The Republican Jewish Coalition has been highlighting the presence on the 600-plus "Rabbis for Obama" list of a rabbi allied with the far-left group Jewish Voice for Peace. Now the RJC is announcing plans to highlight the issue with ads in Jewish newspapers in several swing states:
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The Republican Jewish Coalition today announced a print ad highlighting "Rabbis for Obama" member Lynn Gottlieb and her radical views. The ad will run nationally in Jewish newspapers next week, with a particular focus on Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Lynn Gottlieb, a rabbi in the Jewish Renewal movement, was among 600 people touted by the Obama campaign as "Rabbis for Obama." That list includes eight members of the left-wing fringe group Jewish Voice for Peace, which the Anti-Defamation League has named one of the "top ten anti-Israel groups." Lynn Gottlieb sits on the board of that group. She was also the first U.S. rabbi to travel to Tehran since the Iranian revolution and has dined with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Rabbi Sam Gordon, co-chair of "Rabbis for Obama," not only refused to remove Lynn Gottlieb from the list but, in fact, came to her defense and accused her critics of "demonizing" her.
One factual quibble about an assertion that is highlighted in both the RJC ad and the press release: It’s not clear that Gottlieb is actually "the first U.S. rabbi to travel to Tehran since the Iranian revolution." At least one-U.S.-based rabbi from the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta appears to have visited before her. (This is not to rule out the possibility that others have done so as well.)
Gottlieb, meanwhile, has told her side to Israeli and Jewish news outlets. Regarding the dinner she attended with Ahmedinejad, she told Haaretz that "everyone who spoke condemned Ahmadinejad for his Holocaust denial and his statement about Israel disappearing from history – Every single speaker." And she told the New York Jewish Week that she would not mind being removed from the list of rabbinic endorsers: "If they want me to, it would be fine. I would not want my association with Obama to harm his chances of getting elected.”
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