PITTSBURGH — Rabbi Seth Adelson was leading a Shabbat morning service at Beth Shalom Synagogue six years ago, about half a mile from where a gunman opened fire on a congregation at Tree of Life Synagogue, killing 11 people in the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history.
“What was really striking and really heartwarming in the wake of that shooting on Oct. 27, 2018, was the fact that we felt so embraced and loved and supported by all the people around us, all the non-Jewish friends and allies,” Adelson said.
He said he did not feel that same love and support in the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023, after the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel that killed about 1,200 people, which prompted Israeli military action in Gaza that’s still ongoing. “All of those people who we thought were allies, our non-Jewish friends, suddenly weren’t there with us,” said the rabbi from Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.
It’s a feeling permeating the heavily Jewish neighborhood — and one that has affected how the swing-state community has processed the 2024 election. Amid a somber anniversary and with Election Day on the horizon, concerns about rising antisemitism are at the forefront of many voters’ minds.
Squirrel Hill resident Rona Kaufman said she volunteered for John Kerry’s 2004 Democratic presidential campaign, donated to Barack Obama’s campaign, took her kids with her to vote for Hillary Clinton and went to a Black Lives Matter rally in Squirrel Hill holding her “Jews for Black Lives Matter” sign. Now, she calls her plan to vote for former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 “shocking.”
“I am so disappointed with the Democratic Party. And I’m really concerned about Harris’ view on Israel as reflected by some of the advisers that she has selected,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman views the Israel-Hamas war as “front line of a fight for liberal values, human rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, LGBTQIA rights, religious freedom, democracy and the rule of law. That’s what I see it as. And that’s what I’m voting for.”
Kaufman is convinced more Jews are going to be voting Republican in this election than in any election in recent memory.
But Kaufman’s political journey isn’t universal. Lynda Wrenn is a longtime Democrat who says she is “definitely” voting for Harris.
She and Kaufman have the same fears and concerns when it comes to antisemitism and Israel, but they have different opinions on which candidate will be best for the safety of the Jewish community.
“I don’t believe a word Trump says, period, much less how he is trying to court Jewish voters. He talks out both sides of his mouth. He says that he loves us and then he says if he loses, it’s all our fault. So he’s scapegoating us and pandering to us at the same time and it rings hollow,” Wrenn told NBC News.
In recent days, Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly told The New York Times that he heard Trump praising Adolf Hitler on multiple occasions (which Trump has denied), and the retired four-star general also said he thinks Trump meets the definition of a “fascist.” Harris has echoed that language, and the Trump campaign responded with an advertisement featuring a Holocaust survivor decrying Harris for putting that label on Trump.
Wrenn, who has experienced the rise of antisemitism firsthand in the last year, getting sneered at for wearing a Star of David, says she can sympathize with members of her community who are single-issue voters this time around.
Out of all the battleground states, Pennsylvania has the highest concentration of Jewish voters — about 300,000, according to a Brandeis University estimate, in a state that President Joe Biden won by approximately 80,000 votes in 2020 and Trump won by 44,000 votes in 2016.
Republicans are aiming to make inroads with Jewish voters and chip away at the margins, with groups including the Republican Jewish Coalition spending big on ads like one featuring three Jewish women discussing antisemitism at an iconic Jewish deli in the Philadelphia suburbs.
One of the women at the table says Harris is “busy defending the squad.” She later says “I have never voted Republican in my life but I am voting Trump.”
Back in Squirrel Hill, two Jewish women chatting about politics who spoke to NBC News, Jackie Orlanksy, 90, and Barbara Walko, who is in her 80s, gave off a similar vibe to the women featured in ad — except they are both Democrats voting for Harris.
“All he does is lie, and some of the things that he said are just so absolutely mind-boggling that he could stand in front of people and talk the way he talks,” Walko said of Trump.
While Israel and antisemitism are top issues for both Orlansky and Walko, they say there are lots of issues to look at this election cycle.
Orlasnky also pointed out that Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish.
“She is married to a Jewish man, and he seems like a very genuine, kind person,” Orlanksy said.
“[That] does make a difference,” Walko echoed.
While both women are excited to cast their ballots for Harris, they will be breaking with the Democratic Party on their local congressional race, voting against Democratic Rep. Summer Lee.
Many members of the local Jewish community say they were deeply offended by Lee’s statement on the anniversary of Oct. 7, co-signed by other Democratic leaders in Pittsburgh, that did not place direct blame on Hamas. Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, a Lee endorser running for re-election himself this year, put out a statement condemning Lee’s.
Jeremy Kazzaz, the executive director of the Beacon Coalition, a nonprofit engaged in voter education and outreach focused on the concerns of the Jewish American community, will be voting for Harris but will cast his ballot for some Republicans in down-ballot races in Pennsylvania.
He says the Jewish community has felt a “political awakening” after the terror attacks on Oct. 7, and if that does not manifest in the presidential race, there could be signs of it in down-ballot races.
“There has been, I think, a fairly seismic shift of people in this community from all religious and political levels who realize that they have to participate more in elections, educate themselves more, and evaluate candidates based on their individual attributes,” he said, “as opposed to engaging in straight party-line voting as they may have been doing for many years.”
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