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Is congressman Jewish or Catholic?

WASHINGTON — On Sunday night, Dec. 18, George Santos joined the Republican Jewish Coalition on Long Island, where he was just elected to Congress, for a menorah-lighting to mark the first night of Chanukah.

Cong.-elect George Santos speaking at the RJC annual meeting, Nov. 19, 2022. (Wade Vandervort/AFP/Getty)

He was invited as one of just two freshmen Republican Jews elected to Congress in November.

On Monday morning, The New York Times published an article alleging that much of what Santos, 34, had said about his education, his wealth, his business experience, and even where he lives is false or at least questionable.

Not addressed in the article: Was he really Jewish? As with so much else in his personal narrative, there’s little to suggest truth beyond his own past comments.

The Times noted that Santos, 34, has identified to Jewish Insider as Jewish through his mother and Catholic through his father. Both parents were born in Brazil. Santos has said on Twitter that he is a practicing Catholic.

It is not unusual for some Americans to identify as ethnically Jewish and religiously Christian.

“Whether my mother’s Jewish background beliefs, which are mine or my father’s Roman Catholic beliefs, which are also mine, are represented or not,” he told Jewish Insider after his election, “I want to represent everyone else that practices every other religion to make sure everybody feels like they have a partner in me.”

His campaign biography begins, “George’s grandparents fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WW II. They were able to settle in Brazil, where his mother was born.”

Many European Jews fled to South America during the leadup to the Holocaust. George Santos’ mother, Fatima Devolder (Santos himself sometimes goes by the name George Devolder), died in 2016 in New York, but nothing in her online obituary indicates any Jewish background.

Fatima is one of a number of Roman Catholic appellations for the Virgin Mary, derived from what the church claims are apparitions of Jesus’s mother in 1917 in the Portuguese city of the same name.

Devolder is a Flemish-Dutch name, which validates Santos’s claim that his mother has Belgian ancestry. Flemish people are overwhelmingly Catholic.

Matt Brooks, the RJC CEO, told JTA, “I asked him about this. He identifies as Jewish.”

Santos was a featured speaker last month at the RJC’s annual Las Vegas event, billed as one of two freshmen Jewish Republicans in Congress. (The other is Ohio’s Max Miller.)

He campaigned heavily among Orthodox Jews living in New York’s 3rd District, encompassing parts of northern Long Island and a part of Queens.

“It was an honor to address fellow members of the Jewish community in #NY03,” he tweeted Nov. 3 after attending a Chabad event also attended by Israeli Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau.

At Sunday’s Chanukah event, Santos joined Lee Zeldin, the outgoing New York Jewish congressman.
Santos did not return emails sent by JTA. His sister, Tiffany, also did not reply to an email, nor did his lawyer, Joe Murray.

Santos’ claims about his religious and ethnic origins are minor compared to the revelations in the Times expose, which offered new details as well as ones published previously elsewhere and uncovered by Democratic Party opposition research.

There are no records of Santos attending the institutes of higher learning he claims to have attended, or of working at some of the financial brokerages he claims have employed him.

A charitable institution he started has no evidence of being charitable.

Santos faces outstanding charges in Brazil for allegedly stealing a checkbook from a man in the care of his mother, a nurse, and then cashing checks, according to The New York Times’ report.

He has twice been evicted. His financial reporting as a candidate is missing required information, omissions that could bring legal jeopardy. The Times sought Santos out at the address where he is registered to vote; the person there said she did not know him.

It’s not the first time a politician has campaigned as identifying as having a Jewish background that evaporates under scrutiny.

In 2018, Julia Salazar, a progressive Democrat who won a seat in the New York state legislature, said she identified as Jewish in part because of her father’s Jewish roots; her brother said their father was not Jewish.

Salazar and her defenders said that she identified as Jewish and it was untoward to demand proof. The RJC’s Brooks sounded a similar note regarding Santos. “He considers himself a Jew. That’s good enough for me,” he texted.




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