Jewish Governor Candidate Is a ‘Varemer Yid’

By Rabbi Shmuel Lipszyc – Woodbury, NY

The Yiddish phrase that comes to mind when I think of Bruce Blakeman is zeier ah varemer, a truly warm person. That’s not a line I’m using loosely. It’s earned, through a few specific moments.

At an event we both attended on August 10th, 2026, I asked Bruce, using his own phrase, “Chillin with tefillin?” he said yes right away, and we went together into a side room so he could put them on, away from the crowd, with no fanfare or audience. As he put them on, he smiled.

I told him how impressed I was that he took the time, in the middle of a busy public event, and in the middle of everything involved in running for governor, to do this. He didn’t make a show of it. He just did it.

Something Bruce said to me has stayed with me since: “Hashem decides if I win or not, not anything else.” It’s a statement of genuine humility, which he said quietly, and not just for effect.

When my son Shalom and daughter-in-law Rochel Leah lost their daughter, Esther Gittel, Bruce made the trip, a 45-minute drive each way. When I saw him afterward and mentioned the schlep, he answered immediately: “It’s not a schlep for such an important thing.”

Perhaps what stays with me most is something indirect: because of his own example, other men have started putting on tefillin. One man, in his seventies, essentially a karkafta who hadn’t put on tefillin as an adult, began doing so because of Bruce Blakeman’s example.

These are the moments I think of when his name comes up.

This is not an endorsement. These are simply personal reflections on a man I have come to know.