Lonely In New Hampshire

Adam Dickter reports in The Jewish Week:

As the nation’s political attention pivots from Iowa to New Hampshire this week, Rabbi Levi Krinsky, the emissary of Chabad Lubavitch in Manchester for the past 22 years, is feeling a little lonely.

Without a Democratic primary fight, the Jews of this fiercely independent state, who number about 10,000, aren’t being courted as heavily as they used to.

“This is the quietest [primary] I can remember,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday. Of the small Jewish population, even a smaller number are Republicans, judging by national trends.

The Jewish community of New Hampshire won’t likely play much of a role in next week’s primary election. The Republican Jewish Coalition has no members in the Granite State, which holds the first primary in the nation after Tuesday’s Iowa Caucus.

In the past New Hampshire’s Jews were more heavily courted in the election cycle — Sen. Joe Lieberman spent six months campaigning there during his failed 2004 bid for the Democratic nomination. This year no Democrat is in the race other than the incumbent president, who does not have to seek his party’s nod.

Rabbi Krinsky, son of Crown Heights Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, who was a close aide to the late Lubavitcher rebbe, said he could think of only a handful of his two dozen or so regular congregants who identify as Republicans.

In past election years he has fielded requests for kosher food or other accommodations for Jewish visitors during the primary. But this is his quietest primary season since he arrived at his post.

“You have a bunch of people running now that not a lot of people are excited about,” he said.

Read the full article on TheJewishWeek.com