Utah Gov. Spencer Cox shakes Rabbi Avremi Zippel’s hand after an off-the-cuff assembly on the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, April 10, 2023. Ryan Solar, Deseret Information
Shoshana Weissmann, from left, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Rabbi Avremi Zippel pose for a photograph throughout an off-the-cuff assembly on the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, April 10, 2023. Ryan Solar, Deseret Information
Shoshanna Weissmann speaks throughout an off-the-cuff assembly on the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, April 10, 2023. Ryan Solar, Deseret Information
Rabbi Avremi Zippel speaks throughout an off-the-cuff interview on the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, April 10, 2023. Ryan Solar, Deseret Information
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Shoshana Weissmann, proper, pay attention throughout an off-the-cuff interview on the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, April 10, 2023. Ryan Solar, Deseret Information
Shoshanna Weissmann laughs throughout an off-the-cuff interview with Gov. Spencer Cox and Rabbi Avremi Zippel on the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, April 10, 2023. Ryan Solar, Deseret Information
It’s a Monday afternoon, and a rabbi, a Latter-day Saint governor and a Jewish coverage wonk stroll right into a room. It seems like the beginning of a nasty joke, however that is no joke, neither is it coincidence — these three associates circled the assembly on their calendars weeks in the past, below the enigmatic topic line “JEWTAH!”
Rabbi Avermi Zippel arrives first, sporting a trim, darkish go well with and a gray kippah, and takes a seat outdoors the governor’s workplace. Gov. Spencer Cox arrives quickly after, trailed by a throng of aides, and greets the rabbi.
“Do we all know the place Shoshana is?” one staffer asks, and the rabbi pulls out his cellphone earlier than noting he doesn’t have the third visitor’s cellphone quantity. “We talk by way of Twitter DMs,” he says, smiling.
Shoshana Weissmann, from left, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Rabbi Avremi Zippel pose for a photograph throughout an off-the-cuff assembly on the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, April 10, 2023.
Ryan Solar, Deseret Information
Earlier than the third visitor arrives, let’s meet the buddies: There’s Rabbi Avrohom “Avremi” Zippel, this system director of Salt Chabad Lubavitch of Utah and the state’s first homegrown rabbi. (He moved to Salt Lake Metropolis from Brooklyn when he was 1 12 months previous, when his father — Rabbi Benny Zippel — established Utah’s Chabad congregation.)
There’s Spencer Cox, Utah’s first-term governor, who has emerged as an ally to Utah’s small-but-growing Jewish group. He led a delegation to Israel in 2022, the place he met with the nation’s president, visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum and prayed on the Western Wall, alongside the elder Rabbi Zippel.
After which there’s Shoshana Weissmann, the Jewish digital director on the R Road Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based libertarian suppose tank. She’s garnered one thing of a cult following on social media for her eclectic character and her political spark — her purple-and-blue hair, and a stuffed animal she named “James Madisloth.”
Weissmann arrives in a rush, sporting a Fitbit and a climbing backpack — she’s on a three-day work journey to Utah, however the realreason she involves the state is for the mountains. “How are you going to not fall in love with this?” she says, signaling out the window.
The three associates make for an fascinating bunch. However their ecumenical relationship, in a state dominated by one Christian faith, hints at how one religion custom may help one other as antisemitic incidents surge within the U.S.
Someway, calling them “associates” appears wholly pure, although solely two of them have ever met in individual. Weissmann first interacted with each by way of Twitter — the rabbi, as a result of she was trying to find a Jewish group in her adopted state, and the governor, as a result of ”when Trump rose to energy, he was one of many few sane Republicans,” Weissmann stated.
Cox’s obvious love for Judaism doesn’t harm, both. “I don’t suppose I’ve seen a governor publish extra photos with rabbis,” Weissmann stated. “It’s such as you’re discovering each rabbi right here, saying, ‘let’s be associates.’”
Cox smiles, saying it occurs organically. (There are, it seems, solely about 10 rabbis within the state.)
Weissmann first found Utah in 2018, and over the 2 subsequent years, she visited 4 instances; on the fifth go to, she introduced her dad and mom, and Cox organized for a non-public dinner with them on the Governor’s Mansion.
Shoshanna Weissmann speaks throughout an off-the-cuff assembly on the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, April 10, 2023.
Ryan Solar, Deseret Information
Cox’s relationship with Rabbi Zippel, nevertheless, goes again a bit additional. Their first interplay was in 2014, when then-Gov. Gary Herbert organized for the first-ever menorah lighting ceremony within the Utah Capitol. Minutes earlier than the ceremony was to start, Cox requested for extra reserved seats, which despatched Rabbi Zippel scrambling. Rabbi Zippel later discovered that the seats had been for Cox’s kids, who he needed to witness the distinctive occasion.
“That’s been the hallmark of our relationship,” Rabbi Zippel remembers. “He has a deep respect for our religion, and he needed these closest to him to really feel the identical.”
Pleasantries by way of, the buddies transfer on to the true agenda merchandise. “So, why didn’t my flag design win?” Weissmann asks. When Utah lawmakers had been accepting public submissions for a brand new state flag final 12 months, she’d playfully tweeted her personal design — that includes a Star of David, a beehive, an area laser and the phrase “JEWTAH” sprawled alongside the underside.
“There was extra assist for different choices,” the governor deadpans.
Lengthy work day so I took a fast break to attempt a brand new Utah state flag design idea. @SpencerJCox simply gonna begin a thread so you possibly can inform me your suggestions or simply know what horrors are occurring in my photoshop. Additionally cc @UtahRabbipic.twitter.com/dwnrsjzBb0
— Shoshana Weissmann, Sloth Committee Chair 🦥 (@senatorshoshana) January 20, 2022
The dialog drifts from flag designs, to climate, to preventing antisemitism. (Something and the whole lot is on the desk; Weissmann’s Google Calendar invitation stated they’d “chat about Judaism, Utah, coverage, mountains, and anything we like!”) Cox leads off by reminding his company that Utah was the third state to have a Jewish governor, when Simon Bamberger was elected in 1917.
“How did he get right here?” Rabbi Zippel asks, bewildered, earlier than acknowledging Utah’s Jewish group constantly “punches above its weight.”
At current, there are an estimated 6,000 Jews in Utah, amongst a state inhabitants of three.3 million. However Jews really feel welcome right here, Rabbi Zippel says.
“I can’t try to talk for the entire group,” Rabbi Zippel says. “But it surely’s a exceptional place to be, to start out a household. There’s a sure commonality.”
That respect is mutual. When Cox requested Utahns in 2021 to pray for rain as “divine intervention” to fight the state’s ongoing draught, he was met by scorn from some, however the state’s Jewish group, he notes, was unequivocally supportive.
Rabbi Avremi Zippel speaks throughout an off-the-cuff interview on the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, April 10, 2023.
Ryan Solar, Deseret Information
“They stated, ‘we’re fasting and praying with you,’” Cox remembers. “That it felt like an actual unifying factor for us.”
At this, Rabbi Zippel nods on the snow-capped mountains out the window and jokes, “I hear you guys are going floating within the Nice Salt Lake this summer season.”
Cox smiles. “Now we’re praying it comes down gently.”
Rabbi Zippel’s perspective on the connection between Latter-day Saints and Jews in Utah is a singular one. When his household arrived in 1992, the state’s Jewish inhabitants was a fraction of what it's now. Rabbi Zippel views the connection as one among brotherhood — each have skilled expulsion and the eager for a homeland, and each obtain less-than-flattering portrayals in public, at instances.
Rabbi Zippel quotes The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, whose evaluate of Hulu’s “Below the Banner of Heaven” notes, “When you study Mormonism from watching TV, you would possibly suppose that we spend all of our time kidnapping and murdering or getting kidnapped and murdered.”
Rabbi Zippel feels the identical about many portrayals of Jews. “All you understand about us on Netflix is house lasers and dishonesty and Madoff,” he says. “There are a variety of good people whose tales aren’t being informed within the public enviornment.”
Cox presses him on this. “We’re having this glorious dialog,” he interjects, “however sadly, we have now not eradicated antisemitism from the state.” What's it actually like dwelling right here as a Jew?
Rabbi Zippel explains that the state has definitely modified since his childhood. Rising up, it felt like dwelling in a fishbowl: “Folks would see my dad with a kippah, they usually’d suppose, ‘The place did you come from, and the way lengthy are you staying?’”
Rabbi Zippel chalked up many such feedback and inquiries to real curiosity, and took no offense. (He remembers, for instance, some associates at college asking if he had horns.) However in the present day, Rabbi Zippel posits, unfavorable views of Jews are now not born of harmless curiosity, however of a lack of expertise.
“The curiosity has been swapped out with ignorance,” Rabbi Zippel says. “Individuals are cool with very observant Jews strolling the streets of Salt Lake Metropolis. However now the query is, what does that imply in the event that they’re your neighbor?”
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Shoshana Weissmann, proper, pay attention throughout an off-the-cuff interview on the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, April 10, 2023.
Ryan Solar, Deseret Information
Whilst Rabbi Zippel lauds the state’s embrace of its Jewish group, his expertise has not at all times been Zion. Rabbi Zippel’s synagogue was defaced with a swastika in 2021. In 2022, a outstanding Utah businessman was fired after sending an antisemitic electronic mail. In current months, a string of antisemitic incidents have occurred on the College of Utah.
“I believe each Jews and LDS folks keep in mind once we had been persecuted,” Weissmann says. “And I fear typically when any group of individuals overlook that. It’s so essential to recollect this, and ensure it doesn’t occur to different folks, too.”
Cox nods. “If folks don’t really feel that belonging right here,” he provides, “they received’t keep.”
As Cox excuses himself for one more assembly, Weissmann and Rabbi Zippel keep to talk. They discuss by way of their Passover celebrations and the problem, at instances, of discovering Kosher meals in Utah. It requires Talmudic endurance.
Weissmann grins, and mentions coverage for the primary time all day. “Look, I’m all for Kosher regulatory reform,” she jests.
Shoshanna Weissmann laughs throughout an off-the-cuff interview with Gov. Spencer Cox and Rabbi Avremi Zippel on the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake Metropolis on Monday, April 10, 2023.
Ryan Solar, Deseret Information