How Sanders is driving up Jewish support for Hillary

While Clinton is not well-liked in the Orthodox Jewish community, an electorate that voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney by almost 80 percent, the comments made by Sanders has motivated the bulk who are registered as Democrats to cast their first-ever vote for Hillary Clinton, according to a dozen Jewish voters interviewed for this story.

“Many Orthodox Jewish Democrats who engaged me, were previously indifferent or even negative towards Hillary Clinton,” Chaskel Bennett, a local community leader and board member of Agudath Israel of America, told Jewish Insider on Saturday. “People I spoke with now feel it imperative‎ to go out and vote against Bernie Sanders.”

“Several callers on my radio show told me they were abandoning Bernie for Hillary because of his negative comments towards Israel,” Greenfield“>published this week. It’s not clear whether his comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have any influence on the actual outcome of the vote. Nevertheless, there are three congressional districts in New York City that could be in play on Tuesday, and all three of them have a strong Jewish presence. If Sanders thought he could have a chance to beat Clinton by driving up the vote in Park Slope, in Flatbush and Lower Manhattan, among others, Jewish voters in those districts now have a chance to make a difference by preventing him from picking up more delegates.

“If the Sanders campaign was on a mission to alienate undecided NY Jewish Democrats, my message to them would be, ‘mission accomplished,’” said Bennett.

Daniel Sieradski, an organizer of the group “Jews for Bernie” which has 8,000 supporters on Facebook and 2,700 followers on Twitter, pushed back against the critics, painting them as right-wing extremists. “Before Bernie said anything about Israel on campaign trail, Orthodox Democrat machine declared for Hillary and said he was a self-hating Jew,” he tweeted. Sieradski told AFP, “I don’t think it’s political suicide, but it definitely didn’t help him among people who have hard-line views on Israel.”

Professor Alan Abbey, director of internet and media at Shalom Hartman Institute, who covered Sanders in the 1980′s at the for the Burlington Free Press, believes that sweeping statements as to how well Bernie will do among Jews in the Democratic primary are impossible since the New York Jewish population is so diverse. “Orthodox Jews, some of whom are coming out as openly Republican even in Democratic New York, will oppose him not only for his Israel stance, but for many of his liberal social ideas,” Abbey told Jewish Insider. “He will presumably do well on the UWS, while mainstream, suburban Jews will likely split their votes between the two candidates, because of a welter of issues, with Israel not being in the forefront.”

Laura Rosenberger, a foreign policy advisor for Hillary Clinton, appeared on “Community Matters” with Leon Goldenberg, a Saturday night radio show focused on issues that matter to the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, to discuss Clinton’s stance on Israel among others. “When we think about the challenges that the next president is going to walk into the Oval Office and face, I think that there’s a very clear choice that New York voters will face on Tuesday,” Rosenberger said. “And Hillary Clinton not only has the record and experience getting things done, but she has the plan to actually keep our country safe, to protect Israel, and to take that relationship to the next level.”

Clinton scored key endorsements by both Satmar factions, as well as personal endorsements by, Sol Werdiger, Chairman of the Board of Agudath Israel of America, and Rabbi Genack, head of the OU kashrus division.

Yeger predicts Clinton will receive “stronger support in Brooklyn’s Jewish neighborhoods than she’s received in any previous election.”

The Republican presidential candidates have also courted the Jewish vote in the week leading up to the New York primary. Ted Cruz “>remindedNew Yorkers about the Obama administration boycotting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress last year during a speech at the New York State GOP dinner on Thursday. John Kasich also visited Jewish communities in “>Long Island. And Donald Trump met on Thursday with some 30 representatives of  Jewish news media outlets, in which he