Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

CNN Panel Erupts Over Ivanka Meeting With Rabbi Who Compared Blacks To Monkeys

(JTA) — On CNN on Tuesday, Don Lemon asked an all-black panel to comment on how they felt about Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner receiving a blessing from Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, during their visit to Israel to dedicate the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

Yosef is under criminal investigation for making a bizarre analogy that compared a hypothetical black child born to white parents with a monkey born to black parents. He also repeatedly referred to blacks as “Kushim,” a pejorative term.

The CNN segment, however, devolved from monkeys into a weird discussion about manhood.

Lemon showed the panel a photo posted on Twitter on Sunday, a day ahead of the embassy festivities, by Jewish Insider reporter Jacob Kornbluh.

“What’s your reaction to them meeting and getting a blessing from this rabbi who once compared black people to monkeys?” Lemon asked.

Up first was Paris Dennard, an African-American conservative commentator and Trump Advisory Board member.

“If that is true, he should certainly apologize for it if he means it,” Dennard said of Yosef. “And I think that if it just shows that, if the Kushners knew about that ahead of time, it just shows grace and love and acceptance and I think that’s an amazing thing.”

Watch the clip and you’ll see double takes from his fellow panelists, Angela Rye, the former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Temple University professor Mark Lamont Hill.

Then Rye leans in.

“Paris, somebody calls you a monkey you looking to show grace and love, you can’t do that with correction? You can’t tell them who you really are, you’re a man! You can’t allow someone to call you an animal,” she said.

Dennard, weirdly, took Rye’s comments on racism as an attack on his masculinity.

“Thank you Angela, I don’t need you to tell me or inform me of that, I’m acutely aware of my manhood,” he said.

Rye leaned in again.

“That wasn’t shade, it was just saying you show grace and love by correcting, Brother Man!” she said.

Rye also was familiar with the case, and Rabbi Yosef’s multiple sins against thinking before speaking.

“He also called Ethiopian Jews ‘kushi,’ which is also a derogatory term, he also compared women who dress immodestly to animals,” she said.

Rye then circled back to Lemon’s question about the appropriateness of Trump’s Jewish daughter and son-in-law of taking Yosef’s blessing.

“Paris, you don’t show grace and love to someone by allowing them to lay hands on you or to bless you,” she said. “You show yourself worthy of respect, of not being ignorant and shunning bigotry by making sure those people don’t have a place in your life!”

When Yosef’s “monkey” comment came to light, his office said he was drawing on an analogy from the Talmud to explain when one should say a blessing over a highly unusual event. One such event, he suggests according to the Talmud’s 1,800-year-old idiom, would be if a white couple gave birth to a black child, or a black couple gave birth to a monkey.

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

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

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.