Is It Good For The Yidden?

Voting in Austria was never an option for me. Too young to cast a ballot, and by the age of twenty, already married, I had left Vienna.

I remember my parents voting for whoever seemed least sympathetic to the Nazis, or at least whoever pretended to care about the few Jews, mostly immigrants from Eastern Europe, who had made Vienna their home after the war.

But as my late father used to say:

“It does not matter who leads the country. We are in the Galut, and we simply have to live with that reality.”

Even when Jörg Haider, the far right Austrian politician known for his controversial remarks about the Nazi era, rose to prominence and came close to the highest levels of government, my father was not particularly worried, just a little bit.

What I remember most vividly are the conversations among the grown ups.

There was always one question:

“Is he good for the Jews?”

It came up during where ever an election took place, in Austria, America, England, France, and Italy.

When the results were announced, there was either a collective sigh of relief or an exclamation:

“OY, A BROCH! ER IS SCHLECHT FIR DI YIDDEN!”

Now, Oy, a broch! is one of those wonderful Yiddish expressions that loses its flavor in translation.

But the rest is easy enough:

“He is bad for the Jews!”

That familiar question stayed with me long after I left Vienna. It resurfaced years later, when I became an American citizen and finally had the opportunity to vote for myself.

I first voted in 2004, after receiving my American citizenship. I remember walking to the polling station with enormous pride.

The right to vote had not always been granted equally, and certainly not to women. Only in 1920 did the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantee women the right to vote regardless male of female.

Throughout European history, Jews had so often been denied even the most basic rights of citizenship.

With all this in mind, I approached the ballot box with gratitude. Finally, I could participate. Finally, I could fulfill what I considered not merely a privilege, but a duty.

That feeling of pride has never left me. Yet there is another country whose elections touch me in an entirely different way. A country whose very existence was once only a dream for generations of Jews, including my parents.

And now, as the Jewish State of Israel approaches another election, I find myself thinking once more about the extraordinary privilege of having a voice in shaping the future of one’s own country.

I am not an Israeli citizen and therefore cannot cast a ballot. But I have always been deeply impressed by Israelis who travel home from abroad to exercise their democratic right.

How deeply Israelis cherish their national sovereignty! How they refuse to take for granted what generations of Jews could only dream of.

It is almost as though voting has become a sacred act, performed with the same devotion as praying three times a day.

And so, all of us living in the Galut follow Israel’s elections with intense interest.

We listen, debate, hope, and sometimes worry.

After all these years, I can still hear the voices of the grown ups around my parents’ table in Vienna, asking that familiar question:

“IS IT GOOD FOR THE YIDDEN?”

But what a difference between then and now.

My parents lived in a country where Jews had to wonder what the next government might mean for their future. Today, in the Jewish State, Jews have the extraordinary privilege of helping determine that future themselves.

My father was right. In the Galut, we had to live with the decisions of others.

But in Israel, the Jewish people have a voice of their own.

And perhaps that is the greatest answer to the question I have heard all my life.

“IS IT GOOD FOR THE YIDDEN?”

The very fact that we have a Jewish State in which to ask it is a blessing beyond anything my parents could have imagined.