Sarah Palin’s Appeal

Jonathan Mark writes:

I’m getting a hunch the Republicans just might win for one reason alone, and it makes no sense, just like Chabad makes no sense to the Jewish elite.

That one reason is Sarah Palin. She reminds me of about a thousand different Chabad shluchot (the rebbe’s women representatives). She’s seems friendly, sexy (forgive me) in an Orthodox way, with that magnetism, optimism, and accessibility that has made Chabad shluchot successful in 5,000 different locales, even though they are almost always considerably more right-wing — religiously and politically — than their congregants and financial supporters.

Reform, Conservative and other Orthodox Jews don’t get it. How is Chabad is so successful in places where there are no Chasidim? Why do liberal Jews on the Upper West Side want to send their kids to Chabad pre-schools? Why do many hundreds of non-Chasidic, even non-Orthodox students at Harvard and SUNY Binghamton want to spend Friday night meals with these Chabad Sarah Palins rather than the more mainstream, liberal Jews down the road? It makes no sense.

Don’t get it, do you?

Who would you rather have a cup of coffee with on a bungalow porch, a cup that can turn into a three-hour conversation, Sarah Palin or Nancy Pelosi?

Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton come across like the Queen of Spades of a nanny state; school marms of a school you don’t want to go to. Pelosi, in particular, seems like one of those Sisterhood program chairs from a suburban temple whose calls you don’t want to answer.

Sarah Palin seems like one of those Chabad women who don’t have enough chairs at her table for all the non-Chabad women who’d take a plane or a subway to attend the next shluchot convention in Crown Heights.