Sotomayor Jewish Community Ties

Aaron Keyak — May 28, 2009 – 9:40 am | Israel | Obama Comments (0) Add a comment

Yesterday, I wrote about the Jewish community’s reaction to the nomination of Sotomayor. The response to President Barack Obama’s pick was so strong that Ron Kampeas of JTA wrote, “Jewish groups don’t endorse U.S. Supreme Court nominees, at least in writing.”

Kampeas gave a brief summary of the reaction from Jewish leaders in White House when the announcement was made:

The tears and choked sobs when Sonia Sotomayor accepted President Obama’s nomination on Tuesday told another story.

Packed into the room along with Sotomayor’s family, friends and colleagues were representatives of Jewish groups that have consulted with the White House about prospective replacements for David Souter.

The story of her life—the daughter of a Puerto Rican single mother from the Bronx, N.Y., whose ambitions knew no bounds—resounded with a community that has made the story of immigrant triumph over struggle a template of Jewish American success.

Kampeas also reported that the Supreme Court nominee is “a poster child for strong Jewish-Hispanic relations:”

It doesn’t hurt that Sotomayor, 54, is a poster child for strong Jewish-Hispanic relations. In 1986, when she was in private legal practice, she joined one of the first young leadership tours of Israel sponsored by Project Interchange, which is affiliated with the American Jewish Committee.

Sotomayor so enjoyed the country—its immigrant culture, its popular music influenced heavily by Jewish immigrants from Argentina and Brazil—that she made a return visit in 1996 when she was a federal judge, and recently joined a Project Interchange U.S.-Israel forum on immigration. In the process, she formed a lifelong friendship with Project Interchange founder Debbie Berger and her husband, Paul, who attended her swearing-in as a Manhattan appeals court judge in 1998.

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