{"id":95,"date":"2008-07-15T20:45:58","date_gmt":"2008-07-15T20:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/obama-was-an-occasional-shabbo.html"},"modified":"2008-07-15T20:45:58","modified_gmt":"2008-07-15T20:45:58","slug":"obama-was-an-occasional-shabbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/obama-was-an-occasional-shabbo.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama was an (Occasional) Shabbos Goy!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/imgs\/ira%20silverstein.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"ira silverstein.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/128\/import\/imgs\/ira silverstein-thumb-144x216.jpg\" width=\"144\" height=\"216\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/a><\/span>Shabos goy is the term used by orthodox Jews for gentiles who help them with certain tasks they&#8217;re forbidden from doing during the Sabbath, such as operating electrical devices.<br \/>\nAccording to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/id\/145971\">Newsweek&#8217;s excellent cover story <\/a>on Obama&#8217;s faith, when he was a state senator in Illinois his roommate was Ira Silverstein, an Orthodox Jew.  He peppered Silverstein about questions on Kosher rules:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;On the Sabbath, if I ever needed anything, Barack would always offer,&#8221; remembers Silverstein. &#8220;Some of the doors are electric, so he would offer to open them&#8230; I didn&#8217;t expect that.&#8221;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>UPDATE:  Thanks to commenter Manachem Petrushka who points out: &#8220;Senator Barack Obama is not fisrt celebrity to have been a &#8216;Shabbos Goy&#8217; Elvis Presly and Colin Powell offered their serviced to help out religious Jews on the Sabbath.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shabos goy is the term used by orthodox Jews for gentiles who help them with certain tasks they&#8217;re forbidden from doing during the Sabbath, such as operating electrical devices. According to Newsweek&#8217;s excellent cover story on Obama&#8217;s faith, when he was a state senator in Illinois his roommate was Ira Silverstein, an Orthodox Jew. He&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Obama was an (Occasional) Shabbos Goy! - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/obama-was-an-occasional-shabbo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Obama was an (Occasional) Shabbos Goy! - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Shabos goy is the term used by orthodox Jews for gentiles who help them with certain tasks they&#8217;re forbidden from doing during the Sabbath, such as operating electrical devices. According to Newsweek&#8217;s excellent cover story on Obama&#8217;s faith, when he was a state senator in Illinois his roommate was Ira Silverstein, an Orthodox Jew. He&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/obama-was-an-occasional-shabbo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-07-15T20:45:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Obama was an (Occasional) Shabbos Goy! - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/obama-was-an-occasional-shabbo.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Obama was an (Occasional) Shabbos Goy! - Steven Waldman","og_description":"Shabos goy is the term used by orthodox Jews for gentiles who help them with certain tasks they&#8217;re forbidden from doing during the Sabbath, such as operating electrical devices. According to Newsweek&#8217;s excellent cover story on Obama&#8217;s faith, when he was a state senator in Illinois his roommate was Ira Silverstein, an Orthodox Jew. 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He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. 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