An apocryphal story is told of a moment early in the life of the State of Israel, in which all the religious parties combined to make a joint slate. Ads for the slate announced it was a mitzvah to vote for it. Two Torah giants were talking, and one said, “Do you really think it’s a mitzvah to vote for the slate? Like eating matzah?” Replied the other, “Well, maybe like eating maror.”
To our fellow Jews who plan to vote for President Trump, we write to suggest his attacks on American democracy should make clear that a vote for him should feel like eating maror, bitter even if necessary, even if you think it a mitzvah. This has nothing to do with the many character flaws others may note, but only with his actions after he lost the 2020 election and since, actions that show his disregard for America’s strong democratic institutions, what has made the United States the great country it has been, including as a safe and gracious haven for Jews.
We need to remember that after the 2020 election, President Trump pressured numerous election officials, in more than one state, to misrepresent the results in his favor; he pressured his Vice President to reject votes of the Electoral College; he encouraged the riot that ended up with an overrunning of the Capitol, with real danger to elected officials of both parties, and actual injury and death of those tasked with guarding the Capitol.
Nor has he withdrawn from those postures since. He continues to insist the election was stolen from him, weakening if not destroying his supporters’ faith in the electoral process, a key element of what has always held the United States together. As Vice President Dick Cheney, no closet liberal, said, “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump…He can never be trusted with power again.” Indeed, no living Republican who was elected to national office has endorsed him, not former Vice President Dan Quayle, not former President Bush, and obviously not President Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence. They all think he is a systemic threat even as they like his policies.
Still and all, Orthodox Jews may think the political stakes for Jews militate for a vote for Trump. But one cannot do so without some bitterness. Reasonable people feel that President Trump’s conduct in 2020 undermines the best feature of American democracy – its ability to peacefully transfer power from one party to another without violence. To endorse President Trump, happily and enthusiastically, sweeps aside the serious institutional problems with his candidacy, his threat to the democratic foundations of this great country. For those who care about the State of Israel, Israel will be hugely impacted by a totalitarian America – it is not well supported by dictatorships generally.
Maybe one’s response is, “Oy gevalt, our situation in America and Israel is so bad, the other candidate so odious, that we must support this crooked anti-democratic crazy guy and cry while voting for the person who seeks to steal elections.” We understand. Many of us do in fact fear that Kamala Harris is “far less supportive” – and now is a hard and sad time of need and vulnerability for Israel and the Jewish people, far greater than any in recent memory. Many worry about her choices of close foreign policy advisors and the pressure from the rabidly Zionist-hating voters that her party might depend on to win at the national level in 2024 and 2028.
You may worry, or may have concluded, that the likelihood of catastrophic outcome for Israel (and hence Judaism) if Harris wins is greater than the likelihood of catastrophic outcome for U.S. democracy if Trump wins. We each do our own math on these issues, and do not write here to tell you the “correct” calculus.
What we write to protest is how Orthodox Jews who opt for Trump do not articulate any of this. Orthodox Jews who support Trump speak and act as if he is a completely reasonable candidate for President – as if they think this is an ideal. And this, we believe, is a deep error.
The great conservative thinker, Eric Metaxas, is famous for saying “Sometimes you have to hold your nose and vote for the person who is going to do the least damage or who is maybe going to pull you back from the brink.” So too, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein once told Michael Broyde (about a different situation, many years ago) that “sometimes, we hold our nose and vote.” But acknowledging that we are holding our noses, with trepidation for what it might do to the world’s greatest democracy, is itself a religious value.
If the time has come to eat the bitter herbs at the Seder, we do. Maybe it is even the best choice we have. Still, it is bitter.
