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Congressman-elect George Santos campaigned as a Jewish Republican. Was he lying?
(JTA) — On Sunday night, George Santos joined the Republican Jewish Coalition on Long Island, where he was just elected to Congress, for a menorah-lighting to mark the first night of Hanukkah. He’d been invited as one of just two freshmen Republican Jews elected to Congress in November.
On Monday morning, The New York Times published a blockbuster expose alleging that much of what Santos, 34, had said about his education, his wealth, his business experience, and even where he lives is false or at least questionable.
Not addressed in the article: Was he lying about his Jewish background? As with so much else in his personal narrative, there’s little to suggest truth beyond his own past comments.
The Times noted that Santos, 34, has identified to Jewish Insider as Jewish through his mother and Catholic through his father. Both parents were born in Brazil. Santos has said on Twitter that he is a practicing Catholic — and it is not unusual for some Americans to identify as ethnically Jewish and religiously Christian.
“Whether my mother’s Jewish background beliefs, which are mine or my father’s Roman Catholic beliefs, which are also mine, are represented or not,” he told Jewish Insider after his election, “I want to represent everyone else that practices every other religion to make sure everybody feels like they have a partner in me.”
His campaign biography begins, “George’s grandparents fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII. They were able to settle in Brazil, where his mother was born.”
That story could well be true. Many European Jews fled to South America during the leadup to the Holocaust. But Santos’ mother, Fatima Devolder (Santos sometimes goes by the name George Devolder), died in 2016 in New York. Nothing in her online obituary, which often is posted by family, indicates any Jewish background. Fatima is one of a number of Roman Catholic appellations for the Virgin Mary, derived from what the church claims are apparitions of Jesus’s mother in 1917 in the Portuguese city of the same name. Devolder is a Flemish/Dutch name, which at least validates Santos’s claim that his mother has Belgian ancestry, but the Flemish people are overwhelmingly Catholic.
Matt Brooks, the RJC CEO, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a text, “I asked him about this. He identifies as Jewish.”
Santos was a featured speaker last month at the RJC’s annual Las Vegas event, billed as one of two freshmen Jewish Republicans in Congress. (The other is Ohio’s Max Miller.) He campaigned heavily among Orthodox Jews living in New York’s 3rd District, encompassing parts of northern Long Island and a part of Queens. “It was an honor to address fellow members of the Jewish community in #NY03,” he tweeted Nov. 3 after attending a Chabad event also attended by Israeli Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau.
At Sunday’s Hanukkah event, Santos joined Lee Zeldin, the outgoing New York Jewish congressman who gained traction among New York’s politically conservative Orthodox Jewish voters.
Santos did not return emails sent by JTA to multiple addresses or messages sent through a number of social media platforms. His sister, Tiffany, also did not reply to an email, nor did his lawyer, Joe Murray.
Santos’ claims about his religious and ethnic origins are minor compared to the revelations in the Times expose, which offered new details as well as ones published previously elsewhere and uncovered by Democratic Party opposition research. There are no records of Santos attending the institutes of higher learning he claims to have attended, or of working at some of the financial brokerages he claims have employed him. A charitable institution he started has no evidence of being charitable. He has repeatedly identified with the far right, and then attempted to scrub such expressions from his social media.
Santos faces outstanding charges in Brazil for allegedly stealing a checkbook from a man in the care of his mother, a nurse, and then cashing checks, according to the New York Times’ report. He has twice been evicted. His financial reporting as a candidate is missing required information, omissions that could bring legal jeopardy. The Times sought Santos out at the address where he is registered to vote; the person there said she did not know him.
It’s not the first time a politician has campaigned as identifying as having a Jewish background that evaporates under scrutiny. In 2018, Julia Salazar, a progressive Democrat who won a seat in the New York state legislature, said she identified as Jewish in part because of her father’s Jewish roots; her brother said their father was not Jewish.
Salazar and her defenders said that she identified as Jewish and it was untoward to demand proof. The RJC’s Brooks sounded a similar note regarding Santos. “He considers himself a Jew. That’s good enough for me,” he texted.
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Quiz: For America 250, how well do you know U.S. Jewish history?
The Forward produced The Great American Jewish History Quiz! using Claude, a generative artificial intelligence tool by Anthropic. All questions and answers were researched and written by Louis Keene, who prompted Claude to create the user interface and underlying code and to track statistics.
Questions or feedback? Send us an email: forwardquiz@forward.com.
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Mazel tov, Taylor and Travis: A rabbi’s imagined wedding speech under the celebrity chuppah
I have to admit, as a rabbi, I never imagined I’d be standing at a wedding bringing together two of America’s great religions: football and Taylor Swift.
And yet here we are. I’ve officiated weddings in synagogues, in backyards, on beaches. I was not prepared for Madison Square Garden.
Before I get to the blessings, I need to share a little Torah with you. Don’t worry: I’ll keep it short. Half this room is Swifties and half is Chiefs fans, and the only thing you agree on is that you didn’t come here for a sermon.
The very first matchmaking story in the Torah involves a man named Eliezer, sent by the patriarch Abraham on a mission: find a wife for Abraham’s son Isaac. Eliezer travels far, he arrives at a well, and he devises a test. A test that looked past beauty, past pedigree, past fame, past achievement.
The test is simple: When a stranger arrives tired and thirsty, what do you do?
Rebecca does more than just offer water to Eliezer. She sees his camels are also thirsty, and without being asked, she waters every single one. Ten camels. Anyone who has ever watered a camel knows this is not a small thing.
And the Torah stops to tell us: this is the wife for Isaac.
The Torah could have stopped to admire her talent or her beauty. Instead, it stopped to admire her kindness. Because she saw need in the world and responded to it, just because that’s who she was.
Taylor and Travis, I think about that story when I think about the two of you. Because what we know about you isn’t just about the Grammys or the Super Bowls. It’s about the friendships. It’s about the family. It’s the way Travis’s eyes light up when he talks about his brother Jason. It’s the way Taylor has shown up, year after year, for her crew — the people who have been with her since the beginning, long before the sold-out stadiums.
These are people who know how to love. Eliezer traveled hundreds of miles looking for exactly that. Turns out it was worth the trip.
Red zones and red carpets
Now, because we have a professional athlete here, permit me a football analogy.
Every great quarterback needs protection from a tight end like Travis. Every championship team depends on its offensive line. The line doesn’t get the glory. They don’t score the touchdowns. But without them, nothing works.
Marriage is the same. Protect one another. Protect each other’s dignity. Protect each other’s dreams. Protect each other’s hearts. Be each other’s offensive line on the hard days.
And because we also have one of the greatest songwriters in history standing before me — someone who has written the soundtrack to a generation — permit me a music analogy as well.
Every beautiful song has both melody and rhythm. Sometimes one instrument leads. Sometimes another does. But what makes the song truly beautiful is that each makes room for the other. The goal is never the solo. The goal is the harmony.
Marriage is exactly the same. There will be seasons when one of you carries more. Seasons when one of you needs extra support. Seasons of celebration and seasons of challenge. The goal is to reflect each other’s light. The goal is to create something together that neither of you could have created alone.
So, Taylor and Travis, here is my blessing for you: May you always remember what drew you to each other, the soul beneath the spotlight. May you protect each other fiercely and gently, in the stadiums and in the quiet rooms where no one is watching. May you make room for one another — to lead and to follow, season by season, era by era.
And may the love you build together — the real love, the private love, the love that has absolutely nothing to do with cameras or crowds — be the greatest thing either of you ever creates.
Mazel tov.
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The 50 most interesting Jews in American history you’ve probably never heard of
The United States is turning 250 years old. You know the stories of many of the Jews who have helped to shape the country’s history and culture, including such luminaries as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Philip Roth and Barbra Streisand.
But behind the American Jewish names we know and revere are the stories of many other American Jews who influenced the nation — and whose lives reflected the country’s efforts to realize its founding promises — who have found less purchase in history’s spotlight. To celebrate the 250th anniversary of this country’s founding, we’ve collected 50 of those stories here.
Among their number are scientists, athletes, lawmakers, clergymen and a couple genuine American characters — the type of people who, no matter where they were born, ended up living lives that speak to the best of what the U.S. has to offer its citizens.
As one of our honorees, the author Edna Ferber, wrote: “America — rather, the United States — seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warmhearted, overfriendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures. Its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The schnuckle among the nations of the world.”
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