By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal
I am probably the only writer starting a column about the incoming president of Mexico by citing a once-prominent Marxist theoretician who died more than half a century ago. Because it provides an insight into who Claudia Sheinbaum is.
Isaac Deutscher, who died in 1967, wrote a very influential article, “The Non-Jewish Jew” in 1958. It could have been a portrait of Mexico’s newly-elected president.
The concept of the “non-Jewish Jew” has been adopted by many secular leftist Jewish intellectuals as a badge of identity. Defined by a universal and secularist humanist outlook that is rooted in Jewish thought, they are revolutionaries of modern thought who transcend their Jewish background.
Deutscher attributes their exceptional breadth to the fact that as Jews they live in the boundaries of various civilizations, religions, and national cultures This, Deutscher suggests, has what enabled them to lift their gaze above their own community and to strike mentally into new horizons. It fits Sheinbaum to a T.
Sheinbaum, who headed outgoing president Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador’s left-wing Morena (National Regeneration Movement), gained 59.3 per cent of the vote, winning handily over her main opponent, Xochitl Galvez -- also, as it happened, another woman.
Running for a right-of-centre coalition comprising the PAN (National Action Party), PRI (Institutional Party of the Revolution) and PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution), she came in at about 30 per cent.
Of course virtually every columnist has emphasized that Sheinbaum is the first woman to assume Mexico’s highest office, especially notable for a country often criticized for its machismo and violence towards women.
Journalists also speculate that she is probably going to follow in the footsteps of her left-wing mentor, who has completed his six-year term as head of state, since Mexico’s presidents are limited to one term in office.
Sheinbaum has promised continuity, saying that she will continue to build on the welfare programs which have made the outgoing president very popular. She points to her term as Mexico City mayor, during which she oversaw a 50 per cent reduction in the murder rate in the capital.
Yes, Sheinbaum’s Jewish background has been noted – and her opponents have in fact used it against her, in this very Catholic country. She has been the target of hyper-nationalist, antisemitic prejudice, including online birther conspiracy theories alleging that she was born in Bulgaria. Former PAN president Vicente Fox has referred to her as a “Bulgarian Jew” and “Jewish and foreign” in separate posts on X.
Sheinbaum’s maternal grandparents were indeed Sephardic Jews who fled Bulgaria before the Holocaust. Her paternal grandparents were Ashkenazi Jews who arrived in Mexico, fleeing persecution in Lithuania, in the 1920s. Her paternal grandfather left Europe because, she has stated, he was “Jewish and communist.”
But while that may be one reason why she downplayed her roots, she really is a “non-Jewish Jew” who has rarely addressed her Jewishness in public. When she does, she tends to convey a more distant relationship to Judaism than many others in Mexico’s Jewish community.
“Of course I know where I come from, but my parents were atheists” and leftists, Sheinbaum told the New York Times in a 2020 interview. “I never belonged to the Jewish community. We grew up a little removed from that.” Her own Mexican identity is rooted in science, socialism, and political activism.
Both of Sheinbaum’s parents were well-off scientists and Sheinbaum studied physics before going on to receive a doctorate in energy engineering. She spent years at a renowned research lab in California studying Mexican energy consumption patterns and became an expert on climate change. That experience and her student activism eventually earned her the position of secretary of the environment for Mexico City at the time when Lopez Obrador was mayor of the capital.
On the campaign trail this year, she gained attention for wearing a Catholic rosary necklace and skirts decorated with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the “Queen of Mexico.” The Basilica in Mexico City is the most-visited Catholic shrine in the world.
“You have the right not to believe in God, it is a personal issue, but you don’t have the right to use Mexicans’ faith for political opportunism. That’s hypocrisy,” maintained Galvez, who highlighted her own Catholic credentials in her campaign.
Ironically, Xochitl Galvez took to X last September to wish the Jewish community a happy new year and a “blessed” Yom Kippur. And the Mexican Jewish community in this election mostly supported Galvez, rather than Sheinbaum, who, even when mayor, never integrated herself with the tightly knit Jewish community of Mexico City.
In her victory speech June 2, Sheinbaum acknowledged the significance of her becoming Mexico’s first female president, but made no mention that she will also be the country’s first Jewish president.
As Sheinbaum prepares to tackle some of Mexico’s most pressing social issues, including a crisis of murder and drug cartel violence, she might also strive to showcase the multiple identities and ancestries that comprise Mexican society. But she doesn’t seem to want to include Mexico’s 60,000 Jews in that tapestry.
In a few months, she will occupy the National Palace, and she will always be remembered as the woman who managed to break the glass ceiling in Mexican politics. But few will remember she was Jewish by birth.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science
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