Doesnt it just seem like religion is seeping into every layer of daily life, too easily mucking up the world and tainting the common welfare? What with sectarian violence across the globe, we have been through a week of ferocious Catholic-Islam dialogue over the popes speech, and religion-related stuff constantly arises in this falls they-cant-get- them-over-quick-enough political campaigns.Pity Sen. George Allen, R-Virginia, as he fights off his challenger, Jim Webb, the Democrat seeking his Senate seat. They were debating Monday in Tysons Corner, Va., when one of the panelists, a TV reporter named Peggy Fox, hit him with a question, It has been reported your grandfather Felix, whom you were given you middle name for, was Jewish. Could you please tell us whether your forebears include Jews, and, if so, at which point Jewish identity might have ended? According to the story by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, Allen was understandably taken aback.
Allen recoiled as if he had been struck, Milbank reported. And the senators supporters in the audience hissed, booed and made the WUSA-TV reporter know her remarks were not welcomed. Predictably, Allen asked her how probing into his mothers religion had any relevance to bona fide campaign issues. Furiously, he asked, Why is that relevant — my religion, Jims religion or the religious beliefs of anyone out there?
A normal and legitimate response. So Fox essentially used the reporters ploy that it was a question out there in the public needing to be asked. Milbank said Fox herself seemed a bit frightened by Allens fury. She offered a reason. Honesty, thats all, Fox emitted. Allen didnt let up, Oh, thats all? Thats just all. He then insisted she ask questions that really mattered to help the people of Virginia and not make aspersions. By then, the high-profile moderator, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, ex-communications director for President Clinton, suggested they all move on.
Seems the national Jewish newspaper, The Forward, had reported that Allens mother, Etty, came from the august Sephardic Jewish Lumbroso family. Further, If both of Ettys parents were born Jewish — which, given her age and background, is likely — Senator Allen would be considered Jewish in the eyes of traditional rabbinic law, which traces Judaism through the mother.
Milbank then sought to explain why Allen, a Presbyterian, was so testy at any suggestion he had Semitic heritage. First, she suggested the questioning seemed out of place in a senatorial political debate given the raft of heady issues. But Allen turned on the questioner with ferocity, she wrote. … He may have been concerned that Jewish roots wouldnt play well in parts of Virginia. Or, maybe the senator was just in a quarreling mood, she suggested. In much of the debate, he was surly to other questioners, as well.
The Post reporter noted how Allen was still stinging from the fallout of his recently spotting a young Indian American photographer from the opposing campaign and called him macaca, meaning monkey. Its been speculated it was a racial slur that his mom might have learned in Tunisia where she was born. As Allen reacted and defended himself in that controversy, he offered that his grandfather was incarcerated by the Nazis in World War II.
It all has prompted a discussion over: 1) other than the impertinence of the question, did Allen overreact in a way suggesting he wanted to avoid acknowledging Jewish heritage?; and 2) where was Webb for not jumping on the question, too, and saying it was out of bound? Fox later insisted curiosity motivated her question. I thought it was important to find out, is this part of his heritage, because if it is, nobody knows it. Do you deny part of your heritage for political reasons? Fox, saying that she had a great-grandfather who was a Mormon polygamist, insisted Allen should not be upset. Why would he get so angry at the suggestion there might be something in your background thats Jewish? I don think that is a bad thing at all.
Surely, Allen should derive some sympathy for the incident. It has provided another nasty distraction for the campaign. In the final analysis, it should make no difference to voters what a candidates relatives religious heritage is and what candidates might do in roles of leadership.
