Senator Chuck Schumer: Shamer of the Jewish People

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) should be ashamed.

For years, we’ve all seen and heard Senator Schumer speak to his Jewish American constituents using popular Yiddishisms while eye-winking that he’s “one of us,” speaking up for our best interests.

Schumer loves to call himself the “Shomer” (guardian) of the Jewish people, a cute wordplay which sells to fond Jewish audiences. He drops every classic Yiddish word he knows when speaking to these crowds. “Shande,” “mishegas,” “kvell,” “schtick,” “mishpacha,” just to name a few, trying to replace his lack of Judaism with a sense of cultural sameness.

Increasingly, politicians who see the need to curry favor with Jewish voters employ this maneuver. In my home state of Maryland, retiring Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) said a Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) event in August: “Let’s also be clear that this administration, and it’s in Kamala Harris’s ‘kishkes’ to fight all forms of hate.”

Cardin has also been actively campaigning for Democratic candidate for US Senate, Angela Alsobrooks, in her run against popular former Governor of Maryland, Republican Larry Hogan in the overwhelmingly blue state, touting her Jewish cultural bona fides to a group of Baltimore-area Jewish leaders this past June.

Second Gentlemen Doug Emhoff, campaigning to Jewish voters on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris, has continuously been quoted regarding rising antisemitism, “Kamala feels it, as we say, in her kishkes.” Read: “She’s got our back.”

Politicking to the demographic is, of course, nothing new. But Schumer has taken it to new lows.

With the latest story, “House Education Committee: University leaders ‘turned their backs’ on Jewish students,” in today’s “Jewish Insider,” we learned that Schumer told elite university leaders, “that ‘the best strategy is to keep heads down’ and the senator and his staff suggested that the school’s leaders did not need to meet with Republicans.” Behind the scenes, and out of sight of his Jewish constituents, Schumer is actively defending antisemitism on college campuses, and worse, the mental and physical safety of Jewish students on American college campuses.

The story further reports that, “At Columbia, then-President Minochue Shafik allegedly revealed in internal communications with the chairs of the Board of Trustees that she had spoken with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who, according to Shafik, said that “the universities[‘] political problems are really only among Republicans,” effectively telling Shafik that this is not antisemitism, just a Republican vendetta which will hopefully soon end.

In March, Schumer called for Israel to replace sitting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an outrageous ploy, interfering in a close ally’s and sovereign nation’s electoral process, particularly egregious considering Schumer would undermine the sole Jewish state to curry favor with anti-Israel voters. In that same speech, Schumer listed Netanyahu and Hamas as two of the four obstacles to peace, making a jaw-dropping and despicable moral equivalence between the duly-elected leader of a democracy with cultish rapists and murderers.

In 2015, Schumer waited until his vote did not matter and would not block the horrible JCPOA Iran deal before finally making his vote of no. (Sadly, our very own Maryland Senator Ben Cardin did the same.) This tactic was based on the ability to defend himself to his Jewish constituents without hurting the deal’s enactment. Though Schumer voted no, the powerful Senator did not attempt to sway anyone else to vote against the deal. He then criticized President Trump for pulling out of the deal (as he promised during his campaign) in 2018, and supported Pres. Biden’s attempts to renew the deal in 2022.

But Schumer’s behind the scenes advice to former Columbia University President Shafik take the cake, indicating that his Yiddishisms and empty warmth to Jewish Americans are lipstick on a pig, covering the very real damage he is causing to not only Israel in the present and future, and not only “as a shomer” for Jewish Americans, but to young Jewish students on American campuses.

Shomer of the Jewish people? More like Shamer of the Jewish people.