliance with the black community working out for ya, you stupid liberal Jews? LOL

  • Phyllis Miller

    I hope not!!!!! Where is Cantor’s feeling about charity? and empathy?
    His parents may be Kosher but he is not!

  • Nathan

    Really? That’s really his own hair?

  • Gil

    That’s right,Eric, keep bashing gay rights. It will help you among
    the bigotted goyim who will say: “He’s not like a real Jew.” Shame
    on you! P.S. Eric, should Jews be forbidden from marrying Christians?

  • Not Michael

    Oswald Gasser said, “Some people don’t like him because he is a Jewish guy, but look, I’m thoroughbred German on both sides, and if anyone was going to dislike him for that, it would be me.”

    What the hell does that mean? Is he saying that it’s normal of Germans to hate Jews? What kind of farkakte logic is that?

    “But everyone deserves to be represented. He goes to the Jewish church. I don’t because I’m a Baptist. It’s all right.”

    And it’s not called a “church” Mr. Gasser. Even German has a word for it: Synagoge.

  • Bill Pearlman

    These responses are amazing. Eric Cantor is an observant Jew who has risen to a high level. But to people like Phyllis Miller he might has well be Satan. Why? I really am interested in the reasoning.

  • Bill Pearlman

    And Gil, how come you can’t see where someone who actually attends synagogue might not think that gay marriage is the greatest development since polio vaccine. Does it rate insults.

  • Peter

    Cantor irritates Obama and he talks slow. I like him a lot.

  • Gil

    Bill,
    If attending synagogue means that you are justified in denying
    equal rights to all Americans, then I’m going to stop going
    to shul. Gil

  • matt

    This man is on the verge of wrecking the US economy. Is that good for the Jews or for Israel? He is clueless. I especially like the Richmond enablers who support him merely because he is Jewish, regardless of what his policy positions are.

  • http://cherrypickerrental.net Cherry Picker Rental

    Thanks for a lovely write up.

  • http://yahoo larry

    Eric Cantor signed a pact with Grover Norquist, founder of the Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative non-profit that is against any kind of tax increase. The pact or pledge was signed by 230 House Congressmen and 40 Senators. Grover Norquist has had ties with Islamic Supremacist, jihadists and Islamic terrorists for years. He founded the Islamic Free Market Institute, founded also with funding from Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi and Dr. Sami Amin Al-Arian who were later convicted on terroism charges. His wife is a Palestinian Muslim and has been accused of having connections with the Muslim Brotherhood. Norquist also supported building a mosque in New York City down the street from the twin towers destroyed by Islamic terrorists. Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform were mentioned in Senate testimony relating to the lobbying scandal for which Abramoff pled guilty in 2006. Norquest denied that he did anything wrong, records released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee allege that ATR served as a “conduit” for funds that flowed from Abarmoff’s clients to surreptitiously finance grass-roots lobbying campaigns. Eric Cantor signed a pact to do the bidding of a known terrorist supporter and sympathizer. It is appalling and puzzling why a man would support someone who supports terrorists that have vowed to destroy Israel and America!

  • Bill Pearlman

    Larry, I could ask you the swame exact things about Barack Hussein Obama. With way more justification.

  • http://libertysspirit.blogspot.com Independent Patriot

    I was raised in the same South as Rep. Cantor. I can tell you that where I lived, Jews were not respected nor welcome. (By the way, all those Jew haters in the South during the 1960s happened to be southern Democrats.) However, I do know who my friends are today and it is not the Democratic Party. What I also know is that the Democrats have vaulted to the Oval Office one of the worst antisemites in Presidential history. (Yes, Obama has Jews in office. But just because you sleep with a Jew does not mean you are not an antisemite.)

    Unfortunately the Jews of the US have yet to recognize their real mistake. As indicated by even the tenure of this article, the only thing that liberal Jews worry about is abortion. What these diehard Jewish Democrats fail to understand is that if you have no economy, no military and have lost your right to exist(because whether Jewish-American like it or not, those that want to commit genocide against Israel are not fond of any Jews), abortion is the least of your problems.

    Lastly, the United States is a Christian nation. It is predominantly, 95%, Christian, and the society is geared toward Christian values and holidays. While the Constitution does not allow for a state religion, that had more to do with the recent wars the founding father s faced between Protestant and Catholics in Europe and had nothing to do with Jews, Moslems and other other minority religions.Only the delusional think that they are living in a purely secular society. Try going shopping on Christmas, or Easter and then tell me how this is not a Christian Nation.

  • chgohunt

    As someone who grew up in Virginia, as a Jew, at the same time as Cantor … I can only say “feh.” This is a man who despite being raised in a Jewish home, became a racist, bigoted, self-loathing representative of all that is most wrong with this country at this time. He learned nothing about what it means to truly be a Jew — instead, he spouts hate. A sad thing for the country, for his state, and for the his religion.

  • Bill Pearlman

    How do you figure him has racist, bigoted, and self loathing. Please enlighten me.

  • http://yahoo larry

    He hangs around with and is best friends with racist,bigoted,self loathing,greedy,corrupt people that make up the Tea Party. The Republicans have aligned themselves with these “puritanical right-wing extremists” and now hold the American taxpayer and system hostage because they refuse to compromise on a debt ceiling proposal that cuts spending and raises revenue from those who can afford it the most. He has signed a pact with the devil named Grover Norquist who has aligned himself with Muslim radical terrorists who have vowed to destroy Israel and America. Eric Cantor has become his servant, and all Grover has to do is pull his strings and Cantor performs to whatever he says and wants Eric to do! He has turned his back on Jews and now serves the Tea Party Puritans who together with Norquist will throw him to the dogs once they finish with him.

  • http://www.kitchenchaircushion.org Kitchen Chair Cushions

    Thanks for a lovely post.

  • http://aa2255563.com a2255563

    I’ve said that least 2255563 times. The problem this like that is they are just too compilcated for the average bird, if you know what I mean

Thank You!

Thank you for subscribing to the Tablet Magazine Daily Digest.
Please tell us about you.

The Gentleman From Virginia

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history, hails not from the urban melting pot but from a Southern, explicitly Christian America