Jewish Insider
The clusters of New York Orthodox Jews backing Biden
MINORITY OF A MINORITY
Groups launched on social media and WhatsApp have amassed small followings in some Orthodox communities
Joe Biden speaks during the funeral for U.S. Sen Frank Lautenberg, in New York's Park Avenue Synagogue, Wednesday, June 5, 2013.
October 30, 2020
This group of activists isn’t very vocal within its own community.
“Remember, for some, being vocally pro-Biden or anti-Trump can be problematic or even dangerous in certain families/social circles/workplaces/communities,” reads the description of a recently launched WhatsApp group of Orthodox Jews that aims to garner support for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
WhatsApp is a major source of news and coordination among many traditional segments of the Jewish community, and the group, created recently by Chaim, a resident of the Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn — who refused to go on record with his last name for fear of retribution — currently has 73 members and is active around the clock.
Chaim and the other activists involved are part of a small but committed group within New York’s Orthodox Jewish community, which traditionally votes for Republican candidates in national elections. Close to 80% of the community voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012, respectively. According to a 2016 exit poll in Brooklyn’s 48th Assembly District — which encompasses most of the Borough Park neighborhood — President Donald Trump received 69% of the vote, while Hillary Clinton got 27%.
This year — amid a pandemic and heightened tensions between Democratic elected officials in the city and the local Jewish community — the president is expected to receive well over a majority of the Orthodox Jewish vote in his home state. A recent poll published by Ami Magazine, a weekly print-only publication widely read in the Orthodox community, found that 83% of Orthodox Jews support Trump’s reelection. A survey conducted for the American Jewish Committee showed a similar result, giving Trump a 74%-18% edge over Biden among Orthodox Jews.
“What I found fascinating is that no one within my social circles was open with their political views unless they were Trump supporters,” Chaim told Jewish Insider on Thursday. “I had a couple of friends who quietly were Biden supporters, but there was kind of this understanding that if you don’t support Trump — as a Jew — you will be labeled an outsider, and you will be ostracized and maligned.”
Chaim said he was initially fascinated by Trump’s outsider persona and commitment to shaking up the political system, but later became disillusioned with the president. He attributes his switch to supporting Biden to a number of issues: the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, an uptick in antisemitism, the president’s rhetoric regarding his political opponents and the ways in which he saw support for Israel increasingly framed as a partisan issue.
That’s when Chaim began to quietly share his concerns with friends and found other below-the-radar Biden supporters. He was motivated to create the group following recent protests opposing state and local government-imposed lockdowns in Borough Park, where some residents had continued to flout social distancing rules. He launched a Twitter handle, @FrumJews4Joe, and the private WhatsApp group to serve as a “safe environment” for members who “don’t feel safe talking about their convictions or their ideologies, or that they are politically diverse from what’s become mainstream of Orthodox Jewry.”
