Help to Hunter: In the tradition of “Tikkun Olam”?
A Jewish Democratic leader says the financial help Fred Baron gave to John Edwards's former mistress could be classified as one of the acts of "Tikkun Olam" that the Dallas lawyer been doing for many years.
Marc Stanley, chairman of the National Jewish Democratic Council and a Dallas lawyer, called Baron "an exceedingly generous person" and said he "supports more people and causes than any individual I've ever met .... only because I've never met Bill Gates."
Noting that Baron has hosted a number of events sponsored by Dallas Jewish organizations at his home, Stanley said Baron is motivated not by the expectation of getting anything in return but by the highest aims of Tikkun Olam, or building a better world. Baron's assistance to Rielle Hunter and Andrew Young, another former campaign aide who has been named as the alleged father of Hunter's child, "really could" be seen in the same tradition, Stanley said.
"I have seen Fred help individuals for 20 years," said Stanley. "Andrew Young worked for him. I am confident Fred felt [Hunter] was part of the [campaign] team. It was not unlike Fred at all."
Stanley said Baron had bought a house in North Carolina at the start of the presidential campaign and allowed campaign staffers to stay there. Baron's assistance to Hunter and Young was designed to help them relocate and avoid the attention of reporters purusing the Edwards scandal story. Baron apparently did not know of Hunter's involvement with the former Democratic presidential candidate.
"I'm sad to see him caught up in this whirlwind," Stanley said.
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New York’s Chasidic mover and shaker: Isaac Abraham
The New York Times' Kareem Fahim profiles Isaac Abraham, the Chasidic mover and shaker who's running for City Council from District 33, in Brooklyn.
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The Jewish link to the Edwards scandal
If there's a political sex scandal, it seems there's always some kind of Jewish involvement. We had Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton's relationship, and a few years later there was Chandra Levy and Gary Condit. And it's not just Jewish women– on the male side, Eliot Spitzer was visiting prostitutes just last year.
So it can't be too suprising that the man who paid for John Edwards' ex-mistress, Rielle Hunter, to relocate in order to avoid tabloid attention is Jewish: top Edwards fundraiser and Dallas lawyer Fred Baron.
No word yet on the religious background of former New York party girl Hunter, whose original name is Lisa Druck and is originally from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
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Cohen beats Tinker
After Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) beat Democratic primary opponent Nikki Tinker in a landslide on Aug. 7 (read JTA's story here), New York Times columnist Bob Herbert called it a victory against racism (in this case, against whites) and anti-Semitism:
In that Ninth Congressional District of Memphis, a district that is predominantly black in a city that has had its share of racial trouble — the city in which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed — Mr. Cohen won an astonishing 80 percent of the vote, sweeping all demographic categories and destroying the disgusting (yes, stomach-turning) campaign of Nikki Tinker.For the moment, at least, we can put the Pepto-Bismol aside and raise a glass of Champagne.
The voters in Mr. Cohen's district rejected the Tinker tactics overwhelmingly, refusing to succumb to the blandishments of racism or anti-Semitism. Instead of abandoning their congressman, they rallied around him when the filth started coming his way.
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