Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, a prominent New York rabbi who oversaw the conversion to Judaism of the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, sharply criticized President Donald Trump’s response to the violent white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Va, last weekend.
Lookstein weighed in on the issue Wednesday along with other rabbis at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, a modern Orthodox synagogue in Manhattan.
“We are appalled by this resurgence of bigotry and antisemitism, and the renewed vigor of the neo-Nazis, KKK, and alt-right,” the rabbis wrote in a letter to members of the synagogue and its affiliated Ramaz School. “While we avoid politics, we are deeply troubled by the moral equivalency and equivocation President Trump has offered in his response to this act of violence.
“We pray that our country heeds the voices of tolerance, and stays true to its vision of human rights and civil rights.”
Far-right protestors converged on Charlottesville in defense of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and fought with counterprotestors. Some of the protestors carried Nazi and Confederate flags, gave Nazi salutes and expressed anti-Semitic and racists views.
After police broke up the the rally, a white supremacist, James Fields, rammed his car into a crowd of the counterprotesters, killing one woman and injuring at least 19. Two police officers also died when their helicopter crashed while monitoring the rally.
President Donald Trump had said at a news conference Tuesday that not all the participants in the rally were white supremacists. Confronted about whether he was putting white supremacists and neo-Nazis on the same “moral plane” as the liberal and leftist counterprotestors, he said, “I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane.” Trump seemed to backtrack from his statement a day earlier condemning neo-Nazis and white supremacists for the violence.