In 2009 he donated money to Hillel International in order to build a Jewish student center at Kent State University. Cohn is an active member of his local Jewish Federation. So why the silence from Cohn and Mnuchin? Here’s some guesses:Ĭould it be that neither man is that connected to his Jewish identity? Unlikely. If so, it is far more subtle than the visible snort and head shake his comments drew from Chief of Staff Gen. Some media reported that Cohn and Mnuchin looked uncomfortable as Trump spoke.
These were the men and women that the President put on the same moral plane as those who confronted them. The marchers chanted, “Jew will not replace us!” Their flyers featured Nazi imagery and Stars of David. When services ended, my heart broke as I advised congregants that it would be safer to leave the temple through the back entrance rather than through the front, and to please go in groups.Īnti-semitism was not a bug of the rally, it was a feature.
Later, I noticed that the man accused in the automobile terror attack wore the same polo shirt as the man who kept walking by our synagogue apparently it’s the uniform of a white supremacist group. Was he casing the building, or trying to build up courage to commit a crime? We didn’t know. Some carried flags with swastikas and other Nazi symbols.Ī guy in a white polo shirt walked by the synagogue a few times, arousing suspicion. Several times, parades of Nazis passed our building, shouting, “There’s the synagogue!” followed by chants of “Seig Heil” and other anti-Semitic language. Perhaps their presence was just a coincidence, and I’m paranoid. Perhaps the presence of our armed guard deterred them. Had they tried to enter, I don’t know what I could have done to stop them, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them, either. Here’s an account of that day from the temple’s president, Alan Zimmerman:įor half an hour, three men dressed in fatigues and armed with semi-automatic rifles stood across the street from the temple. On the day of the rally, congregants felt the threat acutely. Its attendees posted threats against the local Charlottesville synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, in the days leading up to the march. It is impossible to believe that both men are unaware of the deeply anti-semitic nature of the rally. But Mnuchin and Cohn, who both come from the world of business and finance, remained silent As of today, neither one has spoken out. The statement was offensive enough that at least seven CEOs serving the administration as advisors resigned from their posts. It was, as the historian Steven Windmueller wrote, “the first time in American history where a President has not uniformly and consistently condemned anti-Semitism.” And both men stood just to the right of Donald Trump as he equated neo-Nazis and white supremacists with the people who protested them, and declared that at a rally attended and promoted by hate groups from around the country, there were “very fine people” The question of the day, at least in my corner of the world, is this: How can Gary Cohn and Steven Mnuchin keep silent?Ĭohn is chief economic advisor to President Donald Trump and the director the National Economic Council.
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