I Will Never Tell You How to Vote

Every election season, I find myself facing the same question: How much politics belongs on the pulpit? My instinct has always been clear: very little.

The synagogue is one of the few remaining places where people who disagree profoundly about politics can still sit beside one another, pray from the same siddur, answer the same Kaddish, celebrate one another’s joys, and stand beside one another in moments of loss. I do not want the pulpit to become one more place where people are sorted into political camps.

I also know the peculiar authority a pulpit carries. When a rabbi speaks during services, the words do not sound quite like an opinion offered over coffee. They arrive wrapped in Torah, tradition, office, and sacred space. That imposes a responsibility to know where rabbinic authority ends.

I have never had any desire to tell members of my congregation which candidate deserves their vote. But as another election approaches, I find myself increasingly convinced that there is something I should say: I will never tell you from this pulpit for whom to vote. But I will tell you that you should vote. That distinction has become increasingly important to me.

Voting is often described as a right, and of course it is. Generations struggled to secure that right for people who had been denied it. But Judaism has always been more interested in responsibility than in rights alone. The Jewish question is rarely only, What am I entitled to do? It is also, What am I obligated to do because I belong to a community?

Pirkei Avot teaches, Al tifrosh min hatzibbur: “do not separate yourself from the community.” I have always understood that teaching to mean more than showing up at synagogue or supporting communal institutions. It means refusing the luxury of becoming merely a spectator to the world we share. That is what voting represents to me. A ballot is not simply a declaration of personal preference. It is an acceptance of responsibility for a society in which other people must also live.

When I vote, I am not only asking which candidate best represents my interests. I am deciding what kind of society I am helping to create for my neighbors, for people I will never meet, and for generations that will inherit the consequences of choices made long before they were able to participate in making them. That is not partisan. It is civic responsibility.

There is another reason I believe rabbis should speak about voting. Democracy is sometimes discussed as though it were primarily a system of institutions: legislatures, courts, constitutions, elections, checks and balances. Those institutions matter enormously. But no democratic system can sustain itself through structure alone. Democracy also depends upon habits. It requires citizens who participate even when they are disappointed. People willing to listen to arguments they dislike. Voters capable of losing an election without abandoning faith in elections. Citizens willing to defend institutions even when those institutions produce decisions they oppose. It depends upon the conviction that political opponents remain fellow citizens. Those habits are fragile. They cannot simply be written into a constitution. They must be practiced. That is where I believe the religious community has something to contribute.

The Torah does not give us instructions for running a modern democracy. It does insist, again and again, that power must be restrained, leaders must be accountable, justice must be pursued, and communities bear responsibility for the lives lived within them. Parashat Shoftim begins not with an inspiring theological declaration but with an institutional command: establish judges and officers. Build structures capable of administering justice. Scripture seems to understand something we occasionally forget: a decent society does not happen automatically. It must be built, sustained, examined, repaired, and handed on. Citizenship works the same way.

I understand why clergy hesitate to speak about elections. I share that hesitation. There is a danger in politicizing religion. There is also a danger in allowing our fear of politicization to make us silent about citizenship itself. The pulpit should never become a campaign platform. A rabbi should not use Torah to imply that faithful Jews have only one permissible political conclusion. People of good conscience can weigh competing values differently. They can disagree about policies, candidates, priorities, and solutions. A congregation capable of containing those disagreements is healthier than one in which everyone has learned to say the same thing. The task of the pulpit is not to tell people what conclusions to reach. It is to remind them of the responsibilities they must bring to the act of reaching them. 

So when election season comes, I believe the pulpit has something important to say. Not which party deserves your loyalty. Not which candidate deserves your vote. But this: I will never tell you from the pulpit for whom to vote. But I will tell you that you should vote. Learn what is at stake. Listen carefully. Think beyond your own interests. Consider character, competence, justice, and the consequences of your choice for other people. Then show up. Democracy cannot be sustained by spectators. It depends upon people willing to accept the responsibilities that come with belonging to a community.

The pulpit should never tell you what choice to make. It should remind you that the choice is yours to make, and that making it is part of the responsibility of belonging.