The Buzz: The First Jewish President?

Wait a minute. Hold on. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is Jewish. Did you know that? Not assume, but know.

I ask because the media has been fairly silent about the senator’s religion, so much so that this morning, I woke up and thought: I think he’s Jewish. But then, I have a friend who’s an economist, and his last name is Goldstein, and he’s not Jewish. I need to get on Google right now!

Bernie Sanders is Jewish, everyone. More than that, he’s the first Jew to win a presidential primary (by a landslide, by the way). It’s a pretty significant milestone in American politics and in Jewish history, so why isn’t Sanders celebrating at a local synagogue? Because as he explained in The Washington Post last month, believing in God means “all of us are connected, all of life is connected, and that we are all tied together.” Put more simply, he’s secular.

Sanders is not running for office as a Jewish candidate. He’s not even a politician who happens to be Jewish. His faith, however he defines it, is a non-entity. And I kind of like that. I don’t think Sanders needs to identify himself based on others’ perceptions or aspirations. But that doesn’t mean we should pretend that how others view the senator is irrelevant.

We can stumble into a philosophical black hole about the nature of personal identity next time we’ve had three bottles of wine at 3 a.m., but for now, it’s worth pointing out that identity matters. While Sanders may not want to play the religion card, the card is in play, nonetheless—because more than ever, it sends the message that in America, you don’t necessarily have to pray to Jesus to earn votes. (But you do have to pray. Poll after poll shows Americans do not trust atheists.)

Contrast Sanders with his competitor. Hillary Clinton, after sidelining her chromosomes during her first run for the White House eight years ago, is now highlighting her gender. You don’t need Google to tell you that Clinton is a woman, of course, but if you’ve followed election politics for more than five minutes, you also don’t need to wonder if she is a woman running as a woman.

All of which makes the presidential campaign kind of exciting. For the second time, the Democratic nominee will be a type of person who you’d never have imagined would be the nominee not that long ago. The Republican party, too, has its share of diverse candidates. We’ve come a long way.

But not long enough. I suspect that were Sanders to run as a Jew, he’d face a tougher road ahead, perhaps thanks to unlikely critics. More than one Jew I know has worried that were he to become President, he’d only stoke anti-Semitism. The concern is that while many people may not see Sanders as a Jewish candidate now, you best believe they’d view him as a Jewish president.

But hey, at least we’d get to see more of Larry David.