Our yeshivas also need to teach students how to judge a candidate’s positions on a panoply of issues important to the Orthodox community – including local zoning policies, private school tuition vouchers, government services for yeshiva children, protections against discrimination, and the fight against Islamic terrorism.
We must make sure young Jews understand the need to hold elected leaders accountable for breaking promises made to Jewish voters (such as presidential candidates who, once elected, backtrack on their vows to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem).
The Orthodox community also must be consistent in supportingthose elected officials who have kept their promises to us, cared for our community, and protected its interests
Regardless of their views on Zionism, our yeshivas must also teach our children basic information about the Israeli system of government so that they can understand the news they read and hear from Israel. Ideally, that education should also include a Torah perspective on current events such as the ongoing controversy over draft exemptions for Israeli yeshiva students or the exchange of more than 1,000 jailed terrorists for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. (In the latter case, for example, teachers and students could discuss the refusal of the Maharam of Rothenburg to allow the Jewish community to pay his ransom, lest it lead to the kidnapping of other rabbis.)
Yeshivas also must explain to their students their civic responsibility to act with honesty and integrity in whatever field they go into as adults. Students should be made to understand the Chillul Hashem and the damage done to the reputation of the Torah community when those who are identified as Orthodox Jews behave in an illegal or unethical manner.
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Too many of us don’t register to vote because we fear that doing so will increase our chances of being called for jury duty. Two years ago I met a woman well into her 80s on the way to the polls. It was difficult for her to walk, and she pushed a shopping cart that doubled as her walker. While crossing the street with me, she said she was a Holocaust survivor who always voted and told others to vote, reminding them that Hitler got his start by winning an election.
Many individuals in our community believe jury duty doesn’t affect them – but only until they (or someone they know) find themselves in court subject to a jury’s decision in either a civil or criminal case. Then they complain about the justice system. But they have only themselves to blame. If your peers are not jurors, you will not be judged by a jury of your peers.
Supporting law and order in the society in which we live is also a Torah value. Jews doing their civic duty in the jury pool is another way of ensuring that members of our community will be treated fairly if and when they are subject to a court trial.
News from areas of the world where Jews are considered guilty unless proven innocent reminds us that we are fortunate to live in a country that protects our religious liberties and views all citizens as equal in the eyes of the law.
For all of these reasons, yeshiva students need to understand how the American justice system works. Better yet, yeshivas should arrange school trips to the local legislature or the courts so that students can meet judges and lawyers and see the system in action. More of our community schools should follow the example of a Bobov yeshiva in Brooklyn that recently took its students on a trip to Albany to see for themselves the workings of state government and the practical results of elections.
