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BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Let's talk about his personal side.
Senator Sanders is the first Jewish candidate
to win a presidential primary.
Hillary Clinton has said that she would make history
by being the first female president.
Senator Sanders said his background
as a son of Polish immigrants would make him
a historic candidate as well.
Yet he hasn't specifically talked
about his Jewish heritage that way, and when asked,
he says he's proud of it.
But why do you think he's not identifying
more with what, by the way, has always
been a histor-- an important part and base for Democrats?
HARRY JAFFE: Right.
I think there are two reasons.
One, I think that he doesn't want to muddy his own message.
His message is, we need a political revolution
in this country.
We need a movement.
We need to kind of shift our way out
of this, as he calls it, corrupt campaign finance system.
We need to change the oligarchy.
He doesn't want to get his own personal relationship
with religion or God in the way of his message.
Secondly, he's not very Jewish in practice.
You know, at least he's not an observant Jew.
He doesn't go to synagogue.
I'm writing a piece right now kind
of exploring whether Bernie Sanders believes in God or not.
So I think that there are two reasons.
One, he thinks it's a distraction, and two,
he's not much of a Jew.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Do you think-- and it's
interesting for voters and Americans in particular--
they always identify, or they tend
to identify, being Jewish with being pro-Israel or identifying
yourself with being supportive of Israel.
And we know that Senator Sanders had spent time
on a kibbutz in Israel.
But his cultural background and his observant ways
of being Jewish are completely different from,
let's say, Joe Lieberman, who as we know is an Orthodox Jew.
You mentioned questioning whether he even
believes in God.
Do you think he believes in God?
HARRY JAFFE: I think that from all I can gather,
he is at best an agnostic.
So he's questioning whether there is such a thing
as a deity, as a god.
He certainly does not believe in God
the way that you-- the Christian God, the Muslim God.
He doesn't believe-- for him it's more like, hey,
as he said to Jimmy Kimmel, we're all in this together.
That's his interpretation.
Let him have it.
But it's not exactly what mainline Christians or Jews
would see as their sense of God.
BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Yeah.
He went to Hebrew school, in an article in the New York Times
today on the subject.
He knows most of the prayers.
Yet, as you say, he doesn't necessarily
identify himself with a large population of Jewish voters
here in this country who do go to services regularly.