And the Award for Best Everything Goes To…

The business behind “Best Dentist,” “Best Pizza” and other local awards — who wins, who pays and why your inbox is full of voting pleas

Every few days, another urgent message arrives in my inbox.

Vote for us as Best Dentist.

Vote for us as Best Plumber.

Vote for us as Best Pizza.

Vote for us as Best Accountant.

At this rate, I expect my shul to send out a ballot for Best Kiddush Herring.

And if you think that would not become competitive, you have never attended a synagogue board meeting.

Somewhere along the way, American life — and certainly Jewish communal life — became one enormous popularity contest. We used to be satisfied with “Best Dressed” in the high-school yearbook. Now we have Best Periodontist, Best Roofer, Best Caterer and probably, somewhere, Best Mohel.

I am not sure I want to know how the voting works in that last category.

What fascinates me about these contests is how seriously everyone takes them.

“Please vote for Dr. Cohen as Best Dentist in the County!”

I happen to like Dr. Cohen very much. He is pleasant. His office is clean. He has never accidentally removed the wrong tooth.

But am I really qualified to declare him the best dentist in the county?

Have I sampled the competition?

Nobody sends me ten sets of X-rays and says, “Please rank these root canals.”

With pizza, I have some standing. I have conducted decades of painstaking field research, often under difficult conditions.

But Best Cardiologist?

My standards are somewhat less scientific: Did he seem to know what he was talking about? Did I survive the appointment? And, perhaps most important these days, did somebody in the office actually answer the telephone?

Indeed, if newspapers want useful contests, I have several categories to suggest:

Best Doctor Who Calls You Back.

Best Specialist Who Can See You Before Pesach.

Best Medical Office Where the Receptionist Does Not Begin With, “Can you hold?”

Those awards would mean something.

But the real genius behind these “Best Of” competitions belongs to the newspapers and local media companies that run them.

Think about the business model.

The newspaper creates the contest.

Then the businesses competing in the contest promote it.

Suddenly the dentist is emailing his patients. The plumber is posting on Facebook. The pizza shop has a QR code next to the garlic knots.

“Vote for us!”

In other words, the contestants are advertising the newspaper’s promotion for the newspaper.

This is the sort of arrangement that would make a Jewish organizational fundraiser stand up and applaud.

The newspaper gets website traffic.

It gets attention.

It may get email addresses.

It sells advertising around the voting.

Then it announces the finalists.

More advertising.

Then the winners.

More advertising.

Then come the plaques, certificates, decals and special “We Won!” advertisements.

If Moses had come down from Mount Sinai with this business plan, there might have been an eleventh commandment:

Thou shalt monetize reader engagement.

Of course, the winners benefit too.

“Voted Best Dentist 2026” looks impressive on the office wall.

But I always wonder: Voted by how many people?

Under what standards?

Was there independent dental judging?

Did a panel of distinguished endodontists inspect the fillings?

Or did Dr. Rosenberg simply send twelve reminder emails while Dr. Levine forgot the contest was happening?

That does not make these awards worthless.

If hundreds of customers like a business enough to vote for it, that tells us something. Good service creates loyalty.

But “Readers’ Choice” does not necessarily mean “objectively best.”

Sometimes it means “most beloved.”

Sometimes it means “best organized.”

And sometimes it means “the guy whose daughter knows how to run an email campaign.”

Jewish life adds its own special possibilities.

Best Rabbi.

Now there is a contest that could destroy a community.

Would we vote on sermons? Responsiveness? Fundraising? Length of Yom Kippur davening?

Perhaps there should be separate categories.

Best Rabbi at Ending a Speech Before the Kugel Gets Cold.

Best Rabbi at Answering a Halachic Question Without Beginning, “It depends.”

Best Shul President Who Knows That When Someone Says, “I Just Have One Small Suggestion,” the next 45 minutes of his life are gone forever.

And naturally:

Best Kiddush.

That one would require independent judging.

I volunteer.

So I have stopped being annoyed by all those “Vote for Us” emails. I now regard them as one of the more elegant examples of American capitalism.

The newspaper creates a contest.

The businesses advertise it.

The public supplies the labor by voting.

The winners then pay to advertise the fact that they won.

And twelve months later, everybody does it again.

It is almost a perpetual-motion machine.

So yes, when the email arrives asking me to vote for Best Pizza, I will probably click.

A citizen has responsibilities.

But I would like to nominate one additional category for next year:

Best Local Newspaper at Getting Everyone Else to Advertise Its Contest for Free.

No recount necessary.