Ivanka Trump’s Rabbi Condemns President’s Charlottesville Comments

Ivanka Trump listens during the Women's Entrepreneurship Finance event at the G20 Summit, Saturday, July 8, 2017, in Hamburg. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Ivanka Trump listens during the Women's Entrepreneurship Finance event at the G20 Summit, Saturday, July 8, 2017, in Hamburg. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Ivanka Trump’s rabbi is condemning President Donald Trump’s response to a deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Rabbi Haskel Lookstein told his New York synagogue that he is “deeply troubled by the moral equivalency and equivocation” of Trump’s reaction.

Trump has blamed “both sides” in last week’s march that also drew neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members. A car plowed into a group of counterprotesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 others.

Lookstein is rabbi emeritus of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun. He oversaw Ivanka Trump’s conversion to Judaism. She and her husband, Jared Kushner, were longtime members of the synagogue. Lookstein only rarely comments on the Trumps.

Lookstein’s message was posted Wednesday night on the Facebook page of the modern Orthodox synagogue and was signed by the congregation’s other rabbis.

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