Rahm Emanuel has accepted Obama's offer to be his Chief of Staff. It is said that the President's Chief of Staff is the second most important job in Washington.
Knowing what you know (see below) about Mr. Emanuel, how do my fellow JTF members feel about this very important Obama appointment? Is this a sign that Israel won't be thrown to the wolves by this administration? And does this appointment bode well for Jewish concerns in America? What are your thoughts?
From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_EmanuelRahm Emanuel (Hebrew: רם עמנואל) was born in Chicago, Illinois.[7] His first name, Rahm, means "high" or "lofty" in Hebrew[8], while his last name, Emanuel, means "God is with us." According to his father, his son is the namesake of Rahamim, a Lehi combatant who was killed.[9] Rahm’s surname was adopted by his family in 1933, after Rahm’s paternal uncle, Emanuel Auerbach, was killed in a skirmish with Arabs in Jerusalem.[10] His father, the Jerusalem-born Benjamin M. Emanuel, is a pediatrician and former member of the Irgun[10][9], a militant Zionist group active in the British Mandate of Palestine between 1931 and 1948. His mother, Martha Smulevitz, worked as an X-ray technician and was the daughter of a local union organizer.[6] She became a civil rights activist; she was also once the owner of a Chicago-area rock and roll club.[10] The two met in Chicago in the 1950s.[11] Emanuel's older brother, Ezekiel, is an oncologist and bioethicist, and his brother Ari is a talent agent in Los Angeles who inspired Jeremy Piven's character Ari Gold on the HBO series Entourage.[6] Emanuel himself is the inspiration for the character Josh Lyman on The West Wing.[6] He also has a younger adopted sister named Shoshanna, 14 years his junior.[6][10]
When his family lived in Chicago, he attended Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School, a Jewish day school. After his family moved to Wilmette, he attended public school: Romona School, Wilmette Junior High School, and New Trier West High School.[11][12] He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1981, and went on to receive a master's degree in Speech and Communication from Northwestern University in 1985. While still an undergraduate, he joined the congressional campaign of David Robinson of Chicago.[13]
Emanuel was a civilian volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, serving in one of Israel's northern bases, rust-proofing brakes.[14][15]
Topic: Rahm Emanuel (Read 1718 times)