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Amanda Renteria, the national political director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, was running through the campaign’s messages for minorities and women: immigration for Hispanics, land use for Native Americans, various policies for defending children and women.
She didn’t mention Jews in her July 26 briefing for specialty media, and there’s a reason for that: There wasn’t a Clinton issue that was unique to the Jews.
When asked to mention some, Renteria looked to Sarah Bard, who directs Jewish outreach for the campaign. Bard acknowledged that targeted messaging was a challenge for Jewish voters, particularly young Jewish voters.
“The Jewish millennial community is tremendously diverse,” Bard said.
Whereas older Jewish Democrats once coalesced around Israel as an issue, that’s a harder sell for younger Jewish Democrats, who increasingly question the actions of its hawkish government. Hence the Democratic Jewish message relies on Jewish terms for familiar vague themes — Bard cited kehilla, the Hebrew word for community.
“One of the strongest Jewish values is the value of kehilla,” she said before acknowledging, “We do have work to do with millennials.”
Bard also spoke to the power of personalities.
“We had Sarah Silverman on the stage last night,” she said, referring to the headline-making moment on July 25 when the Jewish comedian told staunch Bernie Sanders backers who were disrupting the Democratic National Convention, “You’re being ridiculous.”
Sanders and the following he built among younger Democrats is emblematic of the challenges facing the Democratic establishment.
Shabbos Kestenbaum, a 17-year-old student at the liberal Orthodox SAR Academy in Riverdale, New York, sported a “Jewish Americans for Bernie” button at the convention.
“In light of the recent Debbie Wasserman Schultz scandal, the model for Jewish Democrats should be Bernie Sanders, for transparency and integrity,” he said.
By contrast, Brianne Nadeau, 35, a member of the Washington, D.C., municipal council and a Clinton delegate, said Jewish women like herself had looked to Wasserman Schultz for inspiration. She was wary of Sanders-driven talk of dismantling existing structures.
“As a member of the next generation, I want to challenge people who came before me as well as respect them,” Nadeau said.
Bard and Renteria described an intensely active Jewish campaign, with phone banks for rabbis and community leaders who call one another for support and ideas, and then report back to the campaign on successes and setbacks. A staffer is headed to Ohio the first week of August to work campuses there. And there are Jewish house parties for Hillary and meetings of Jewish women.
Going forward, there would be appeals asking Jews in “safe” states to campaign in swing states, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Colorado.
But the elusiveness of a single unifying message was evident at a Jewish roundtable organized by Bard on July 26. Speakers focused on tikkun olam, repairing the world, a phrase that has become a catch-all for the Democratic social justice agenda.
“Donald Trump is not a tikkun olam kind of guy,” said Pennsylvania state Sen. Daylin Leach. “He’s more a destroy olam kind of guy.”
In Bard’s opening remarks, it was clear that Israel, once a unifying factor for Jewish voters, was not going to cut it anymore.
“We have no greater ally in keeping the world safe than Israel,” she said, using a one-time surefire applause line that this time was met with silence.
Speaking earlier at a J Street session, journalist Peter Beinart, who has written extensively about the drift away from Israel among millennials, said Jewish leaders needed to retool. He said the ethos of facing down threats that motivated earlier generations no longer inspire a generation of Jews distant from the Holocaust and born after Israel’s defining wars of defense.
He lauded J Street, the liberal Middle East lobby, and American Jewish World Service, which fights global poverty and defends LGBTQ rights abroad, for tailoring their missions along lines that could appeal to younger Jews.