Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed posted a campaign video over the weekend of him celebrating the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah with two Jewish Michiganders, as he tries to atone for remarks he made about a terrorist attack on a Detroit-area synagogue and attempts to distance himself from anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker.
However, the self-described “Jews for Abdul” featured in el Sayed’s video, meant to help the Democratic nominee repair his strained relationship with Jewish voters, are actually left-wing activists deployed by Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Israel organization that stands “in full solidarity with Palestinian resistance.”
Elaine Shifman and Missy Shifman-Bean, the mother-daughter duo who welcomed el Sayed into their home to share a traditional Rosh Hashanah meal together, also stumped for el Sayed in an earlier July 29 video created by JVP Action, the lobbying and political action arm of JVP.
“Join Jews for Abdul like Missy and Elaine to get out the vote this week!” JVP Action captioned the July video. The group then directed followers to sign up on its website to canvass and phonebank for el Sayed ahead of the Aug. 4 primary, which he went won over Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), a staunch supporter of Israel.
The Shifmans are related to Pamela Shifman, the president of Democracy Alliance, a collective of Democratic megadonors formed to build out the Left’s financial and activist infrastructure.
Democracy Alliance counts left-wing philanthropist George Soros as one of its top donor members. Pamela Shifman used to be the program coordinator of a women’s program run by the Open Society Foundations, a major grantmaking group part of the greater Soros funding network. JVP has also received significant grant money over the years from several Open Society entities funded by Soros.
In 2017, Pamela Shifman joined dozens of self-identified Jewish leaders in signing a statement defending Women’s March co-founder Linda Sarsour, whom even left-of-center Jewish civil rights organizations have condemned as an antisemitic figure.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the president of the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League, once proclaimed that “having Linda Sarsour & head of JVP leading a panel on #antisemitism is like Oscar Meyer leading a panel on vegetarianism.” Greenblatt was speaking out against a panel composed of Sarsour and JVP’s executive director, Rebecca Vilkomerson, that a New York City college had assembled to discuss antisemitism.
“These panelists know the issue, but unfortunately, from the perspective of fomenting it rather than fighting it,” Greenblatt posted on social media.
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Hours after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, JVP issued a statement describing the Hamas militants responsible for the mass killings as “Palestinian fighters from Gaza.” Blaming the onslaught on Israel and the U.S. alliance, JVP argued that “Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence.”
Pamela Shifman is Missy Shifman-Bean’s sister and Elaine Shifman’s daughter, according to a Washington Examiner review of the Shifman family’s social media posts and an obituary identifying various family members. An old profile of Pamela Shifman says she “comes from a family of liberal Jewish activists” and that “melding Jewish expression with social justice was embedded in her upbringing in suburban Detroit.”
In the call-to-action July video paid for by JVP Action, the Shifmans characterized “being Jewish” as supporting Palestinian statehood.
“For me,” Elaine Shifman tells JVP members, “being Jewish has always been closely tied to fighting for human rights and social justice for all people.”
“And it’s why we’re both so proud to support Abdul el Sayed for Senate,” Missy Shifman-Bean adds. “Abdul…is someone who believes in the rights and freedoms of every person, no exceptions, including Palestinians.”
Shifman-Bean, a telehealth therapist, said they were spending the final week before the Michigan primary “putting our Jewish values into practice by knocking on doors and making calls for Abdul.”
JVP’s political messaging strategy primarily frames its opposition to Israelis’ claims to their ancestral homeland as criticism coming from fellow Jews, but its progressive member base has been accused of being Jewish-in-name-only and not practicing Jews. Some local JVP chapters have been founded by non-Jews, including Muslims, while non-Jewish members make up only half of other JVP branches.
Critics called el Sayed’s campaign video inauthentic and not truly representative of the Jewish community due to the Shifmans’ association with JVP. Others online criticized the Shifman family for reciting the Hebrew blessings from a prayer card, rather than by memory.
“The two Jewish Voice for Peace members featured in Dr. el Sayed’s campaign video are entitled to their views, and we do not question the sincerity of their Jewish identities or their observance of Rosh Hashanah,” Jewish Majority executive director Jonathan Schulman said. “The problem is the campaign’s attempt to present these two individuals as representatives of the broader Jewish community.”
Schulman’s advocacy organization works to demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans believe in Israel’s right to defend itself and that being pro-Israel is a mainstream position among American Jews.
“Jewish Voice for Peace exists to create the impression that Jewish opposition to Israel’s existence is something other than an extremely fringe position,” Schulman told the Washington Examiner.
The Jewish Majority has repeatedly warned that JVP “weaponizes the Jewish identity” to portray anti-Zionism as a popular belief held by most Jews in America. JVP’s mission, as stated by Vilkomerson, is to drive a wedge from within, by portraying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a polarizing internal issue splitting the American Jewish community, to weaken broader U.S. support for Israel.
“The choice to feature these JVP activists in a Rosh Hashanah message appears to be a blatant attempt to distract from the Michigan Jewish community’s serious concerns about el Sayed’s choice to partner with Hasan Piker and explain away the attack on Temple Israel,” Schulman said. “A carefully staged holiday gathering is no substitute for listening seriously to mainstream Jewish concerns about antisemitism, Israel, and Jewish safety.”
In the lead-up to the tight November election, el Sayed has sought to mend relations with Jewish voters, including by tepidly apologizing for comments he made in the wake of the Hezbollah-inspired terrorist attack on Temple Israel, one of the largest Jewish congregations in Michigan.
Though he condemned the violence, el Sayed appeared to excuse the attacker’s actions, saying “hurt people hurt people” in reference to reports that the perpetrator’s family had been killed in an Israeli airstrike days earlier.
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In the March 12 attack on Temple Israel, authorities say Ayman Mohamad Ghazali rammed a vehicle containing explosives into the synagogue and opened fire before he was killed in a shootout with police. More than 100 young children were on-site at the preschool inside Temple Israel. None were injured.
The Washington Examiner contacted el Sayed’s campaign and JVP for comment.