"די צייטונג" איז אין די נייעס, אויסגעמעקט קלינטון

Hillary and the Hasidim
By Joseph Wendelken

Through all the courting of fickle donors and glad-handing from coast to coast, Sen. Hillary Clinton always knew that she had friends back at home.

She scored a decided victory in her party's presidential primary in New York State on February 5, that superist of Tuesdays. She also bested her adversary, Sen. Barack Obama, in Brooklyn, despite the different virtual garrisons for thousands of his young, eager foot soldiers in the borough (including the indefatigable folks at BrooklynForBarack.org and the clever activists at AudacityOfParkSlope.org). In Williamsburg's two Assembly districts, Clinton won by 25 percent points.

A staffer for the sometimes-floundering Clinton campaign listed reform-minded Jewish voters in the state and Hispanics in the borough among her loyalists.

But few constituencies in New York, and certainly no group in the North Brooklyn, remain as unflinchingly loyal to their junior senator as Williamsburg's Hasidic Jews, according to many both inside and outside of that community.

Before Clinton's 2000 senate run, longtime political powerbroker and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), himself an orthodox Jew, opened doors for her in the state's different Jewish communities. But in few locales did she need more doors opened than in Williamsburg, where two or three leaders serve as gatekeepers to the rest of the Satmar Hasidic community. With the blessing of these gatekeepers comes near unanimous electoral support from the Williamsburg Hasidim.

''We vote as a community,'' said Rabbi David Neiderman, the executive director of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, which provides myriad social and housing services to the Hasidim. ''This is not about individual people's needs, this is about the community's needs. We understand what our needs are and we look together at who is addressing those needs.''.

In an interview in his Penn Street office, Neiderman explained that a group of 15 community leaders decide whom the Hasidim should support in upcoming city, state and federal elections.

In making these decisions, members of this unnamed group of 15 do not act as ideologues, but rather ask the questions their families and neighbors need answered, he added.

''Where are families going to live? How is bread going to be put on the table? How is the rent going to be paid?'' he asked as he stood over a fax machine with his desk phone at one ear and a cellular phone at the other. ''Those are the core issues, and we believe that she will be extremely responsive to them.''

As a senator, Neiderman said, she did as much.

''They like her because of their stances socially,'' said David Chill, a political science professor at Touro College, a Jewish-sponsored institution with campuses throughout the city and in Israel. A Williamsburg native, Chill added: ''They're very much a minority in the sense that their needs are of the community. They have many children and they don't have the means.''

Her economic policy even won over Hasidic voters who were less enamored with her. ''I don't like her at all,'' said a Hasidic merchant on Lee Avenue, who voted for Clinton on Super Tuesday. ''I couldn't believe that I was pressing that button, but the interest of the community is number one. People are not rich here. They have 10, 12 kids; some use food stamps, Medicare.''

The merchant, who requested anonymity because his views differed from those of the area's Hasidic leaders, said that he took issue with Clinton's stances on ''moral issues,'' a statement he would not develop further.''

In his final days in the Oval Office, President Bill Clinton commuted the prison sentences of four Hasidic men from a Hasidic enclave in nearby New Square, N.Y. His move to grant clemency to the felons prompted accusations that he engaged in vote trading for his campaigning wife, though federal prosecutors eventually announced in 2002 that they found no wrongdoing.

While some Hasidic Jews, find some of Clinton's stances on 'morality' issues objectionable, many contended that her gender matters little to the Hasidim.

''We're much more likely to elect a woman than the rest of America,'' said Israel Abraham, a Hasidic, 30-year Williamsburg resident.

However, Der Yid, a Williamsburg-based, weekly Jewish newspaper, along with Hamodia, a national Jewish daily newspaper, do not print photographs of Clinton or other females.

To avoid mixing of the genders, female members of the Clinton campaign staff held at the back of a procession that moved through Williamsburg as part of a Clinton rally on February 3. (The few austerely dressed women in Williamsburg approached during the reporting for this piece, many in apparent preparation for Purim, turned away unresponsively). The candidate did not attend the rally.