Argentine Rabbi Is Running in National Election for Center-Right Party
Image by Wikicommons
Rabbi Sergio Bergman will lead the ticket for the center-right PRO Party in Argentina’s national elections.
The PRO Party confirmed the decision on Saturday hours before the deadline for parties to present candidates for the October vote.
Bergman, a member of the Buenos Aires municipal Legislature, will head the list for the National Lower House. He is the first rabbi to lead a national ticket in Argentina.
Buenos Aires city Mayor Mauricio Macri, who is running against President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of the Victory Front party, tapped Bergman to lead the party list.
Bergman, the senior rabbi of the traditional Congregacion Israelita Argentina, is the founder of Active Memory, a group that demonstrated every Monday for a decade seeking justice for the victims of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center.
In July 2011, he handily won his Legislature seat with 45 percent of the vote.
Before that election, Bergman told JTA that he became involved in politics because Argentinian society is “in a deep crisis of values,” adding, “I believe that Torah can also be taught in the Legislature.”
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
