New York Rabbi Haskel Lookstein has reportedly reversed his acceptance of an invitation from Donald Trump’s daughter to deliver the convocation at next week’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
“Unfortunately, when my name appeared on a list of speakers at the convention, without the context of the invocation I had been invited to present, the whole matter turned from rabbinic to political, something which was never intended,” Lookstein wrote in an email to his congregation, obtained by Politico.
Lookstein, who serves as rabbi at the Orthodox Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan, said he originally agreed to the gig “out of respect” for his relationship with Ivanka Trump, who converted to Orthodox Judaism to wed Jared Kushner in 2009.
Hundreds of graduates of a Jewish day school had reportedly circulated a petition urging Lookstein to abandon his speaking role at the GOP convention as soon as it was revealed he’d accepted it.
“Rabbi Lookstein, all the good work you’ve done in your life — everything you’ve done for your community, for the plight of Soviet Jews — will be flushed down the toilet for 10 minutes on stage in Cleveland,” the graduates wrote in a letter, according to the Jerusalem Post. “This is the single action history will remember you by, and history will not be kind.”
Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort told CNN Friday morning that reports of people not wanting to speak at the convention were inaccurate.
“I do know we have a lot of people that want to speak,” he sad. “The idea that people are not wanting to speak is not true.”
