If either Michael Bloomberg or Bernie Sanders become the Democratic nominee for president, they would be the first Jewish person in U.S. history to reach that level of political achievement.
Irene Monroe and Emmett Price joined Boston Public Radio on Thursday to discuss the intersectionalism of religion and politics as it relates to the two Jewish candidates in the race.
"The challenge is, until now we've never seen them as necessarily being stalwarts of the Jewish community, of being activists," said Price.
While Bloomberg donated to redesign his childhood synagogue in Medford and funded the building of a wing of an Israeli hospital in the name of his parents, Sanders'only recently began to speak more openly about his family's history and connections to Judaism.
"We're seeing the intersection of Judaism and politics at a time we're very polarized," Monroe said. "I think it's very important there might be a way of normalizing Judaism, because Judaism at one point and may still be to some folks, it's an un-American supposedly threat to the American landscape that is supposedly christian majority."
