Sarah Newman of Bethesda says that after the presidential election results came in early on Nov. 9, she wasn’t able to sleep.
“I just kept sitting and thinking, I have to do something, I have to do something,” said Newman, 42, a Democrat. “And I felt like I can’t do everything, but I’m Jewish and I need to at least do something to mobilize Jews.”
She is directing her anger at the Republican Jewish Coalition, whose silence during the campaign she says made it “complicit” in Trump’s victory.
By early the next morning, Newman, who works as a consultant on documentaries, had channeled her outrage into a petition on Change.org, calling on the RJC to condemn “all forms of anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia and misogyny in the Trump administration and the Republican Party immediately.”
The petition has more than 500 signatures and Newman says that she plans to deliver it to the RJC’s executive director, Matt Brooks.
Newman said her petition’s main demand is more accountability from the RJC, meaning that the organization “demand that anti-Semitic people from the Trump campaign have nothing to do with the administration. They have a responsibility as Jews to stand up against their own party when that party takes endorsements from neo-Nazis and klansmen, and runs anti-Semitic ads and uses anti-Semitic imagery,” she said, referring to charges made against Donald Trump and his presidential campaign.
For Newman, the “J” in RJC should outweigh the “R,” considering the persecution and murder of Jews throughout history.
“For any Jew, knowing the Holocaust and all of the persecutions we’ve experienced is wrong, for any Jew to go along with [anti-Semitism] is a disgrace.”
