I spent half of last week covering the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It's a political pageant that draws over half of Congress, dozens of administration officials, scores of dignitaries, an army of journalists, and thousands of delegates from across America.
So naturally, the first thing I did when I got there was design a bingo board. Since there are particular buzzwords and catchphrases that the speakers are pretty much contractually obligated to say ("Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East," "all options are on the table for dealing with Iran"), it's a fun game to play. Certainly, attendees thought so--some even tweeted pictures of their boards during the speeches.
So naturally, the first thing I did when I got there was design a bingo board. Since there are particular buzzwords and catchphrases that the speakers are pretty much contractually obligated to say ("Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East," "all options are on the table for dealing with Iran"), it's a fun game to play. Certainly, attendees thought so--some even tweeted pictures of their boards during the speeches.
One thing you couldn't help but notice at the conference was the visible presence of Orthodox Jews. Regular readers (ok, my mom) will recall that I first wrote about the increasing political engagement of this group at the Republican National Convention. At AIPAC, I talked to the major movers in the Orthodox Union, among others, to get a sense of the Orthodox involvement in the country's largest pro-Israel lobby:
“The official buzz is Iron Dome, but the unofficial buzz might be velvet dome,” said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, a longtime Chabad emissary in Washington, D.C. (who famously kashered the White House kitchen), referring to the velvet skullcaps worn by the numerous Chabad attendees. “You used to see maybe a couple dozen yarmulkes at the AIPAC conference. Now there are many hundreds.”
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