Posted on 09/23/2004 11:17:00 AM PDT by Chickamauga
For Kerry’s Jewish brother, pickle choice is order of day By Uriel Heilman
NEW YORK, Sept. 22 (JTA) — In a ritual well known to Jewish New Yorkers, Sen. John Kerry’s campaign participated in a tradition this week that long has been a prerequisite of campaigning in the city Rev. Jesse Jackson once infamously dubbed “Hymietown.” The campaign came to a kosher deli.
The Democratic nominee himself was busy stumping in Florida — a state where, unlike New York, the vote actually may matter this year — so his Jewish brother, Cameron Kerry, was dispatched to eat the obligatory smoked-meat sandwich on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
“I had the pastrami,” Kerry said when asked about his menu selection. “It was good pastrami — tender.”
By contrast, the Jewish journalists who joined Kerry for lunch ordered very non-Jewish-looking avocado wraps, chicken salads and tuna fish.
The stop Wednesday at Noah’s Ark deli on Grand Avenue, just steps away from a world-famous bialy purveyor, was sandwiched between a series of Jewish meetings for the candidate’s brother, who has become a key adviser to John Kerry (D-Mass.) and has been central to the campaign’s outreach to Jews.
Cameron Kerry spent the morning meeting a host of New York Jewish communal officials, and afterward he headed off to Flatbush, Brooklyn, to visit a garage of Hatzolah, the Jewish volunteer ambulance service, and then to a food pantry in Canarsie, Brooklyn, run by the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.
The lunchtime meeting at the deli, hosted by New York state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, was an opportunity for Kerry to talk to a small group about his brother’s positions — and his own Jewish predilections.
“Energy independence is a national security issue, not just an economic one,” Kerry said, critiquing President Bush’s energy policy. “Bush has taken his eye off the ball.”
But the talk quickly turned to more important issues — like pickles.
Kerry said he preferred the half-sour variety, which he demonstrated by biting into one. Silver, a Lower East Side native and an Orthodox Jew, chided him for his choice.
“The is the home of the sour pickle — the Lower East Side,” Silver said. “Gus’ Pickles is right around here.”
Silver also noted that the film “Crossing Delancey,” a love story drenched in nostalgia for the Lower East Side, had been filmed not far away, and described where the old building of the Yiddish Daily Forward was situated in relation to the restaurant.
Kerry nodded earnestly.
The lunchtime meeting also was an opportunity for all assembled to recount their own experiences meeting presidents and presidential candidates on the Lower East Side, including a gray-bearded man with a black hat who stopped by Kerry’s table on his way out of the restaurant.
“This reminds me of the day that John F. Kennedy came to the Lower East Side,” he said.
Others quickly chimed in with tales of a Lyndon Johnson visit to the Borough Park section of Brooklyn; a Dwight Eisenhower rally at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge, and a Kennedy rally — they couldn’t remember whether it had been Jack or Bobby — on the Lower East Side on the eve of Sukkot.
Kerry noted that his brother often joined his family for Shabbat dinner, though the senator from Massachusetts had never come to a family Passover seder.
After New York, Kerry said he was going to campaign in Michigan for a day or two before “going home for Yontif.” On Yom Kippur, he said, his daughter would be reading from the Torah at his home temple in Massachusetts.
“My girls have a very strong sense of Jewish identity,” Kerry said. One of them — Jessica — won an award at her high school for leadership of a Jewish youth club, he noted.
As the lunch wound down, one or two of the diners slipped some of the warm rugelach that had been put out for dessert into their purses and briefcases. One asked for a brown paper bag and emptied a plateful.
Kerry was asked about his favorite Jewish food.
“Lox,” he said.
“The mayor really likes gefilte fish,” Silver offered.
To be sure, nuclear proliferation in Iran is an important issue this presidential campaign — “You just can’t ignore the threat; you’ve got to deal with it,” Cameron Kerry said — but on this particular campaign stop, more prosaic things seemed to be on people’s minds.
When a waiter came by to take away the leftover french fries, the only question one reporter had was: “Can I take that with me?”
Sorry. The source should have read Global News Service of the Jewish People.
huh?
When in Mass. Kerry is Irish, when in New York he`s Jewish. Flip flop flip flop flip.
Jewish brother, Cameron Kerry ?
Did Cameron marry a Jewish woman and convert? Is he a half brother by another wife of John Kerry's father? I don't know much about J F'n's family.
I believe that Cameron is a convert. Kerry also has a Muslim brother, Rasheed Kerry; a French brother, Pierre Kerry; a Gernan Brother Hans Kerry; an Hispanic brother, Ramon Kerry; as well as his Portugese African-American wife.
Okay, now this has to be the ultimate flip flop! Kerry has said that he just recently found out that his grandfather was Jewish---and changed his name. Kerry has said that he was Irish! Geez, now we find out that his brother is a practicing Jew? And his daughters are proud of their heritage?!
This is too much.
February 05, 2004
KERRY CLAN'S OWN WATERGATE
DEMOCRATIC presidential front-runner John Kerry and Richard M. Nixon have something in common - Sen. Kerry's political history is scarred by its own version of Watergate.
During Kerry's 1972 bid for Congress, his younger brother, Cameron Kerry, was arrested for "breaking into . . . the headquarters of a Kerry opponent," the New York Times reported on Sept. 19 of that year. Kerry's headquarters were in the same building in Lowell, Mass.
Cameron Kerry and another campaign worker pleaded not guilty to charges of "breaking and entering with the intent to commit grand larceny."
John Kerry characterized the break-in as a preemptive strike and told the Times the two men "entered the building after receiving an anonymous telephone threat . . . that the telephone lines at his [own] headquarters were to be sabotaged."
Cameron, now a partner in a Boston-based law firm, has been a key supporter of all of his brother's campaigns.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, Kerry-the-younger's law firm "has been the biggest financial backer of the Massachusetts Democrat's two decades-long political career in elected office, with its employees contributing nearly $187,000 to various Kerry races, including his current presidential campaign."
Meanwhile, State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer might want to rethink his support for Kerry, considering the records being circulated by Howard Dean's campaign.
Spitzer, who endorsed Kerry earlier this week for the nomination, has crusaded against financial shenanigans on Wall Street. And some of his investigations have targeted the same firms that made big contributions to the Kerry campaign.
Citigroup, which gave Kerry $71,500, paid $400 million in penalties as part of a settlement with regulators. Goldman Sachs, which gave Kerry $62,600, and Morgan Stanley, which gave him $40,000, were party to a $1.4 billion settlement with Spitzer over charges that their analysts gave investors bad advice to win investment banking business. FleetBoston Financial, which gave $32,050, suspended a trader last April when the New York Stock Exchange launched a probe.
One Democrat wonders: "Did Spitzer know the connections between Kerry and the financial companies he investigates
This reminds me of a completely gratuitous comment, intended to hark back to the glory days of the Democrats, with a not-so-subtle link to that other JFK who just happens to be running for President, and who just happens to be Catholic (though some of his best relatives are Jewish).
"He's only Irish once every sixth year"--Billy Bulger
It figures, he's trying to pander to both those who hate pickles (who must obviously be liberal wackos) and those who love the full sour ones.
The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind....
Both of Kerry's paternal grandparents were Jewish. When the Kohn's came to America to escape anti-semitism they converted from Jewish to Catholic and changed their name to Kerry. They tried to keep it a secret. John Kerry's grandpa commited suicide when John Kerry's father Richard was about 12 years old. John Kerry's brother married a Jewish woman and converted to Judaism.
Yes.
This reminds me of the day that John F. Kennedy came to the Lower East Side
Oh please, enough of the JFK nonsense already.
Am I missing something here? Didn't Kerry just "find out" recently that his grandparents were Jewish?
Okay, now this has to be the ultimate flip flop! Kerry has said that he just recently found out that his grandfather was Jewish---and changed his name. Kerry has said that he was Irish! Geez, now we find out that his brother is a practicing Jew? And his daughters are proud of their heritage?!
This is too much.
No Problem. He'll be whatever you want him to be.
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