Jake Auchincloss could become the Jewish John F. Kennedy if he plays his cards right.

He can own the anti-Jewish issue just as Kennedy owned the anti-Roman Catholic issue in 1960.

Auchincloss, 36, is a progressive two-term Democrat Congressman from Newton who holds the fourth congressional seat once held by Joe Kennedy II and Joe Kennedy III, son and grandson of the late Robert F. Kennedy. He has Kennedy-like ambitions.

JFK began his political career as a member of the U.S. House from Boston, later becoming a U.S. Senator and president in 1960. He ran at a time when there were serious concerns about electing a Catholic, who might be under the influence of the Pope.

Now all these years later that is something of a joke, but it was not a joke back then.

However, as bad as anti-Catholicism was back then, it does not compare the virulent anti-Jewish hatred that is taking place today at colleges across the country. It is not only antisemitic, but also anti-American.

Kennedy put much of the anti-Catholicism to rest, however, when he said to the country, “I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democrat Party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak or me.”

Although there are barriers to a Jew becoming president, many of those barriers were overcome by the impressive showing of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish, in the 2020 Democrat primary campaign for president.

However, that is long before the well-organized, anti-Israel, antisemitic protests and riots swept across the country’ colleges and universities following Israel’s retaliatory invasion of Gaza.

Auchincloss, who is matrilineally Jewish (his father is of Scottish heritage) was elected to Congress after the seat was vacated by Joe Kennedy III who ran unsuccessfully against fellow Democrat Sen. Eddie Markey in the 2000 primary.

He is the only Jewish member of the state’s nine-member delegation to the U.S. House

Like JFK in World War II, Auchincloss is a combat veteran. He joined the U.S. Marine Corps after graduating from Harvard, earning a commission.

As a lieutenant he led combat patrols in 2012 against the Taliban in Helmand Province in Afghanistan and later led a drug reconnaissance unit in Panama.

He is a natural to lead a Jewish political counter-offensive against the purveyors of imported Muslim hatred for Israel and the Jews that has infested the country.

Because right now American Jews have no elected official to lead such a movement, and this includes old hack U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader and the highest ranking Jewish American official.

Jews need a Jewish JFK, who can explain to Americans that it is one thing to oppose Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza. It is another thing to blame American Jews for it and to robotically chant for their extermination.

And, ironically, Auchincloss is a Harvard graduate and a Marine who fought to defend the freedom and the rights of Harvard professors and student protestors who are now calling for another holocaust. How bitter is that?

Auchincloss, to his credit, unlike the other Massachusetts members of Congress, has visited Massachusetts college campuses, including Harvard, which is not even in his district. It’s in Cambridge, which is represented by Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Boston, a member of the, anti-Israel, pro-Hamas wing of the Democrat Party.

Auchincloss found the colleges, including Harvard, to be “ransacked by antisemitism.”

He said that the withholding of federal funds might be in the works if Harvard and the others cannot provide a safe place for Jewish students to learn.

That is good, but it is not nearly enough. Americans need to come to their senses. What is happening to Jews in America is what happened to Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

The Jews need a Jewish John F. Kennedy. It could be Auchincloss, if he is up to it.

Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter. Email him at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy, right, confers with his brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 1, 1962 during the buildup of military tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that became Cuban missile crisis later that month. (AP Photo)