פאר וועם שטימען די ארטאדאקסישע אידען ?
10/22/2004)
A Vote On Values
As the Orthodox community swings to Bush, not everyone is on board.
Jonathan Mark - Associate Editor
No presidential candidate will stump in Jewish New York; there are few, if any, election posters on neighborhood walls; and no one seems to be wearing political buttons. The Jewish street may never have been so quiet in a quadrennial October, nor so taken for granted, since nearly 70 percent are expected to vote for John Kerry.
But the Jewish vote has never been so divided along denominational lines, with the non-Orthodox supporting Kerry far in excess of that 70 percent, while the Orthodox vote has never been more “swingable” toward the Republicans, said Nathan Diament, director of the Orthodox Union’s Institute of Public Affairs.
Diament points out that some 60 percent of Orthodox Jews voted for Gore-Lieberman in 2000; “current polling indicates that 65 percent, or upwards, of Orthodox Jews now plan to vote for Bush,” he says.
A clear line has been drawn, with 24 percent of all Jews supporting Bush, a non-gay definition of marriage, and 25 percent supporting government aid to religious schools, according to recent polls.
Binyamin Jolkovsky, editor and publisher of the right-leaning online journal JewishWorldReview.com, observed, “There are two distinct Jewish communities right now, the general Jewish community and the Orthodox. Our value systems are so different.”
Maybe there are no big political rallies, or political storefronts in Orthodox neighborhoods, but two Republican senators, Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, came around in September to the Orthodox version of the old smoke-filled room, the Borough Park parlor of the Novominsker Rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, head of Agudath Israel of America and its Council of Torah Sages, the most elite and some say infallible leadership in the Orthodox world. The Novominsker was joined by several of his fellow Sages, as well as some 20 other black-hat heavyweights.
After a preliminary pitch by both sides about their shared values, and the need to support Jewish safety in an unsafe world, the very next issue raised by the sages was about the centrality of education in Orthodox life and therefore the necessity of vouchers, or tax credits for day schools, according to a source familiar with the meeting, something that would never have been raised in another denominational setting.
There have been no major rabbinic endorsements, but Zev Brenner, president of the Talkline radio network, and the leading talk-show host in Jewish radio, says, “I hear people using words like hakaras hatov, the religious obligation to appreciate and support someone who has helped you. Despite the fact that [Bush] has made comments that are very strongly worded against Israel, the feeling among people is that at the end of the day, he’ll be the best for Israel. People believe that every now and then the president has to do or say things for the Arab Street or public consumption, but deep down he’s supportive.”
To listen to Bush’s Orthodox supporters is to hear a “heads-I-win, tails-you-lose” understanding of Bush and Kerry’s views on Israel. For example, if Bush excoriates Israel in front of a UN General Assembly full of enemies for Israel’s “humiliation” of Palestinians, it’s not Bush’s fault, he didn’t really mean it. But if Kerry has a 100 percent rating from AIPAC, well, say the Bush supporters, Kerry doesn’t mean it either.
“People have the idea,” explains Brenner, “that deep down Bush is a good guy, and he is aligned with the Christian Zionists who won’t let him sell Israel down the tubes.”
The idea that Bush is a good guy, and a Christian guy, hints at a deeper truth. In a recent column on the ascent of conservative politics, George Will cites “The Right Nation,” by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, who demonstrate that the conservative appeal derives from “its congruence with American values, especially the nation’s anomalous religiosity,” and the strength of institutions that stress that congruence.
The left, by contrast, according to the book, built a foundation on academia and the major media, though most fervently Orthodox Jews see little value, other than mercantile, in secular education, and perceive the media to be pathologically anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.
The Republicans have become comfortable with God-speak and religious shorthand, and consciously reached out to the black-hat community by picking Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, a Jewish Press columnist and Orthodox evangelist, to give the closing benediction at the Republican convention. This is a level of respect that fervently Orthodox Jews don’t even get from most other Jews, who laugh at the Jewish Press and have only scorn for the Orthodox critique of television, newspapers, and secular culture.
Over in Williamsburg, Rabbi Hertz Frankel, principal of the Bais Rochel elementary school, says, “The tendency among chasidim is to Bush. It’s about his being pro-life, pro-religious institutions, anti-gay marriage,” issues that strike a religious chord.
In the poor, windswept streets near Rabbi Frankel’s yeshiva, a baby boom has precipitated an economic crisis. Last month, Rabbi Frankel says, his school opened with 383 girls in 14 classrooms in first grade alone. He says Bush is in favor of tax credits for schools such as his — even if no credits materialized in the president’s first term.
“At least he’s in favor,” says Rabbi Frankel.
Bush’s concern for Israel’s safety is paramount for many, and perhaps even for anti-Zionist Satmar. Aside from political Zionism, Jolkovsky explains, almost everyone in Orthodox America has a relative living or studying in Israel.
“Kerry,” said Jolkovsky, “wants to bring people like Jimmy Carter on to his team, people who thought [the] Oslo [peace process] was a good idea. These people are dangerous and delusional.”
Many Orthodox Bush supporters seem to have forgotten their own stiff criticism of Bush emissaries, such as Anthony Zinni, who tried to nudge Israel back into the “delusional” peace process.
Unlike most other patrons at the Jerusalem II restaurant in Manhattan, who enthusiastically supported Bush, citing his support for Israel, Yaakov Friedman, a Bobover chasid who works in real estate, twinkled when he conspiratorially confided, “I’m going to vote for John Kerry. I think he’ll be better for the economy, for health care, better for the average person, for the lower class. I’m a landlord and I know how hard it is for some people to pay the rent.”
It was a sentiment echoed among the Modern Orthodox. Adena Berkowitz, a prominent Orthodox feminist and ethicist who has been working as a non-paid political consultant to the Kerry campaign, says, “There are a million poor Jews in the United States,” she says. “We have to think about who will step up and help us. We have a president who wanted to slash housing allowances and cut entitlements.”
Rabbi Saul Berman, the director of Edah but speaking privately, says, “There is an essential Jewish interest in the creation of just society in the country in which we live.” He believes Kerry is the candidate “more likely to support the needs of the poor and the downtrodden.”
In the Modern Orthodox community, the prose of reality seemed to matter more than Republican emotions that are seen as conveying more kitsch than content.
A rabbi of one of New York’s largest Modern Orthodox synagogues, who asked not to be identified, says he’s never seen his congregation so divided. He expressed concern for “the very dangerous modus operandi of the Bush administration that is geared to serving special interests in ways that don’t get headlines.”
Additionally, “An administration that has so heavily banked on the Iraq war is going to have to come to the table to buy itself out of its quagmire with the Arab world. I’m afraid that the chip that America has available is Israel.”
If there was any consolation for the losers in November, said several Jews, we should remember that there is a God who rules the world, and the fate of this world won’t be the president’s decision alone. n
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