Kushner's synagogue rabbi optimistic about DC's transition

• Author: RON KAMPEAS/JTA
• Date: 06 December 2020
• Published date: 06 December 2020
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

After all, Shemtov has been through decades of presidential transitions as Chabad's main man in Washington, and even though this one is unfolding unusually, he's confident he can continue to offer a spiritual home for people on both sides of the political aisle.

"I am a rabbi in the political arena," Shemtov told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "I'm not a politician in the rabbinical arena. There's a difference."

Shemtov directs American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), an outreach and fundraising body and synagogue for the global Hasidic outreach movement. Growing up, he watched Chabad negotiate Washington under the guidance of his father, Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, who launched the tradition of lighting a menorah in front of the White House. That was during the Carter administration, in 1979.

Levi Shemtov began running Chabad's DCoperations in 1992, the year that one one-term Republican president (George H.W. Bush) lost to a Democratic challenger (Bill Clinton). Twenty-eight years later, another Republican president has lost to a Democrat after his first term — but this time, members of the outgoing president's family belong to Shemtov's congregation.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner live a seven-minute walk from the shul, which doubles as Shemtov's home, and attend services there regularly. Shemtov's intimate and substantive relationship with the outgoing first family doesn't stop there: He also had a small role in the recent treaties between Israel and Arab states.

For years, he has played matchmaker between Jewish organizational leaders and some Arab nations, whose embassies neighbor his headquarters near Washington's Dupont Circle. Some of the seeds of the breakthrough Abraham Accords, signed in September between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, were in his impromptu blessing of the King of Bahrain at a 2008 event, which opened the door to further Arab-Jewish cooperation.

Now, not only is Joe Biden promising a 180 on just about every policy President Donald Trump introduced in his four years in office, but Trump has also broken virtually every norm aimed at facilitating a transition. The outgoing president is also rushing through executive orders that could cripple Biden's first months in office.

Shemtov is not fazed by the machinations of a Trump administration determined to sabotage liberal agendas on its way out the door, or by the calls from liberals for retribution on Trump and those adjacent to him.

He stresses that he's no politico. He has...