Those familiar with Kushner’s dynamic with Trump believe his proximity to the president might bode well for Israel. Still, they are not without reservations. “For a lot of the community, they think it’s a comfort,” the Kushner associate told me, to have Trump’s son-in-law in the inner circle. “They would say, though, that if they were to want anyone from our community in this role, Jared would not have been the first person they would have put on the list. . . . He would not be the guy where you’d be like, ‘Oh, thank God he’s there.’ He wouldn’t be a first- or second- or third-round draft pick.”

Still, this person conceded the importance of having someone of their faith and background close to the president. “But, great,” this person continued, “we have someone there. It’s a comfort. He’s totally solid and fine.”

During his first fortnight as president-elect, Trump appears to be assembling not so much a team of rivals as one of adversaries. Entreaties to the conservative Establishment (such as the appointment of Reince Priebus as chief of staff) appear undercut by gestures to his alt-right base (like the selection of Stephen Bannon as his top strategist). Trump’s attempt to woo the avuncular and cool-headed Mitt Romney as his secretary of state appears compromised by his appointment of the more bellicose Mike Flynn as national security adviser.

Kushner fits somewhat naturally into this tableau. Given the dynamic of Trump’s inner circle, he can be viewed less as an apologist for the politician’s more racially charged supporters than, his supporters hope, as a stalwart against them. After Bannon, the former chairman of Breitbart News, was appointed to Trump’s administration, many Jewish organizations expressed grave concern over the site, which has found support among white nationalists. (In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Bannon said he was a tolerant person who simply happened to be an “economic nationalist.”). But others appeared relieved that Kushner, who said in a new Forbes interview that Bannon is “an incredible Zionist and loves Israel,” have a solid working relationship with Bannon (though he reportedly agitated for Priebus to get the chief of staff job, could provide a calming counterweight. He has “the trust and ear of the entire inner circle of the Trump administration, including the most important member of that group, the president-elect,” as Matthew Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told The New York Times this weekend, making him what he called “one of the most important players right now beyond the president- and vice president-elect.”

“Jared ... would not be the guy where you’d be like, ‘Oh, thank God he’s there.’ He wouldn’t be a first- or second- or third-round draft pick.”

Much of the divide, predictably, fractures along party lines. The Anti-Defamation League, for example, issued a strongly worded condemnation of Bannon’s appointment, calling it a “sad day” and asking President-Elect Trump to appoint individuals who promote tolerance and pluralism. The more conservative Zionist Organization of America, on the other hand, extended an invitation for Bannon to attend its annual dinner in New York on Sunday night. (Bannon, who reportedly reached out to ask for the invitation, did not show up.) At the heart of the schism is a disagreement about objectives: some Jewish groups are gravely concerned by the anti-Semitic views that have been percolating throughout the campaign; others appear more singularly focused on courting Trump’s strong support of Israel. “Our policy is we have to side on the practical, unfortunately, regardless of how much we have intense disagreements,” one director of a major Jewish organization, who wished to remain anonymous, told me. “If you know anything about Trump and Bannon, if you insult them, they’ll never forget it. We don’t have the luxury of doing that, because one day down the line, something really serious will happen, and we’ll be glad that we still have a channel in there.”

Susie Gelman, the board chair of the Israel Policy Forum, a nonpartisan group that has advocated for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said that she has talked to a number of leaders who share this pragmatic outlook. As to whether Kushner’s presence alongside Bannon gives her any comfort, Gelman said that having a Jewish family member doesn’t predispose anyone toward supporting Israel or the Jewish community. “We have to judge the president-elect by his words and his deeds, not his family,” she said. “That he has Jewish members in his own family in no way exonerates him from speaking out vociferously on the kind of anti-Semitism we’ve seen throughout the campaign.”

In some ways, the split among members of the Jewish community is merely a microcosm of larger ones enveloping the Republican Party and the American electorate itself. The challenge for Kushner, as it will be for Trump, is achieving policy solutions that narrow the divide rather than enlarge it.