{"id":113677,"date":"2017-04-16T06:28:45","date_gmt":"2017-04-16T14:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=113677"},"modified":"2017-04-16T06:28:45","modified_gmt":"2017-04-16T14:28:45","slug":"the-happy-go-lucky-jewish-group-that-connects-trump-and-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=113677","title":{"rendered":"The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Politico<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Chabad of Port Washington, a Jewish community center on Long Island\u2019s Manhasset Bay, sits in a squat brick edifice across from a Shell gas station and a strip mall. The center is an unexceptional building on an unexceptional street, save for one thing: Some of the shortest routes between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin run straight through it.<\/p>\n

Two decades ago, as the Russian president set about consolidating power on one side of the world, he embarked on a project to supplant his country\u2019s existing Jewish civil society and replace it with a parallel structure loyal to him. On the other side of the world, the brash Manhattan developer was working to get a piece of the massive flows of capital that were fleeing the former Soviet Union in search of stable assets in the West, especially real estate, and seeking partners in New York with ties to the region.<\/p>\n

Their respective ambitions led the two men\u2014along with Trump\u2019s future son-in-law, Jared Kushner\u2014to build a set of close, overlapping relationships in a small world that intersects on Chabad, an international Hasidic movement most people have never heard of.<\/p>\n

Starting in 1999, Putin enlisted two of his closest confidants, the oligarchs Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich, who would go on to become Chabad\u2019s biggest patrons worldwide, to create the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia under the leadership of Chabad rabbi Berel Lazar, who would come to be known as \u201cPutin\u2019s rabbi.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years later, Trump would seek out Russian projects and capital by joining forces with a partnership called Bayrock-Sapir, led by Soviet emigres Tevfik Arif, Felix Sater and Tamir Sapir\u2014who maintain close ties to Chabad. The company\u2019s ventures would lead to multiple lawsuits alleging fraud and a criminal investigation of a condo project in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the links between Trump and Chabad kept piling up. In 2007, Trump hosted the wedding of Sapir\u2019s daughter and Leviev\u2019s right-hand man at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort. A few months after the ceremony, Leviev met Trump to discuss potential deals in Moscow and then hosted a bris for the new couple\u2019s first son at the holiest site in Chabad Judaism. Trump attended the bris along with Kushner, who would go on to buy a $300 million building from Leviev and marry Ivanka Trump, who would form a close relationship with Abramovich\u2019s wife, Dasha Zhukova. Zhukova would host the power couple in Russia in 2014 and reportedly attend Trump\u2019s inauguration as their guest.<\/p>\n

With the help of this trans-Atlantic diaspora and some globetrotting real estate moguls, Trump Tower and Moscow\u2019s Red Square can feel at times like part of the same tight-knit neighborhood. Now, with Trump in the Oval Office having proclaimed his desire to reorient the global order around improved U.S. relations with Putin\u2019s government\u2014and as the FBI probes the possibility of improper coordination between Trump associates and the Kremlin\u2014that small world has suddenly taken on outsize importance.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s kind of Jews<\/p>\n

Founded in Lithuania in 1775, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement today has adherents numbering in the five, or perhaps six, figures. What the movement lacks in numbers it makes up for in enthusiasm, as it is known for practicing a particularly joyous form of Judaism.<\/p>\n

Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, recalled having this trait impressed upon him during one family wedding at which the two tables occupied by his first cousins, Chabad rabbis, put the rest of the celebrants to shame. \u201cThey were dancing up a storm, these guys. I thought they were black. Instead they\u2019re just black-hat,\u201d Klein said, referring to their traditional Hasidic garb.<\/p>\n

Despite its small size, Chabad has grown to become the most sprawling Jewish institution in the world, with a presence in over 1,000 far-flung cities, including locales like Kathmandu and Hanoi with few full-time Jewish residents. The movement is known for these outposts, called Chabad houses, which function as community centers and are open to all Jews. \u201cTake any forsaken city in the world, you have a McDonald\u2019s and a Chabad house,\u201d explained Ronn Torossian, a Jewish public relations executive in New York.<\/p>\n

Chabad adherents differ from other Hasidic Jews on numerous small points of custom, including the tendency of Chabad men to wear fedoras instead of fur hats. Many adherents believe that the movement\u2019s last living leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994, is the messiah, and some believe he is still alive. Chabad followers are also, according to Klein, \u201cremarkable\u201d fundraisers.<\/p>\n

As the closest thing the Jewish world has to evangelism\u2014much of its work is dedicated to making Jews around the world more involved in Judaism\u2014Chabad serves many more Jews who are not full-on adherents.<\/p>\n

According to Schmuley Boteach, a prominent rabbi in New Jersey and a longtime friend of Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, Chabad offers Jews a third way of relating to their religious identity. \u201cYou have three choices as a Jew,\u201d he explained. \u201cYou can assimilate and not be very affiliated. You can be religious and Orthodox, or there\u2019s sort of a third possibility that Chabad offers for people who don\u2019t want to go the full Orthodox route but do want to stay on the traditional spectrum.\u201d<\/p>\n

This third way may explain the affinity Trump has found with a number of Chabad enthusiasts\u2014Jews who shun liberal reform Judaism in favor of traditionalism but are not strictly devout.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Politico: Chabad of Port Washington, a Jewish community center on Long Island\u2019s Manhasset Bay, sits in a squat brick edifice across from a Shell gas station and a strip mall. The center is an unexceptional building on an unexceptional … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165,29752,13775],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chabad","category-donald-trump","category-russia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t