El una mensch.
Argentina’s new president is a longtime public admirer of the Israel and the Jewish people — and has close ties to the Big Apple’s Hasidic community.
Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina this week in a stunning upset. The libertarian firebrand has made headlines for vowing to vanquish socialism from the South American nation — and for a colorful past which includes a stint as a tantric sex teacher.
In September, just months before his election, Milei, 53, who is Catholic, traveled to New York City where he conferred with top Hasidic Jewish leaders in Brooklyn and Queens.
“In my conversation with Mr. Milei, it was clear that he was genuinely inspired by Judaism’s teachings,” said Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, an official with Chabad, a Hasidic Jewish organization in New York. Kotlarsky met with the incoming leader in NYC earlier this year. “I found him to be very sincere, and it’s that sincerity and deep spiritual conviction that brought him to New York for a soulful day of prayer.”
On the same trip, Milei made a pilgrimage to Queens to visit the Ohel, the gravesite of the Chabad Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
The rebbe, who died in 1994, is one of the most influential rabbis in modern history and his gravesite is visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year of all faiths.
“There’s a book that contains the teachings of the rebbe. Usually they give you that book as a gift,” Milei said in an undated television clip during his presidential campaign. “I had the chance, the honor, to meet one of those rabbis who wrote those teachings and I had the privilege that he gave me that book and signed it for me.”
Milei was alluding to another meeting during the same New York visit with Chabad Rabbi Simon Jacobson, who had been a close associate of Schneerson, and had been among several high ranking officials who would reproduce the rebbe’s Shabbat speeches from memory, as no writing or audio equipment was allowed during the weekly observance.
“You should have seen how his eyes lit up, he was absolutely fascinated by the process of the remembering and that this was all documented in a book,” Jacobson said in a YouTube video describing the moment and congratulating Milei. “His excitement made me excited.”
In other television appearances, Milei has boasted about favoring synagogues over churches and preferring to receive guidance from a rabbi over a priest.
Though he was raised Catholic, Milei has often clashed with Pope Francis, who he has called an “imbecile” and “son-of-a-bitch preaching communism.” He has publicly mused about converting to Judaism.
Milei has promised to visit Israel in his first overseas trip and — following the United States — move his nation’s embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.
And he often cites Torah verses while discussing economic theory and has blown a tradtional Jewish shofar at political events. He has studied Jewish texts closely with his friend Argentine Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish, Haaetz reported.