A once standout senator takes a sharp wrong turn
It was probably 1998, the year Democrat Charles (“Chuck”) Schumer defeated three-term Republican incumbent Al D’Amato and was elected to the Senate, when I met the proud victor.
I had been hired four years earlier by Agudath Israel’s legendary president Rabbi Moshe Sherer to serve as the organization’s director of public affairs. Rabbi Sherer invited me to join top staff members in our 84 William St. national offices’ conference room, where he was hosting the new senator. The Agudah leader lauded the legislator as someone who he felt would become an important voice in the Senate.
After Mr. Schumer left, Rabbi Sherer confided to us that his admiring words had not been mere politesse, that he had sensed Schumer would “go places” (if not literally those words, a similar sentiment).
Indeed, Rabbi Sherer was (as usual) right in his estimation. That day’s visitor went on to become an important voice in the Senate, serving two stints as Senate minority leader and, from 2021 to 2025, as Senate majority leader.
He also became an unavoidable presence in media. Bob Dole famously quipped that “the most dangerous place in Washington is between Charles Schumer and a television camera.”
And the senator was a regular attendee—usually permitted the microphone—at Agudath Israel and Orthodox Union political dinners, where he could always be counted on to pun on his surname and declare himself a “shomer Yisrael.”
And indeed, he did much over the years for American Jews and for Israel.
In 2017, Schumer co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, criminalizing Americans’ participation in boycotts against Israel and Israeli settlements in Yehudah and Shomron. That same year, he introduced a Senate resolution celebrating the 50th anniversary of Yerushalayim’s unification.
In 2025, when Zohran Mamdani was running for the New York mayoralty, Schumer, citing the candidate’s criticism of Israel, pointedly didn’t endorse him.
Earlier this year, addressing Jewish leaders, Schumer said that he would “fight for aid to Israel” and pledged to “always fight to give Israel what it needs to protect itself from the many who want to wipe Israel off the face of the map.”
And in April, Schumer was one of seven Democratic senators to join Republicans in opposing resolutions that would have blocked sales of bulldozers and 1,000-pound bombs to Israel.
In the lead-up to the recent midterm elections, though, partisan politics trumped his personal conscience.
He supported Abdul El-Sayed in his run for the Senate, despite the Michiganer’s unabashed, relentless expressions of Israel-hatred. Apparently, the dream of a Democratic majority in the Senate was just too tantalizing (though, in the end, its realization didn’t need El-Sayed).
That was bad enough. When Democratic Representative Haley Stevens (whom Schumer had backed against El-Sayed in the primary), in an act that was true political mesiras nefesh, crossed the partisan line and endorsed El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, Schumer called the move “a despicable betrayal.”
The comment was not only ugly and unwarranted—heeding one’s conscience is a high ideal—but it was one that in reality describes precisely what Schumer had done with regard to Israel.
And, ironically, El-Sayed hasn’t exactly returned the favor of the Democratic leader’s support. When asked after the election if he’d support Schumer in being reelected as majority leader, he said, “I do believe we need new leadership.” (Backstabbing is a professional sport in Washington.)
Mulling Senator Schumer’s recent acts and comments takes me back to August 2018. President Trump, as has long been his overheated rhetorical wont, had declared that American Jews who vote for Democrats are “disloyal.” (To their heritage? Their country? Whatever.)
An outraged Mr. Schumer tweeted, “When [the president] uses a trope that’s been used against the Jewish people for centuries with dire consequences, he is encouraging—wittingly or unwittingly—anti-Semites throughout the country and world.”
Someone should inform the senator that what truly “encourages—wittingly or unwittingly—anti-Semites throughout the country and world” is supporting and extolling a hater of the country where most of the world’s Jews live, and debasing a public servant who dared to put her conscience before her politics. ●
