14 | OCTOBER 29 • 2020 

VIEWS

essay
There Is No ‘Jewish Vote’
A

n I24News poll determined that 
63.3% of Israelis would prefer to see 
President Donald Trump reelected, 
versus 18.8% for Joe Biden. The majority 
believe that electing Biden would be harmful 
to the relationship between the U.S. and Israel.
But this difference pales in comparison to 
a new poll from Ami Magazine, which deter-
mined that 83% of Orthodox Ameicans, and 
fully 95% of the Haredi, support Trump. 
The overwhelming majority of Israel’
s Jews 
fled there escaping persecution elsewhere, 
primarily in the Arab world. They recognize 
Trump for his fairness and his 
friendship, and for a foreign 
policy that has spread peace 
and helped ensure their safety. 
Trump vacated the Palestinian 
Authority’
s veto power over 
Israel’
s self-determination and 
withdrew funding from the 
vicious pay-to-slay bounties 
for the families of terrorists. 
His opponent pledges to reverse this policy.
Politicians from both parties assured us 
that a massive conflagration would result 
if the U.S. were to move its embassy to 
Jerusalem as Congress directed in 1995. 
Trump proved them wrong. Thanks to his 
bold action, numerous countries moved or 
plan to move their own embassies. Israel 
now has peaceful relations with the UAE, 
Bahrain and Kosovo, a deepened relation-
ship with Serbia, suggestions of a thaw with 
Saudi Arabia and multiple indications of 
future breakthroughs.
The same Ami Magazine poll showed 
overwhelming support for Israel in the 
Orthodox American community, and one 
might be tempted to dismiss the Orthodox 
as “one-issue voters.
” But this would be 
wrong.
For those who adhere to Jewish religious 
tradition, the right to free practice of religion 
is cherished as a privilege. Attorney Nathan 
Lewin, a leading Orthodox legal advocate, 
described the present-day court as the best 
for religious liberties seen in his lifetime, 
even before the nomination of Judge Amy 
Barrett. 
Observant Jews endorse policies that build 

and support life, family and faith as good 
for all Americans. We insist upon private, 
parochial schools to educate our children. 
Orthodox Jews also recognize that denying 
funding to America’
s finest is a recipe for 
disaster: The Bible demands judges and offi-
cers, for the alternative is anarchy.
Again, per the Ami poll, Orthodox Jews 
overwhelmingly believe that Trump is 
treated unfairly by a hostile media. And 
the Orthodox also know that as they were 
viciously attacked on the streets of New York 
City last year, the mayor did little to help. 
Yet in the larger Jewish community, the 
majority clearly plan to vote for Joe Biden. 
Why is their preference so wildly discordant 
with that of Israelis and the observant?
The answer can be summed up in the 
opening line of a news report by JTA 
from May of last year: “Senior Democrats 
in Congress embraced the agenda of the 
Reform movement, including gun control, 
immigration reform, abortion rights and 
dealing with climate change.
”
It seems that the Reform movement has 
replaced classical Jewish, Biblical values with 
progressive politics. 
To confuse matters yet further, 
Conservative Judaism is similarly far from 
conservative. And, sadly, the largest and fast-
est growing segment of the American Jewish 
community today is “Jews of no religion,
” 
unaffiliated with any Jewish movement. 
These are Jews who, in largest part, have 
fully adopted the progressive agenda.
An increasing number, though, now rec-
ognize that something is amiss — that the 
disconnect between the attacks upon the 
president they hear from the pulpit and his 
actual policies are exceeded only by that 
between the values espoused by their leaders 
and words of the Bible itself. 
Jews will vote in accordance with their val-
ues; the question is whether those values will 
be derived from Judaism or progressivism. 
It seems that either one leads inevitably to a 
particular choice. 

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is managing director of the 

Coalition for Jewish Values. A version of this essay was 

first published in Newsweek and is endorsed by the 

Michigan Jewish Action Council.

Rabbi 

Yaakov 

Menken

LEFT BEHIND from page 12

proudly wishes, and promises, to elimi-
nate abortion rights and do all he can to 
overturn laws that allow me to control 
my own body, leaving women open to 
dying during childbirth. A man who 
indefensibly invokes the term “genocide” 
to describe it as well.
But we know true genocide. The sur-
vivors of the Holocaust who sit in our 
synagogues or respond to “mom” and 
“dad,
” “bubbie” and “zayde,
” know true 
genocide. John James’
 wish to assert that 
a woman’
s right to control her own body 
is an example of “genocide” is simply out-
right dangerous and inexcusably disgrace-
ful to the Jewish community.
In a race this preposterously close, for 
our institutions to turn their backs, to 
leave us alone while providing a platform 
to someone who will unequivocally put 
more Jewish lives in danger has very real 
consequences — no matter how hard we 
want to look the other way.
In addition to James’
s stances on 
important healthcare issues — which 
should worry a group so intimately con-
nected to our healthcare system — enter-
taining a candidate who proudly stands 
with Trump, who said the Charlottesville 
marchers were “very fine people” and told 
the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand 
by,
” is not merely putting forth a differ-
ence of opinion. It is, instead, agreeing to 
overlook a policy platform wrapped up in 
dehumanization and the delegitimization 
of human beings.
Accepting a donation from James is 
to decide anything is worth the price of 
discrimination and bigotry; the same 
discrimination and bigotry still heard in 
the Charlottesville chants of “Jews will not 
replace us” just over three years ago.
Thus, I know I cannot turn my back, I 
cannot leave our Jewish community alone 
as our Jewish organizations potentially 
help to elect a man who has promised to 
be a great risk to my life and the lives of 
millions of others. The Torah teaches us, 
“kol yisrael arevim zeh la’
zeh” — all of Israel 
are responsible for one another.
Or, perhaps put another way, no Jew is 
ever alone. 

Annie Jacobson is an intersectional feminist and 

activist.

