Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Shmuley Boteach Defends Trump For Shunning Warsaw Ghetto Memorial

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is defending President Trump’s decision not to visit the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during his sojourn to Poland.

Boteach, who has been a vocal defender of President Trump in recent months, responded in a statement to Poland’s Chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, after Schudrich criticized Trump’s decision to skip the monument.

“He is absolutely correct that it would have been appropriate for President Trump to visit the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial,” Boteach said of Schudrich. “But the absence of gestures should never be allowed to undermine strong and courageous action.”

“So, while President Trump should also be attending the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial today, we should remember that gestures, while extremely important, do not replace grand action,” Boteach added, ticking off supposed achievements of Trump’s rocky presidency.

Ivanka Trump visited the monument with Schudrich, who called her visit “very, very important… not only because she’s a Jew, because her grandparents-in-law are survivors of the Holocaust, but also as a human being it’s important.”

Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aefeldman.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.