MILWAUKEE — Shabbos Kestenbaum remembers the first time he felt lonely because he held an unpopular political opinion.
The year was 2008, and Kestenbaum was 9 and a student at a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where he lived. In a school journal, he decried the Iraq War and extolled a young senator running for president on a platform of opposing it.
“I remember with my dad, we bought a yard sign saying ‘Barack Obama’ in Hebrew,” Kestenbaum recalled in an interview on Wednesday afternoon. Soon, he recalled, a backlash began, at school and in synagogue, where he was told Obama “hates Jews, he hates Israel.”
The experience was top of mind for Kestenbaum on Wednesday afternoon as he prepared to take the stage at the Republican National Convention, where he was invited to speak because of his criticism of Harvard University in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
He would be speaking as a registered Democrat whose previous convention experience was in 2016, as a supporter of progressive Bernie Sanders at the Democratic confab that year in Philadelphia.
“It’s incredibly lonely,” he said of his battles with Harvard, where he just graduated from the Divinity School and which he has sued. “It’s been lonely at Harvard. It’s been lonely in the Jewish community, and it’s certainly lonely at the RNC.”
Not that one could tell from his reception at the convention here. He drew warm greetings from folks who recognized him. And as he took the main stage, Kestenbaum got a hero’s welcome for helping to knock a despised liberal institution, Harvard, back on its heels.
“I am a proud first-generation American, I am a proud Orthodox Jew, and as of five months ago, I am the proud plaintiff suing Harvard University for its failure to combat antisemitism,” he said when he walked onto the stage, to whoops and cheers.
The concerns he raised about Harvard after Oct. 7 helped spur congressional hearings where tough questions from Republican lawmakers helped force the resignation of President Claudine Gay. He is the only named litigant of six Jewish students who in January sued the university.
“If people are going to provide me a platform to speak in front of millions of people to talk about my lived experience, to talk about the need to bring back our hostages, to talk about the need to stand up with a critical ally in the Middle East — look, if the Democrats want me to speak at their convention, it’d be an honor,” he said. “But unfortunately, they’re not really interested in this story.”
A graduate displays a Palestinian flag during the 373rd Commencement at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 23, 2024. (Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Kestenbaum’s story began the night of Oct. 7, when he checked the WhatsApp channel for Divinity School students expecting consolation and instead found calls to exalt the Hamas terrorists who had massacred hundreds of Israelis.
“When I planted 1,200 American and Israeli flags on campus they were all vandalized within 24 hours,” he said in his speech, to sympathetic boos. “I was harassed by my peers merely for being a Jew and have received countless death threats online.”
Next week he appears in court as part of the lawsuit, which alleges that Harvard did not protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment. He wants damages, he says, and he wants Jewish donors to cut off the school until it makes changes.
“We hope that donors continue to see the moral bankruptcy at the center of Harvard and they pull up their funds,” he said.
In an interview hours before his speech, Kestenbaum would not say for whom he plans to vote in November, only that he would vote for policies, not personalities. But his speech left little doubt that, this year at least, his preferred policies overlap with Donald Trump’s promises.
“Let’s elect a president who will instill patriotism in our schools once again,” he said from the podium, mimicking the structure of the evening’s theme, Make America Strong Again. “Let’s elect a president who will confront terrorism and its supporters once again.” The audience erupted in cheers.
In the interview, Kestenbaum said he is aware of and concerned about antisemitism on the right, and listed the folks he would like to see purged from the party’s influence.
Shabbos Kestenbaum poses outside the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, July 17, 2024. (Ron Kampeas)
“I recognize that just as there is far-left antisemitism, of course, there’s far-right antisemitism,” he said. “The likes of Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes absolutely, I don’t pretend otherwise.”
A reporter reminded Kestenbaum that Carlson, who has peddled versions of an antisemitic anti-immigration conspiracy theory, sat alongside Trump in the same arena Kestenbaum would address two nights later. Carlson was reportedly key in persuading Trump to name as his running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
“It’s absolutely frustrating. It’s inappropriate, and I wish that the president wouldn’t sit with someone as despicable as Tucker Carlson,” Kestenbaum said. “I also wish that the Biden White House wouldn’t have individuals who worked for Students for Justice in Palestine when they were in college.” (The reference was to Maher Bitar, a National Security Council staffer who has drawn criticism over his pro-Palestinian advocacy in the mid-2000s.)
The outlook makes Kestenbaum a minority in a Republican Party that is being driven by its right wing. But he said he feels adrift, too, in a national Jewish community that overwhelmingly votes for Democrats.
Kestenbaum’s advocacy has made him a lightning rod for criticism. Even some Harvard students who agree with Kestenbaum that pro-Palestinian protests have veered into antisemitism say Kestenbaum’s rhetoric and tactics have at times been inflammatory.
“I know many of the Jewish community are upset with me because they make a lot of assumptions about my politics. I haven’t said the most perfect things. I haven’t been polished. I could have been more articulate,” Kestenbaum said.
“But at the end of the day, I’m in this fight now, not because I wanted to — I never saw myself being a spokesman or an advocate — but when you’re in an environment where students are cheering on the death of your people, I had no choice.”
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