Douglas Mastriano as Tevye would be an odd casting choice for a Republican candidate.
But Jaymie Bellet, who serenaded a crowd of Mastriano supporters on the last day of his bid to become Pennsylvania’s governor, suggested with her adaptation of a “Fiddler on the Roof” number that she saw the connection.
“All you do is work hard, there is absolutely no one who could say you are a bum!” Bellet sang at the rally Monday in Bucks County, to the melody of “If I Were a Rich Man.” The video was first posted by an Israeli journalist, Nadav Eyal.
“We want you to be the governor, that’s what all the people pray,” she sang in a faltering alto, strumming a guitar.
Bellet, a musician who works with Mitch Triestman, a minister of “Jewish evangelism,” adheres to Messianic Judaism, a movement that believes in the divinity of Jesus while claiming to practice Judaism. She says on her webpage that at age 42, “I became a believer in the Messiah Yeshua, through His great love, His outstretched arms, and His great judgment.” She says she had previously been a secular Jew who attended Hebrew school for two years as a child.
Mastriano, who has embraced former President Donald Trump’s claim that he won the 2020 election, also has mocked his rival, Josh Shapiro, for sending his children to a private school, which Mastriano has said is “elitist.”
Bellet referred once to Shapiro, whom polls showed leading in the final days of the campaign, during her serenade. She noted that Mastriano gives tours of the Gettysburg battlefield. Mastriano’s historical knowledge, she sings, is “nothing we could get from Sha-pi-RO, God, please, No!” and she shudders.
Mastriano’s wife has defended the candidate against criticism by saying that they love Israel more than most Jews do.