New York Political Ad Slammed as ‘Anti-Orthodox’
The Anti-Defamation League is slamming an advertisement for a candidate for Rockland County sheriff as highly offensive for its negative portrayal of Hasidic Jews.
The ad for Richard Vasquez includes a photograph of Lou Falco, the current sheriff of the suburban New York county, surrounded by Orthodox Jews as a narrator says the sheriff “has refused to enforce illegal housing laws.” The video, titled “Where Does Louis Falco Stand on Illegal Housing?,” purportedly was posted on the Internet by the Rockland Republican Party, according to the ADL.
“We find the use of an image of visibly identifiable Jews in this campaign video to be deeply troubling, highly offensive, and inappropriate, as it essentially blames the Orthodox Jewish community for the substandard and illegal housing problems in Rockland,” the ADL’s New York regional director, Evan Bernstein, said in a statement. “Voters should be encouraged to make decisions about candidates based upon their qualifications, political positions and not on the basis of race or religion without offensive insertions ascribing blame on an issue to a particular religious group.”
Rockland County, which is estimated to be one-third Orthodox and includes the Hasidic village of New Square and the sprawling Orthodox community of Monsey, has seen intense infighting between the burgeoning Orthodox population and local opponents. A major focus has been the East Ramapo public school board, which has a Hasidic majority that has been stripping local public school budgets and selling off public school buildings to yeshivas at cut-rate prices.
“We urge Mr. Vasquez to edit the video and make clear that the crux of his campaign – and this county issue – has nothing to do with the Rockland Jewish community,” Bernstein said in the statement.
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
