Some 250 Orthodox Jews from 45 states gathered on April 2 to lobby members of the Senate and the House, or their staffs, in 88 congressional offices as part of Agudath Israel of America’s Mission to Washington.
The nonprofit’s program focused on the Educational Choice for Children Act, which would provide $10 billion in annual tax credits that parents could use to pay for private school.
Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudah, told JNS that in his 42nd year at the nonprofit, the gathering felt larger than ever. “There was an effort to have a diverse geographic representation,” he said.
Unlike in prior years, Agudah wasn’t in Washington to tell members of Congress generally about its agenda, which includes Israeli security and antisemitism stateside. “We’ll be back here tomorrow for those other things,” Zwiebel said. “Today, we brought constituents from around the country,” he said, to let members of Congress know “how important this legislation is to us, to the community, how important we think it is to America writ large.”
“Really, a large part of today was ‘thank you,’” he told JNS. “Most of the people we went to visit, some 80 or 90 congressional offices—House of Representatives side, Senate side—most of them were supporters of the bill and were already sponsors of the bill.”
“I jokingly said that I spoke to three people from Mississippi, and not one of them decided to withdraw his support for the bill,” he said. “So I was successful.”
Saying thank you to members of Congress was politics and “part of who we are,” Zwiebel said. “Part of the Jewish people.”
“There’s going to come some point in time where there will be negotiations about these kinds of things, and maybe, maybe someone will remember a visit from a bunch of Jewish activists from New York and elsewhere, who came to tell us that this really mattered a lot to them,” he said.
“In the most parochial terms possible, school choice initiatives around the country at statewide levels resulted in parents being able to enrol their children in a yeshiva, or in a Jewish day school,” he told JNS of the bill. “To the extent that there are people who want to do that and who are held back from doing that because they can’t afford it, this would make a world of difference.”
The bill would also make “a world of difference” to people with large families, which describes many families in the Haredi world, according to Zwiebel.
“I have eight children, and I remember people were surprised by such a large family, and someone else said, ‘Why did you stop there?’” he told JNS. “This particular corner of the Jewish world has a very strong interest in this type of legislation.”
“We’ve been with this legislation or a slight variation on this legislation for a long time,” he said. “I never thought, based on experience, that we were there. This year, we think—I think I would use the words ‘cautiously optimistic,’ maybe that it could happen this year. The constellations appear to be aligned.”
“If it happens, and if it happens with the magnitude that we’ve been speaking about, about $10 billion a year,” a fraction of which would go to the Jewish community, “it would be significant funding,” he said. “At a time when, to us, the most frightening specter there is, aside from antisemitism, is assimilation into the broader mainstream of society, the abandonment of attachment to our faith, to our tradition, to our people, anything that would make the Jewish education experience more attractive as an option, that’s in my opinion a very positive thing.”
“We feel that it actually could happen this year,” he said.
‘Just the beginning’
At lunch during the Agudah mission, Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) and Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Burgess Owens (R-Utah) addressed the group, and in the evening, Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, spoke during dinner.
“As we know, this is just the beginning,” Rabbi Avi Schnall, director of federal education affairs at Agudah and member of the New Jersey General Assembly, told attendees during the dinner.
“We’ve met. We sat. We discussed, and we talked about perhaps one of the most consequential pieces of legislation that will affect our kehillah in the history of us being in the country. Perhaps. Top three,” he said. “Over 85 members of Congress and offices, we sat there earlier today for a few hours with 250 people from California to Florida, Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Maryland. It never happened before.”
“Minneapolis was here. Kentucky. Louisiana. Unbelievable,” he added. “History was made today.”
Scharf told attendees that there’s “a bit of a whiplash effect” working at the White House.
“About half an hour, 45 minutes ago, we were in the Rose Garden signing an executive order on reciprocal tariffs—probably one of the most important things we’ve done since the president took office in January,” he said. “Now I’m here with all of y’all to tell you that if you get your etrog next Sukkot from Cyprus or Greece, chances are it’s going to have a 20% tariff. But if you buy it from Israel, it’s an 11% rate, and that may go down even further.”
Working for U.S. President Donald Trump as a “proud Jew,” Scharf told the Agudah attendees that he is reminded of a centuries-old prayer for kings that many recite on Shabbat mornings.
“In the history of the Jewish people, we’ve prayed for a lot of really terrible people. We’ve said ‘Hanoten teshuah’ for the czar, for dictators, for people who were terrible to us,” he said. “I think in the history of the Jewish people, we haven’t davened for an earthly leader, who cares more about our community and who has done more for our community than President Donald J. Trump.”
Trump has kept his promises to Jews, according to Scharf, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem even though his advisers told him not to do so, and other presidential candidates before him had said they would but didn’t.
“Time after time after time, when issues that are important to our community have come before the president, he has done the right thing. He has done well by us. And for me personally, it’s deeply meaningful to get to work for a man who has consistently delivered for our community,” Scharf said.
Looking ahead, “President Trump has promised that this is going to be a school choice administration,” he added. “His vision of education, his vision of the federal role in education, is fundamentally different than that of many of his predecessors.”
Trump’s White House is the first to have a faith office in the West Wing, according to Scharf. “I know, because it’s across the hall from me,” he said. That office ensures that “people of faith, including us, have access to the administration, to the White House and the federal government,” he added.
Scharf told attendees that it’s a “tremendous honor” to work for Trump and that he controls the paper flow to and from the president.
“No document reaches the president for his signature without it having gone through my office and my process. Documents flow from the president back through us,” he said. “It’s interesting they trust the yid with all of the papers. It’s sort of playing to stereotypes a little bit.”
“But I’ve seen the president in a lot of stressful settings,” Scharf said. “I believe him when he says that he’s going to continue fighting for things that we believe in, like school choice.”
Zwiebel told JNS that “it worries me, and I think it should worry all of us, that what used to be the baseline of common ground between the Democrats and the Republicans and everybody was total support for Israel.”
“In recent years, especially among the younger generation, especially in the Democratic Party, that’s no longer the case,” he said. “That’s a legitimate concern.”
“The fact that the president is in the office and at least appears to be serious about antisemitism, I think that one can debate strategically the best way to attack antisemitism is by being very heavy-handed or will that just radicalize antisemites, who will say, ‘They’ve declared war against us. We need to respond in kind.’ But turning the other cheek means you’ve ceded to the enemy the ability to attack us with impunity,” he said.
“I don’t have such broad shoulders as to say I know what is going to happen,” he added.