Bernie Sanders Says Being Jewish Is ‘Essential’
Image by Getty Images
Bernie Sanders said being Jewish is “essential” to who he is.
Sanders was asked during the Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Michigan, on Sunday evening about reports that Jews were disappointed that he appeared to be have downplayed his Jewishness during his campaign.
“I am very proud to be Jewish, and being Jewish is so much of what I am,” Sanders, an Independent senator from Vermont, replied.
“Look, my father’s family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust,” said Sanders, 74, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, and whose father emigrated to the United States from Poland.
“I know about what crazy and radical, and extremist politics mean,” he said. “I learned that lesson as a tiny, tiny child when my mother would take me shopping, and we would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms because they were in Hitler’s concentration camp. I am very proud of being Jewish, and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being.”
Sanders’ relationship to his Jewish identity was never much of a national issue during his decades as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and then as a senator from Vermont.
His history making bid for the presidential nod brought the question to the fore, however, and in two earlier debate appearances he appeared to avoid raising it, even when it was clearly an issue.
Asked at a debate in February about the historic potential of his rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, becoming the first woman president, Sanders said someone of his “background” moving into the White House would be historic as well, without specifying that he would be the first Jewish president.
Sanders made history last month when he became the first Jewish candidate to win a nominating election, in New Hampshire.
He won handily in Maine on Sunday, the eighth contest he has won compared to Clinton’s 12. She continues to lead substantially in delegates. The next major contest is in Michigan, on Tuesday, and the former secretary of state is leading Sanders in polling.
Sanders and Clinton agreed on much during their debate, particularly on the need for accountability in Flint, where state government decisions about water piping have led to mass contamination of the drinking water.
They clashed on other issues. On gun control, Clinton highlighted Sanders’ opposition in the past to some measures. On the economy, Sanders emphasized his opposition to the 2008 bailout of the finance sector and Clinton’s Wall Street ties, while Clinton honed in on Sanders’ failure to support the automobile manufacturer bailout of the same year, which proved critical to protecting jobs in Michigan. And on trade, Sanders said he favored greater protections, while Clinton defended international commerce as healthy for the U.S. economy.
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
