Rabbi who oversaw Ivanka Trump's conversion joins chorus criticizing president's Charlottesville response
President Donald Trump has faced all manner of criticism for his comments blaming "both sides" for the violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that killed a counterprotester.
Business executives, military officers, Democrats and even some fellow Republicans have weighed in with their condemnation.
Now it's getting personal.
The rabbi who oversaw the conversion of Trump's daughter Ivanka to Judaism has issued an open letter to Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, a Modern Orthodox synagogue on New York's Upper East Side, in which he castigated the president for his remarks.
"We are appalled by this resurgence of bigotry and anti-Semitism, and the renewed vigor of the neo-Nazis, KKK and alt-right," read the letter, published by New York Magazine and signed by rabbis Chaim Steinmetz, Elie Weinstock and Haskel Lookstein.
Lookstein presided over Ivanka Trump's conversion ahead of her 2009 wedding to Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew.
"While we avoid politics, we are deeply troubled by the moral equivalency and equivocation President Trump has offered in response to this act of violence," the letter said.
Neither Kushner nor Ivanka Trump have publicly addressed the president's vacillating comments on the violent confrontations Saturday in Charlottesville. Trump's daughter did issue a tweet on Sunday stating, "There should be no place in society for racism, white supremacy and neo-nazis."
_Los Angeles Times
