To many Jews, Ted Cruzâ??s attack on Donald Trumpâ??s â??New York valuesâ? sounds vaguely anti-Semitic. We are familiar with Republicans suspicious of â??money and the media,â? because 20 years ago they were the people complaining that the golf club was getting crowded with hook-noses. But to religious Jews like me, this vision of a materialistic, secular New York (â??The line to get into Abercrombie & Fitch,â? Cruz backer Kellyanne Conway explained, â??is a mile longer than the line to get into St. Patrickâ??s Cathedralâ?) also sounds downright delusional.
Why? Well, Cruz may think that New York hates religion: â??I apologize,â? he told Sean Hannity smugly, â??to the people of faith who are ridiculed and insulted by the New York media.â? But cookie-cutter, evangelical Christianity aside, New York is basically the capital of American religion. Within an easy walk of where I was raised in Brooklyn, literally thousands of intelligent Jewish men forgo careers in order to study Godâ??s law and raise large families in poverty. Offshoot communities in New Square and Lakewood notwithstanding, nowhere else in the United States can you find such intense piety and religious scrupulosity, let alone in such numbers.
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