Rabbis Rebuke President Trump Over Charlottesville Response, Cancel Conference Call

Criticizing President Trump's response to the violence in Charlottesville, four groups of rabbis said Wednesday that they will not participate in a traditional conference call with the president. The rabbis, who represent thousands of American congregations, said they will forgo the annual call ahead of the High Holy Days, which are next month.

It is a tradition for the occupant of the White House to have the call and extend good wishes for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, considered the holiest days on the Jewish calendar.

In their statement, the rabbis said that they "have concluded that President Trump’s statements during and after the tragic events in Charlottesville are so lacking in moral leadership and empathy for the victims of racial and religious hatred that we cannot organize such a call this year."

They added that the president's statements gave comfort to "those who advocate anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia."

The president has been roundly criticized across party lines for his original tepid response to the violence in Charlottesville in which torch-bearing, self-proclaimed white nationalists marched through the streets chanting anti-Semitic slogans and evoking Nazism.

The day after the march, a counter-protester named Heather Heyer was killed when a man drove his car into a group. Nearly two dozen others were injured.

In his initial remarks, Trump seemed to equate the apparent Nazi-wannabes with those who were protesting the hatred they espoused, saying there had been violence on "many sides."

While he briefly backed off those sentiments in scripted remarks, in a raucous press conference last Tuesday he went back to seemingly backing the white nationalists, saying there were "fine people" on both sides.

"Responsibility for the violence that occurred in Charlottesville, including the death of Heather Heyer, does not lie with many sides but with one side: the Nazis, alt-right and white supremacists who brought their hate to a peaceful community," the rabbis said in their statement.

"They must be roundly condemned at all levels."

The rabbis — the heads of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the oldest such group in North America, The Rabbinical Assembly, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaisim — represent about 4,000 congregations in the United States that cover almost the entire spectrum of Judaism in the United States, save Orthodox groups.

The president's daughter, Ivanka Trump, converted to Orthodox Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner.

Saying that the High Holy Days are "an opportunity for each of us to examine our own words and deeds through the lens of Americas ongoing struggle with racism," the rabbis say that they "pray that President Trump will recognize and remedy the grave error he has made in abetting the voices of hatred.

"We pray that those who traffic in anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia will see that there is no place for such pernicious philosophies in a civilized society."

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