Washington Lobbyist’s Worlds Collide with Ethics Revelations

Jack Abramoff made a name for himself in the Washington political world as an insider with strong ties to Republican circles of power. But within Washington’s Jewish world, Abramoff cut an image as a lone ranger, someone who shunned the organized Jewish community and chose to create his own Jewish institutions to serve his needs. Several of them quickly failed.

That hasn’t kept Abramoff, who is Orthodox, from turning to Judaism to explain allegations that he overcharged Indian tribes for lobbying services and used his ties to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and other Republican lawmakers to advance his personal interests.

Abramoff is at the eye of a gathering ethical storm over allegations that a number of congressmen — most prominent among them DeLay — accepted gifts and favors from him.

In a New York Times interview, Abramoff was quoted comparing himself to the biblical character Jacob, saying that his involvement in the rough and tumble of lobbying — with his attendant use of shocking and abusive language, revealed in e-mails leaked to The Washington Post — was similar to the incident in which the biblical patriarch took on the identity of his brother, Esau.

In response to questions from JTA, a spokesman for Abramoff said his client had been misquoted in the Times’ article and never compared himself to any biblical figure.

Abramoff’s “political activities, like everything in his life, were informed by his religious beliefs,” the spokesman told JTA. “While he did not always meet the standard of his faith, he certainly aspired to do so.”

Few in the Jewish community are concerned that the scandal surrounding Abramoff will reflect poorly on the Jewish community and its ties with conservative Republicans. Lawmakers and other power brokers know Abramoff is Jewish but don’t lump him in with the organized Jewish world.

“This is not a Jewish issue predominantly,” one Jewish political insider said. “He doesn’t have his yarmulke on when he’s meeting with people.”

Abramoff did, on his own, advocate for some Jewish issues, including Israel, in private conversations with lawmakers and political players, sources said. Newsweek has reported that the FBI is investigating whether he funneled funds from the Capital Athletic Foundation, a charity he established to support sports programs for urban youth, to West Bank settlers threatened by Palestinian terrorism.

Overall, however, Abramoff was seen as a Republican with pure conservative bona fides who did not specialize in Jewish issues or link his influence to Jewish or Israeli causes.

He cut his teeth as chairman of the College Republican National Committee in the early 1980s, working with such young conservative luminaries as Grover Norquist, now an influential conservative activist, and Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition who now is running for lieutenant governor of Georgia.

After a stint in California, Abramoff returned to Washington in 1994, using his connections with the newly installed Republican congressional majority to lobby for a prominent firm.

Sources close to Abramoff said his conservative religious values helped him bond with DeLay and other Christian conservatives. That approach mirrors those of many Orthodox leaders who in recent years have forged ties with Christian and Republican leaders.

“Anyone who knows him knows his Jewish connections are deep and real,” one Abramoff associate said. “These things resonated deeply with a lot of powerful political people on the right wing of the Republican political spectrum.”

Similar values led to sincere kinships, the associate added.

At a time when his influence was growing in Washington, Abramoff shunned offers to get involved with Jewish groups and lasted only five months on the board of directors of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington.

Ron Halber, the JCRC’s executive director, said Abramoff complained about not having time to commit to the group. Halber believes the organization may have been too liberal for Abramoff’s tastes.

“He was certainly known as an espouser of conservative causes,” Halber said.

Instead, Abramoff became renowned as the owner and operator of Stacks and Archives, which were the only two kosher restaurants in the nation’s capitol before they closed last year. The Jewish Community Center runs a kosher cafeteria.

“Stacks became almost like the unofficial lunchroom for Jewish Washington and its colleagues,” said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Washington director of American Friends of Lubavitch, who said he dined at the deli frequently.

Archives, a fine dining establishment, was above the deli but never stayed open for more than a few weeks at a time. Both restaurants occupied prime real estate on Pennsylvania Avenue, across from the National Archives in a space that once housed Planet Hollywood.

Opening the restaurants fit the Abramoff approach: He saw a personal need he had in Washington — kosher dining — and used his own money to make it happen. Diners said Abramoff routinely noted that he was taking a loss each month on the businesses, but boasted that he was using his wealth to serve the needs of his community and himself.

He did the same thing in 2002 when he opened the Eshkol Academy, a Jewish day school that grew out of the home schooling he provided for his own children and like-minded families in suburban Maryland.

“He felt people had to make too much of an extreme choice” between a thorough religious education and quality secular teaching, and he wanted an integrated program that stressed both, said Rabbi David Lapin, who helped found and run the school.

“We talked for many years about the gaps in the Jewish education system, and when he had the means to do so he wanted to try and do it right,” said Lapin, who met Abramoff when he visited Lapin’s native South Africa.

Abramoff knew he would have to take a loss on the school for several years, but he was overwhelmed by the cost, Lapin said. He added that Abramoff didn’t get help from the Jewish community.

The school closed in May 2004, two weeks before the end of the school year. Thirteen former employees sued Abramoff, demanding nearly $150,000 in back salary.

Lapin’s association with Abramoff links Abramoff’s Jewish world to his political world. The New York Times reported last week that Lapin, chief executive of Strategic Business Ethics in California, received a $1.2 million contract from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific and an Abramoff client.

The island’s attorney general, Pal Brown, told the newspaper that the government had been unable to determine what Lapin did under his no-bid contract to promote ethics in government.

The contract reportedly included a trip to the island for DeLay. Abramoff was lobbying in Washington to keep U.S. labor laws from applying in the Marianas, where Chinese workers are employed in the garment industry.

A note on Strategic Business Ethics’ Web site detailed Lapin’s activities on the project, saying SBE restructured the island’s Departments of Labor and Immigration. It goes on to say that the newspaper did not reach Lapin, and suggests Brown said she was misquoted.

A call to Brown’s office was not returned. Abramoff’s spokesman would not comment on his client’s ties to Lapin.

As more is learned of Abramoff, it may become harder to separate the religious man from the political man. Recent profiles noted that he became more religiously observant after seeing “Fiddler on the Roof” when he was 12, and that e-mails filled with expletives and derogatory terms for Native Americans still referenced God with a hyphen instead of the middle letter.

Abramoff says his current environment is reminiscent of a Jewish version of hell.

“In Judaism, it’s one of the definitions of hell,” he told The New York Times Magazine, “that you have to sit and watch the replay of everything you said and did with the people you know.”