My Vote is Not a Prayer, It is a “Kanahara”

At the first night of the DNC, Senator Reverend Warnock preached that, “A vote is a kind of prayer for a world we desire for ourselves.”  This charming sentiment was fast to catch on, especially in clergy circles, where the image of praying to get out the vote quickly gained the traction intended.

I feel like a curmugaden for not loving this image, and even bristling at it.  After all, who does not want to imagine that with the power of a vote one might change the trajectory of our country and map a new future.  Who does not love a dream, delivered in the wings of prayer. Still, while I might pray with my feet in the spirit of AJ Heschel, I don’t find myself voting on the wings of prayer. This is an image for which I cannot even find a Jewish equivalency, except perhaps U’fros aleinu Sukkat shlomeicha, spread over us the wings of your peace.

If anything, I love the notion that my vote is not so much to dream for a new future, as it is a amulet against a bad future. k’neged ayin Ha-ra, against the evil eye, or as my grandmother from Brooklyn would say, k’anahara.  When I pray, I am in conversation with Adonai expressing my innermost emotional struggles, anything from anger, to benign indifference, to deep love and engagement. God and I and the Jewish people are part of a complex dance where my words, my heart, my memories blend together and are transported by the music and the swaying to a deeper place of connection. I dream and I seek in my prayers a better future and a better today.

When I vote, I am participating in an important act of civil freedom, and in doing so evidencing the importance of being Jewish in the United States in having the freedom to participate fully in local and national governance. That is not a love story, it is a tenuous and fragile political reality that we have been nurturing since the rabbis taught us in early rabbinic times, dina d’malkhuta dina, that the law of the land is the law – and thus our obligation to observe and participate in said law of the land.

This is to say, that I believe in the separation of church and state, and do not want to see my local government teaching or preaching about religious values. That being said, if people of religious faith want to engage in identifying how their values inform their votes, especially when the faith they are engaging is to encourage civic duty, and encouraging practices such as voting, that we all win.

Furthermore, let us not confuse my distaste of the analogy of voting to praying, and let me affirm that I do believe in the importance of voting, I believe it is an essential right to exercise, a right that so many have struggled to receive and to maintain.  When I vote however, it is not so much that I am voting for promises made; ones that I imagine in the coming months might be broken, or at least modified. I am voting to hold back those who I feel will do a worse job at governing.  Those who I feel might cause harm, cause pain,  cause deeper rifts.  My vote in other words is my amulet again the evil eye, against spreading that which I believe should not be part of civil discourse or everyday politics.  My vote is not a prayer it is more practically a defensive firewall.

Some people will find their votes next week to be the prayers and dreams for a future they hope to build, a new pathway they hope to forge, a promise they hope to fulfill. I am so happy for them and hope that their prayers are meaningful and full of the power to dream and will it into being with the joy they deserve. On my part, I will be satisfied next week to see my vote more as my amulet to prevent things from getting worse. It is my k’anahara. This has been a really rough year and k’anahara, these elections should not make things any worse. May this be a Shana Yoter Tova, a better year, with b’sorot tovot.