Ivanka’s Rabbi Insists No Green Light For Travel On Shabbat
Rabbi Haskel Lookstein Image by YouTube
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the prominent modern Orthodox rabbi who oversaw Ivanka Trump’s conversion to Judaism, said he is not the rabbi who gave the first daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner a dispensation to fly on Air Force One on Shabbat.
Lookstein told Isaac Herzog, leader of the opposition Zionist Union party, that it was “fake news” that he had given them permission to travel by plane on Shabbat for President Donald Trump’s first international trip, the daily Yediot Acharonot newspaper reported on Sunday. The report was picked up by several Israeli newspapers in advance of Trump’s arrival on Monday afternoon.
Lookstein also told Herzog, according to Yediot, that he had not been in contact with Ivanka Trump for several weeks. The couple moved to Washington DC shortly after Donald Trump was elected, and both serve as official advisers to the president.
The couple also was seen traveling to meetings by car in Saudi Arabia on Saturday.
A White House official, reported by Politico on Friday, said the couple, who are Orthodox Jews, received a rabbinical dispensation to join the president aboard Air Force One when he off on his first overseas trip on Friday, according to the report.
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