The Jews of Capitol Hill by Stone Kurt F.;

Author:Stone, Kurt F.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press, Incorporated
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Republican from Minnesota; elected to the U.S. Senate in November 1978 for the term commencing January 3, 1979; subsequently appointed on December 30, 1978, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Wendell B. Anderson for the term ending January 3, 1979; reelected in 1984 for the term ending January 3, 1991; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1990 and in 1996; chairman, National Republican Senatorial Committee (100th Congress).

The 1990 Minnesota election for U.S. Senate featured a unique first in American history: the first race in which a Jewish challenger ran against a Jewish incumbent. That year the challenger, Carlton College professor Paul David Wellstone, defeated two-term Republican incumbent Senator Rudy Boschwitz. What made the scenario even more remarkable is that the election, held in a state with a Jewish population of less than 1 percent, hinged in large part on the question of who was the “better” Jew. Six years later, Wellstone and Boschwitz faced off against one another a second time. Once again, Wellstone, by now a seasoned member of the “World’s Most Exclusive Club,” defeated Boschwitz. In Rudy Boschwitz’s mind, the “better” Jew had lost yet again. (Continuing the irony, when Wellstone unexpectedly died in the crash of a private plane just a few weeks before the 2002 election, his seat was taken by yet another Jew, former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman. In 2008, Coleman was defeated by the Harvard-trained comedian-turned-political-activist Al Franken.)

Rudy Boschwitz’s personal story is extremely compelling; it has a Horatio Alger “rags-to-riches” quality about it that reifies the “American Dream of Success.” Rudolph Eli, the son of Ely and Lucy (Dawidawicz) Boschwitz, was born in Berlin on November 7, 1930, where Ely was a prosperous stockbroker. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. According to the future senator, “On that day my Dad came home and told my Mom we would leave Germany forever. Six months later we were gone.” Ely fled with his family to Czechoslovakia. Over the next two years, the Boschwitzes kept moving farther west; from Czechoslovakia to Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England. Finally, in 1935, the family arrived in the United States of America. Ely Boschwitz’s decision to leave Germany was obviously a wise one; by 1945, all of his relatives living in Europe—save one—had been murdered by the Nazis.

Ely settled his family in New Rochelle, New York, where young Rudy was a student at the Pennington School in Mercer County, New Jersey, a private coeducational institution founded in 1838. (Pennington’s famous alumni include the writer Stephen Crane.) At age sixteen, Boschwitz entered Johns Hopkins University. At the end of his sophomore year (1948), he transferred to New York University, where he earned a B.S. from the university’s Stern School of Business in 1950, and a bachelor of laws in 1953. Shortly after passing the New York bar exam in 1954, Boschwitz served a two-year hitch in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Returning to New York in 1955, he practiced tax law for two years.

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