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These Rabbis Just Declared The Past 7 Years Of Ivanka Trump's Life A Lie

by Alexandra Svokos
REUTERS

Presumed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been frequently accused of anti-Semitism.

Most recently, he tweeted an anti-Hillary Clinton image with a six-pointed star, causing many people to say it was anti-Jewish. Trump rejected that idea. The image he tweeted was created by white supremacists.

After writing a profile on Melania Trump, journalist Julia Ioffe, who is Jewish, got a rush of anti-Semitic calls and tweets, often violent ones.

Trump is publicly supported by an assortment of white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

Trump and his supporters have often used the fact that his daughter, Ivanka, converted to Judaism to marry her husband, Jared Kushner, who is Jewish, as a defense against these claims. Kushner defended Trump, calling him "not anti-Semitic," after one of Kushner's employees, who is Jewish, wrote an open letter asking him why he has not denounced the anti-Semitism surrounding Trump.

Now, Trump supporters may not be able to use possible vice presidential pick Ivanka as a defense.

Ivanka was converted to Judaism by Rabbi Haskel Lookstein.

But the Supreme Rabbinical Court of Israel ruled on Wednesday Lookstein's conversions are not valid. According to the Times of Israel, a rabbinical judge said,

I don't know what the quality of Lookstein's conversions are, the approval of the chief rabbi is insufficient… because there is no list of official rabbis and no order.

So, all the people who converted to Judaism through Lookstein are not being recognized as Jewish by Israel's Supreme Rabbinical Court.

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This means Ivanka's standing as Jewish is now on uncertain terms.

It was just announced on Thursday morning Lookstein will be a speaker at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next week. It will be interesting to see if he comments on this turn in events, where his work was delegitimatized by the Israeli court.

Citations: The Times of Israel, CNN, The New York Times, Vox