Is Yang ready for prime time? His gaffes certainly are

The New York City mayoral race has been going on for over a year, but Andrew Yang is its unlikely disrupter. Since he tossed his brown Stetson into the race earlier this month, his quirky mannerisms and national following garnered from his presidential bid have rocketed him to the top of the pack, according to an internal poll his campaign shared.

With the sensation comes the attention, though. Twice in the past few weeks he’s been forced to issue clarifications to policies he announced that alarmed the Orthodox community.

Is the 46-year-old entrepreneur against bris milah, as he said last year in a little-seen policy? In a city where a recent mayor tried regulating the practice, askanim’s antennae went full sonar.

No, no, no, no, he hastened to correct in a series of tweets to reporters who asked that question. He’s against general circumcision for medical reasons but would not infringe on religious beliefs.

The next gaffe came last week, when he suggested removing the property tax exemptions of universities. This could dig deeply into the budgets of yeshivah gedolahs. Yang hurried to set the record straight after a brief outcry, saying he was only referring to large institutions — such as his alma mater, Columbia University — that own vast amounts of real estate in prime areas.

Yang also left out any vestige of Jewish life in the video he released announcing his run. As a significant bloc of between 15 to 20 percent of likely voters, this is hard to explain.

But he seems intent on reaching out. An Agudah official tells me that they are planning a virtual meeting with Yang in early February.

Is Yang ready for prime time? His gaffes certainly are.

—Yochonon Donn

Backstory

Winston Churchill, to use a descriptive phrase, must be turning in his grave.

The British legend who supported a Jewish state even when it was unfashionable; whose father, Lord Randolph, was a philo-Semite even when fellow aristocrats turned up their noses at the Hebrews, would doubtless be shocked by what his grandson just wrote about Israel.

The country has “rightly earned many plaudits for having vaccinated its own people so quickly,” wrote Sir Nicholas Soames, a former government minister, in a letter to the Telegraph. “Regrettably, that is where its moral advantage collides horribly with its further conduct,” in being “prepared to vaccinate Palestinians in East Jerusalem, and delivering the vaccine to illegal Israeli settlers in Palestine, but not to Palestinians living in their own country, despite its legal obligation to do so as the occupying power.”

Sir Winston, a prolific coiner of pithy phrases, would doubtless have had a sharp retort to the absurd claims.

But failing that, Israeli health minister Yuli Edelstein’s response to BBC interviewer Andrew Marr will have to do.

“Israel has an interest in seeing the Palestinians vaccinated,” he said, “but our only duty is to Israeli citizens. Don’t they pay the taxes?”

147,000

The number of passengers who passed through Ben-Gurion Airport in November 2020, a drop of tens of percent over the previous year, when more than two million people passed through the passenger hall each month.

Now it seems that this number will drop further. This week, the government announced the de facto closure of Israel’s main airport. The logic is simple: prevent more mutations of the virus from entering the country until after the vaccination campaign is over.

The move, however, raises a number of questions. First, why prevent the exit of those who want to go? Second, why close the airport at such short notice, including to the citizens stuck abroad?

It is important to remember that Ben-Gurion Airport also provides many jobs for security personnel, ushers, porters, and flight attendants. These are sectors already reeling from a very difficult economic year.

Closing the country’s gates to virus mutations is sensible, but only in a way that reduces the harm to the public and workers.

—Omri Nahmias

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 846)