82 Days to Voting: Choosing a Blessing or a Curse

82 Days to Elections:  Choosing a Blessing or a Curse

This shabbat, Jews around the world will begin the reading of this week’s Torah potion with Deuteronomy, 11:26-28 where Moses addresses the Jewish people about to enter the Land of Israel with the following admonition:

“See, I am setting before you today the formula of the blessing and curse.  The blessing will be intended to motivate you to heed the commandments of God, your God, that I am commanding you today; and the curse will follow if you will not heed the commandments of God, your God, but turn away from the path that I am commanding you today by following other peoples’ deities, whom you did not know.”

The reference is to adherence to the laws that God had set down in the preceding three books of the bible. Nevertheless, in thinking about this opening evocation of Moses, I pictured people walking into US voting booths on Tuesday to make their choices known regarding who will be on the ballot in November representing their party.

The parallel was not so much deciding between a blessing and a curse, although that has its transference applicability here as well, but rather who will best represent them or who will fail to represent them if elected. In a way, who will bless them by his or her actions or be as a curse as a result of his or her votes, or “other peoples’ deities, whom you did not know.”

Probably the most contested and most interesting of all the races was that to be the Democrat nominee for the Senate from the State of Michigan. As it turned out Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a member of the party’s ascendant left wing, secured the nomination by a margin of just 1 percentage point.

El-Sayed of course, openly criticizes Israel, AIPAC, all military assistance to Israel (he sees no difference between offensive and defensive weapons) and buys into accusations of genocide and apartheid. He covers his distaste for Israel by saying that he feels the same way about such aid to all countries and is against human rights violations everywhere.

Free Press reporter Olivia Reingold was at the watch party for El-Sayed on Tuesday night and she notes: “There were keffiyehs as far as the eye could see. Keffiyehs on heads, keffiyehs as belts, keffiyeh-printed phone cases.”

Clearly the Jewish as well as the greater pro-Israel community both in the US and abroad is concerned about this turn to the left in American politics. And there is reason to be concerned.

Reporter Eli Lake in a separate Free Press article, examines what El-Sayed’s victory reveals about the Democratic Party’s ideological shift. There was once a time, he writes, when progressive politicians had to distance themselves from anything that hinted at anti-Americanism. No longer. El-Sayed has repeatedly campaigned with progressive influencer Hasan Piker, who has praised Hamas, said America deserved 9/11, and, in Eli’s words, “represents a strain of American politics that demonizes the republic.”

The real question is how do people like El-Sayed in Michigan or Zohran Mamdani in New York City generate so much support and get elected?

I recall in a history class in high school just 8 years after the end of World War II, when we asked our teacher, Louis Ellenoff, all five feet of him, how Hitler made it to the Chancellorship of Germany in 1933? Ellenoff, who was famous for turning to the blackboard when he got frustrated with us, would throw up his hands and say “and the law says teach them,” had an answer.

He said that when the population becomes frustrated with government and loses faith in the main line options of a democracy, they wait for first person to come along on a “white horse” claiming he can save them, and they vote for him. That was Hitler’s claim along with having some convenient group (i.e. the Jews, of course) on whom to blame all of Germany’s post World War I ills as well.

The ideology of such demagogues is metastasizing. All of what is happening today is reminiscent of 1933 Germany. The mainstream Democrat leadership is facing a serious threat, actually a crisis they do not seem to know how to handle, while the Republicans are beholden to a leader whose only goal seems to be to enrich himself at the expense of the country.

There is, of course, no guarantee that El-Sayed is electable in the general election up against a Trump endorsed Republican. But America should have learned by now that there is no such thing as “it can’t happen here.” It can and it might or, perhaps, it has already begun.

Remember, regardless of what you think of Obama, he was a newly elected Illinois State Senator in 1996 who was elevated to the US Senate eight years later in 2004 and then to US President in 2008…….just 12 short years from not holding any elected office to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

As for we Jews (who often tend to be at the forefront of every movement inimical to our survival) and J Street who together supported Mamdani & El-Sayed, well 7,000 German Jews supported Hitler. How did that work out?

As Biden said on Oct. 8, 2023, Israel must survive in order for my family to survive! That thought should keep all thinking Americans up at night. The Michigan electorate has one more opportunity to do the right thing even if Mike Rogers is no bargain either.