Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Letters

How Elitist Jews Push People Like Me To Donald Trump

Noam Neusner’s recent opinion piece, perfectly encapsulates why establishment elites are losing Jews like me to Trump.

It was my vote — along with the votes of thousands of Florida Jews — that delivered our 99 delegates to Trump.

“Donald Trump, the most likely Republican candidate for president, has built within our party the nearest thing America has ever seen to a European nativist working class political movement,” Neusner wrote. “Such movements, to put it mildly, have never been good for the Jews.”

This is simply nothing but literary smut.

Neusner is essentially implying that Trump is the second coming of Hitler and that he intends to fashion a political system that persecutes Jews.

But to imply that Trump, the father of an Orthodox Jewish daughter and the grandfather of Jewish children, has nefarious designs on America’s Jewish populace is just ludicrous.

Please also “educate” me as to why encouraging a political system that makes life better for “working class” Americans is anathema to Jewish Americans? The sense of entitlement here is astounding. People who live a better life than 99.99% of Americans should not have the gall to play the victim.

I grew up in Northern Indiana, smack in the middle of the rust belt. Deindustrialization has destroyed so many communities there. These people aren’t motivated by anti-Semitism. They are motivated to improve their lives. I know this because I know them.

As a Jew who has met plenty of elitist coastal Jews and many working class American citizens (including many Jews; not all of us work in finance and media, you know), I’ll take the working class every time.

It would behoove the writers of this magazine to get out and meet more of their countrymen and women. Otherwise they’ll remain so out of touch with this country that it boggles the mind.

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

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.