Discussion: Missouri Guv Candidate Worried About Anti-Semitic Attacks Before Suicide

He was Jewish?

Well played, Mr. Rove. Well, played.

One of the things that this points up is the way that “being Jewish” morphs between a religious affiliation and an ethnic/racial identity. Imagine the absurdity og saying “he’s a presbyterian” or “he’s a methodist” of someone who was agnostic but had a grandfather who practiced that faith. (What about “he’s a roman catholic” for someone whose grandparents immigrated from Italy?)

And although there was clearly something else going on, I think that a lot of people underestimate the depth and recency of antisemitism in the US. When I was growing up, it was a pretty common “joke” that the middle letters of WASP stood for something other than “Anglo-Saxon”.

Tom Schweich was a lifelong resident of Clayton, an affluent St. Louis suburb with a very substantial Jewish population and attended Clayton HS, which at the time was more Jewish than the community at large. It isn’t unreasonable to put together Clayton history + German surname & infer Jewishness, although why Hancock would be guessing about Schweich’s faith is more damning. I wish I could say it was also shocking, but since I lived in Missouri for 30 years I am entirely unsurprised at politicians discussing each others’ religion in whispers.

[ full disclosure: I graduated from Clayton HS with his younger sister but was never at all close to the Schweich family. Can’t even say for sure whether he was a Senior my Freshman year…]

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He reportedly told Messenger grandfather was Jewish and he was “very proud of his connection to the Jewish faith.”

I believe the second use of the pronoun “he” in the line above refers to the grandfather, not to Tom Schweich. Very clumsy copy editing. Notice the missing “his” as well.

Thanks for the info.

What difference could it possibly make to Hancock whether Schweich was Jewish, or not? Why was that an issue at all? There is absoltely no possible way that we’ve heard the end of this story. Hancock, by even confessing that he “may” have mentioned that thought to someone else, puts him in a very dark corner. By default, that puts the entire Republican love affair with Netanyahu in an entrely different light, as well.

That’s not the closet I thought he was hiding in . . . .