Rabbi Andy Bachman Bounced From Bernie Sanders Interfaith Roundtable

Rabbi Sara Luria wasn’t sure why she was called to participate in a panel discussion on faith and social justice with Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders just 45 minutes before it was to start.

Turns out she was a last-minute substitute for Rabbi Andy Bachman, who was scheduled to participate in the Saturday-night Sanders campaign event at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn Heights but was unceremoniously uninvited shortly before it was to begin.

The leading New York rabbi — formerly the spiritual leader of Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim and now director of Jewish content and community ritual at the 92nd Street Y — was dumped from the program for recent tweets favoring Sanders’ opponent Hillary Clinton.

The tweets were mild by the current standards of political rhetoric. On Saturday morning Bachman, an ardent sports fan, retweeted a post by the Clinton campaign touting an endorsement by Basketball Hall of Famer and author Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, adding it is “a great endorsement by a wise man.” Just a day earlier Bachman had tweeted, “I’m officially sick of the primaries and haven’t even voted yet.”

And on Tuesday Bachman retweeted a link to an op-ed in Haaretz by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, a former president of the Union for Reform Judaism, endorsing Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

But on Saturday night he wrote: “I was booted off tonight’s interfaith panel with @BernieSanders‬ because of some “pro-@HillaryClinton‬” tweets. So much for being a loyal Dem.”


http://forward.com/news/338799/rabbi-andy-bachman-bounced-from-bernie-sanders-interfaith-roundtable/#ixzz46EYddMhZ