Rahmbo’s rabbi

Rahm Emanuel, the take-no-prisoners Dem just elevated to Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, is also a committed modern Orthodox Jew. How committed? According to the Jerusalem Report, he asked his rabbi’s halachic opinion before agreeing to stay late on a Friday night to work on the Wall Street bailout package. Rabbi Asher Lopatin, who […]

Rahm Emanuel, the take-no-prisoners Dem just elevated to Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, is also a committed modern Orthodox Jew.

How committed?

According to the Jerusalem Report, he asked his rabbi’s halachic opinion before agreeing to stay late on a Friday night to work on the Wall Street bailout package.


Rabbi Asher Lopatin, who heads Emanuel’s modern Orthodox congregation in suburban Chicago, said he ” told him it was my halachic opinion that the financial system was on the point of failing and it could be a disaster, and this was a matter of life and death, to get this passed, as long as the violation was kept to a minimum.”

“This is modern Orthodoxy at work – committed to Judaism, but committed to making it a better world,” Lopatin said.

Illustration by The Economist.

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