Writing that former President Donald Trump and his senior adviser Stephen Miller would “champion racist and xenophobic laws” if allowed to return to the Oval Office, Miller’s former rabbi came out Monday to call on Jewish Americans to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I’m casting my Jewish American vote for Kamala Harris because she knows firsthand that despite our progress, we have a long way to go before we treat all citizens equally and fairly,” Neil Comess-Daniels wrote Monday in The Forward. “She is the daughter of immigrants. She experienced growing up as a multi-racial child in America. She has the empathy for the most vulnerable among us that Trump and Miller lack."
In his op-ed endorsement of Harris, Comess-Daniels said it was Trump’s widely criticized Madison Square Garden rally that compelled him to speak out against his onetime congregant “and to call on all Jewish Americans who feel similarly — knowing our heritage and commitment to justice — to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Comess-Daniels, the spiritual leader of Beth Shir Shalom synagogue in Santa Monica, California, first publicly opposed Miller because of his involvement in persuading then-President Trump 's family separation policy, along with other anti-immigrant proposals.
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“I felt embarrassed and ashamed that a Jew in a leadership role could give voice and support to such inhumanity,” he wrote Monday. “And I felt further compromised because, for a couple years in Stephen Miller’s childhood, his family belonged to my synagogue.”
He concluded his piece by writing that Harris is “a true leader,” who “champions a society built on law,” while Trump and Miller have advanced rhetoric that has become “more threatening, volatile and venomous.”
“This year, I am going to vote against the candidate advanced by my former congregant, and for a candidate who I believe shares one of my most central Jewish values: that of honoring, learning from, and building upon the lessons of our past,” Comess-Daniels wrote.
“Kamala Harris is the only candidate in this election who represents these and other critical Jewish American values. I am proud to vote for her — and I hope you will be, too.”
