Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Make a Passover gift and support Jewish journalism. DONATE NOW
Fast Forward

Roy Moore’s Wife: I Was Talking About A Different Jewish Lawyer

Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore’s wife Kayla made waves last month when she tried to defend her husband from charges of anti-Semitism by saying, “One of our attorneys is a Jew.”

The Forward was the first publication to report that Moore’s son Caleb was defended on drug charges in 2016 by an attorney named Richard Jaffe, who is Jewish — and a friend and outspoken supporter of Moore’s opponent, Doug Jones.

But Kayla Moore now says that she was referring to someone else.

“Kayla was certainly not referring to Richard Jaffe but rather to an attorney currently employed by her Foundation for Moral Law,” her spokesperson told the local news site AL.com on Tuesday.

According to its website, the foundation only has two employees: Moore and Col. John Eidsmoe, the group’s Senior Counsel & Resident Scholar. But according to Eidsmoe’s biography on the website, he is an ordained pastor in the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations.

Moore had also said in her fateful speech last month that she and her husband “have very close friends that are Jewish and rabbis and we also fellowship with them.” According to Southern Jewish Life magazine, she was referring to leaders at Beth Hallel, a Messianic Jewish congregation that no other denominations of Judaism recognize as legitimate.

Roy Moore unsuccessfully mounted a legal challenge to his election loss last month, alleging voter fraud. One of the “experts” he relied on in his filing was James Condit, Jr., a Holocaust denier who claimed that Israel had a role in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.

This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.

With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.

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

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 comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag 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.