Department of Justice Gets Re-Jew-venated
September 18, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Assuming that Michael Mukasey will be the next U.S. Attorney General, Extreme Mortman went to our resident team of diverse experts with this question: Will Mukasey be America’s highest ranking Orthodox Jewish cabinet official ever?
The happy news: Yes. Presuming that none of these gentlemen were or are Orthodox, regardless of cabinet rank:
- Michael Chertoff (Bush’s homeland security secretary)
- Nicholas Katzenbach (Johnson’s Attorney General)
- Edward Levi (Ford’s Attorney General)
- Henry Kissinger (Nixon’s secretary of state)
- Henry Morgenthau (Roosevelt’s treasury secretary)
- Bob Rubin (Clinton’s treasury secretary)
- Mike Blumenthal (Carter’s treasury secretary)
- Arthur Goldberg (Kennedy’s labor secretary)
- Dan Glickman (Clinton’s agriculture secretary)
There are a few others. But Mukasey stands alone. Unless you include Judah Benjamin. He got the Triple Crown: Attorney General, War Secretary, and Secretary of State. For the Confederacy.
anonymous said,
September 19, 2007 @ 1:06 am
the heighest ranking orthodox member of the executive branch up to this point was probably Dov Zakheim (he’s even a non practicing, yet ordained, rabbi). Though Chertoff had some sort of orthodox education, albiet his father and grandfather were active in the conservative movement (which decided educating their kids wasn’t a high priority agenda item).
Capt. Jeffrey T. Spaulding (Ret.) said,
September 19, 2007 @ 9:04 am
don’t forget:
Oscar Straus, secretary of commerce and labor (1906–09)
William S. Cohen, secretary of defense (half Jewish)
James Schlesinger, Secretary of Defense (1973–75) & Energy (1979)
Harold Brown, secretary of defense (1977–81)
Neil Goldschmidt, secretary of transportation (1979–1981)
Robert Reich, secretary of labor (1993–97)
Madeleine Albright, secretary of state (1997–01) (raised Catholic by converted parents)
Larry Summers, secretary of the treasury (1999–01)
and Caspar Weinberger who was half Jewish but was raised as an Episcopalian
William Daroff said,
September 19, 2007 @ 9:43 am
Tevi Troy is the highest ranking Orthodox Jew to have served in the Bush Administration. As the Deputy Secretary of HHS, he is the number 2 offficial there. Dov Zakheim was one of a number of Undersecretaries of Defense as the Comptroller — so, he was one of the number 3 officials there (with Wolfowitz being the #2 throughout Zakheim’s tenure).