Romney Campaign: No Tisha B’Av Clash
The Romney campaign never planned a fundraiser in Jerusalem for the fast of Tisha b’Av, a senior campaign official said.
The official reached out to JTA on Thursday to push back against reports that a fundraiser during Mitt Romney’s planned Israel visit was scheduled for the Jewish fast day mourning the destruction of the Temples, among other calamities.
This year Tisha b’Av falls on July 29.
Subsequent reports said the Romney campaign canceled the event once its officials realized July 29 was a fast day.
A donor who will be attending the fundraiser told JTA that the event had always been scheduled for past nightfall on July 29, which means that it will not coincide with the fast day.
The campaign official would not confirm whether there would be a fundraiser during the Israel visit of Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor, but said that the campaign has been careful in planning the visit to work around the traditions and sensitivities of the fast day.
“The campaign has been aware of the sensitivities of Tisha b’Av,” said the official.
Reports have said that the fundraiser will cost between $50,000 and $60,000 a plate.
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
