One would think that a devout Orthodox woman like Ivanka Trump would be familiar with Jewish oral law. But apparently not.
The Republican nominee’s daughter left some of her followers flummoxed on Friday when she uploaded a graphic on her Instagram account featuring a famous rabbinic aphorism, which she attributed to actress Emma Watson — most famous for playing the ginger-haired wizard, Hermione Granger, in the Harry Potter series.
“If not me, who? If not now, when?” read the quote posted on her social account.
Emma Watson did in fact utter those words, during a 2014 speech on gender equality at the United Nations. Yet many Twitter users quickly poked fun at Ivanka for miscrediting this variant of the widely-known Jewish proverb (it is in fact attributed to revered first century rabbi Hillel the Elder), especially because she publicly converted to Orthodox Judaism after meeting her husband, Jared Kushner, in 2009.
The original version of the quote (” And being for my own self, what am ‘I’? And if not now, when?) is somewhat longer, and appears in the Ethics of the Fathers.
The mother of three has highlighted in the past the fundamental role religion plays in her family life. “We’re pretty observant, more than some, less than others. I just feel like it’s such an intimate thing for us,” she told Vogue magazine in 2015. “It’s been such a great life decision for me. I am very modern, but I’m also a very traditional person.”
The aphorism is often repurposed by politicians and celebrities alike, who seldom attribute it to the right source. Addressing the Republican Party platform committee in 2012, for instance, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell credited Ronald Reagan for the 2,000-year-old saying when he asked: “We must answer Ronald Reagan’s question: If not us, who? And if not now, when?”
The proverb has also wrongly be attributed to J.F. Kennedy: