Was Stephen Miller’s Republican Family Shunned By Their Liberal California Synagogue?
Image by Getty Images
Stephen Miller, the aide to President Donald Trump who helped create his “Muslim ban” and defended it on television, comes from a Republican family at odds with their fellow congregants and neighbors in liberal southern California.
Miller attended Hebrew school at the Santa Monica Synagogue, graduating in 2001. The Hollywood Reporter recently spoke with a number of members there who remember the Miller family, who were members for only two or three years. “They have been and are conservative Republicans,” Rabbi Steven Windmueller told the magazine. One source, who was not named in the article, said they did not fit in with the liberal leaning congregation, so they left.
Many have wondered how a native of such a liberal city as Los Angeles could grow up to be one of Trump’s closest advisors. But others have pointed to the political differences in the city between the wealthier areas and those that are more middle class.
“In Santa Monica, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, all those things exist,” Oscar de la Torre, one of Miller’s high school teachers, told the magazine.
Some in Miller’s parents’s neighborhood have stopped speaking to the Millers. “We’ll try to get as many of these on the block as we can,” one neighbor told the magazine of the lawn signs in the area touting liberal causes. “Maybe the Millers will get the message.”
Contact Shira Hanau at [email protected]
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
