Joe.My.God. LGBT News
Politico reports:
The prevailing narrative about when President Donald Trump launches his most reckless tirades involves the absence of the two people viewed as the great moderating influences in his life: his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner. The couple are Orthodox Jews who observe the Sabbath, which runs from sundown Friday until sundown on Saturday—the time when Trump has been most likely to go off-leash.
Last Saturday morning, for instance, Trump accused President Barack Obama of tapping his phones during last year’s election — and followed up the startling allegation with a nonsequitur about Arnold Schwarzenegger driving “The Apprentice” ratings into the ground. His first weekend as president, Trump phoned the National Park Service director on Saturday asking for photographs that would demonstrate the size of the crowd on the National Mall during his inauguration. Trump signed his botched travel ban at 4:48 p.m. the following Friday, after Kushner had left the White House.
Kushner told Vogue in 2015 that he and his wife turn their phones off on Shabbat. But last October, when Trump was embroiled in a scandal involving the release of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video that showed him bragging about kissing and groping women against their will, Kushner broke from his typical Shabbat routine and huddled with his father-in-law and other top aides to discuss strategy—though he walked from his apartment to Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan. He and his wife also attended Trump’s inaugural balls, held on a Friday night.
The rules of Shabbat “are not so black and white,” explained Rabbi Avidan Milevsky, the interim rabbi at Kesher Israel, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Georgetown. “The black and white in traditional Judaism are actions and activities: using electricity, driving, writing. When it comes to work, it’s a little bit of a gray area in terms of what’s permitted to be discussed.”
There’s much more at the link.