For years, the presidential conference calls were a nonpartisan holiday tradition: President Barack Obama would speak by phone with hundreds of rabbis in advance of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, in what participants described as a meeting of minds, largely free of raw politics.
But that emerging tradition was thrown into jeopardy on Wednesday, in a sign of the still-intensifying backlash against President Trump’s response to the violence this month in Charlottesville, Va. Four coalitions of rabbis, hailing from different strains of American Judaism, publicly spurned Mr. Trump, denouncing him in unusually pointed language, and pre-emptively announcing that they would not participate in any conference call before the Jewish holidays next month.
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The organizations withdrawing from the call hail from three branches of American Judaism: the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism represent Reform Jews, while the Rabbinical Assembly is a coalition of Conservative rabbis. Reconstructionist leaders make up the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association.
Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center, said in an interview that events in Charlottesville had sent a deep shudder through the rabbinical community. He said Jews were appalled by the experience of rabbis in Charlottesville, who feared that they would become the targets of neo-Nazi violence, and by Mr. Trump’s equivocal response.
“Charlottesville created a new reality,” Rabbi Pesner said. “It’s not that big a rabbinical community. We’re all showing up for each other and there’s a lot of anger out there.”
Rabbi Pesner, who said he joined two conference calls for the High Holy Days during the Obama administration, said he and his colleagues had fully intended to speak with Mr. Trump before his handling of the Charlottesville aftermath. He said there was “a lot of sadness” at scrapping the call.
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