Brooklyn Candidate Accused Of Adopting Jewish Husband’s Surname To Win Election
Image by Adam Kaz/iStock
(JTA) — An Orthodox Jewish judicial candidate in Brooklyn says one of her opponents changed her last name to that of her Jewish husband in order to win the race.
Civil court judicial candidate Caroline Piela ran for office under the last name Cohen, which she officially changed in February just weeks before she announced her candidacy despite being married since 2006, the New York Post reported.
Tehilah Berman, 49, also a candidate for the judgeship in Brooklyn’s 6th Municipal District, called the name change “deception,” according to the Post.
“Catering to religious groups is not proper in this democracy,” Berman, an Orthodox Jew from Flatbush, told the Post. “People should be proud of their religion and not make believe they are something else.”
Cohen won Tuesday’s election with 44.24 percent of the vote. Berman came in last in the field of four with 14.53 percent.
“To the extent that I received support from the Orthodox community, it was because those folks saw who I am and what I did,” Cohen told the Post
“I know Tehilah Berman is an Orthodox woman, and I believe her name to be very identifiably Jewish, and Ms. Berman did not do nearly as well as I did,” she said.
One of Cohen’s adds in Jewish publications in Brooklyn included the biblical quote, in Hebrew letters, “Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof,” or “justice, justice, you shall follow.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
