Our Most Precious Right – Part II
Last week I wrote about several issues that have caused me to feel alienated and lonely in national and local arenas (“Trump, Ben-Gvir, and my Vanished Abode”). This week I add several to the list.
Almost five years ago, I wrote a column in memory of my maternal grandmother, Mrs. Regina (Rochel) Gross (“Our most Precious Right”), which was a paean to the hallowed right to vote, which my Bobbe (“o” as in pot), an immigrant and naturalized citizen, deeply cherished. I decried the voter suppression and election lies being pressed by Republicans and too often supported by a Supreme Court that no longer seemed to care as strongly about the right to vote as did the Warren Court, which understood that “other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined” (Wesberry v. Sanders).
“My grandmother, coming to the land of the free from lands not so free, appreciated just how important her pulling a lever in a voting booth was,” I concluded. “All should take that devotion to heart and not allow demagogues to weaken our most precious right.”
Sadly, the demagogues are still at it. For example, their proposed SAVE Act would, as explained by the Brennan Center for Justice, “devastate voter registration while disenfranchising tens of millions of eligible American citizens,” and the disgraceful, though thankfully unsuccessful, Republican-supported lawsuits by Judge Jefferson Griffin sought to disenfranchise tens of thousands of North Carolina voters.
This became real to me recently when I accompanied my wife to get her driver’s license renewed and upgraded to Real ID. After spending two hours at the MVC and additional hours beforehand gathering the necessary documents required by the overly complicated and poorly drafted instructions, she was ultimately successful. Others, though also coming prepared with documentation, left empty-handed.
It is this unnecessary difficulty that voter suppressionists want to require voters to endure. This isn’t about election fraud, which is almost non-existent; rather, its goal is to make it arduous to vote, thus discouraging those who are poor, uneducated, or live far from registration offices, often including many minorities.
There are two other, more local, voting/election issues that concern me. First, I’m unhappy with a tactic that was used in a Bergen County closed Democratic primary election for the state Assembly. Such primaries, open only to registered Democrats, give voters affiliated with that party and committed to its principles and goals the right to determine its candidates for office. To evade this purpose, however, Yitz Stern, an Assembly candidate and Modern Orthodox leader whom I personally like and admire, together with a heavily MO organization, BCJAC, urged Republicans to switch their party registration for the sole purpose of voting for him in the primary.
Yes, I know it’s legal. But using a legal loophole doesn’t make it right. To be blunt, Republicans, who put the presidency in the hands of Donald Trump (which was their right, as terrible for our country as I think that was), have no business affiliating with the Democratic party in order to decide who its candidates are. It’s distressing that a MO candidate and organization supported this ploy.
Another aspect of that race that concerns and disappoints me needs some background. There are two open seats for Assembly in Yitz’s district, with three two-person slates running, two of which have one MO candidate each — Yitz and Tamar Warburg. You don’t have to be a political pundit to know that having two competing MO candidates is not a great idea, since it will likely split the MO community, thus allowing another candidate to win. But I’m not here to criticize arguably foolish political decisions.
Rather, what I am criticizing is the endorsement of Yitz and his running mate by a 14-person group consisting of and limited to the educational heads of many Bergen County yeshivot (plus one university president). True, there was a disclaimer that they were “writ[ing] in [their] personal capacit[ies]” but that shouldn’t fool anyone; this was an organized, “united” (their word) effort by the leadership of our local Jewish educational establishment supporting one particular MO candidate and not the other. I raise denominational affiliation because of the nature of their group (MO Jewish educators) as well as their words; they say they were “motivated by [their] deep commitment to Jewish education,” and referred to other endorsements by three Jewish political organizations and other “community political leaders.”
There are a number of serious problems with this endorsement, and I point to an excellent letter by Daniel Edelman in last week’s Jewish Standard for a discussion of many of them. I’ll elaborate here on a few.
First, while I respect everyone’s right to vote for the candidate of their choice, I expect educational leadership to be extremely careful when endorsing candidates, especially when a non-endorsed competing candidate also has deep connections and commitments to the educators’ community, concerns, and values. Thus, I would have expected a serious explanation of why they chose Yitz over Tamar. That’s what good educators do when they offer conclusions — present all the facts and carefully explain how and why they reached their conclusions. Not this endorsement, though. It was an ipse dixit, a decree from on high, whose message was do this because we and some Jewish politicians have made the decision for you.
I’ve spoken to Tamar and a few of the endorsement’s signatories and learned that only one personally discussed the race with her, a graduate of two of their schools. Some spoke to non-candidates or relied on the experience and advice of one of the political organizations, Teach NJ PAC, in concluding who to endorse. That’s not good enough; I expect independent thinking from my educational leaders, not simple reliance on a group of politicians.
But I did suss out the issues the educators were concerned about: tuition concerns for private schools, antisemitism in the public sphere, and support for Israel. Fair enough. But I was also told that at least one signatory — and I suspect most — had no doubt that on all these issues Tamar stood, as she always has, together with her community. Rather, the problem was that the candidate for governor that Tamar is affiliated with, Steve Fulop, holds positions on these issues that are the opposite of those of the Jewish community.
I’m not sure that’s correct; the positions of Fulop, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, son of an IDF veteran, and a onetime yeshiva student, are more nuanced than simple opposition. For example, with respect to antisemitism (a) while he is not a supporter of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which is currently being debated in the New Jersey Legislature and which much of the Jewish community supports, he has publicly said that as governor he will not veto that definition if passed, and (b) as mayor of Jersey City at the time of the horrific 2019 shooting in the kosher supermarket, he was among the very first who quickly and aggressively called it out as antisemitism.
In any event, those are Fulop’s positions and not Tamar’s. She tells him when she disagrees, and he appreciates honest disagreement, discussion, and feedback. Don’t we want that rather than the yes men and women who surround our president? Tarring her with his positions with which she disagrees is guilt by association.
And to be fair, they should have also looked at the positions of the candidate for governor Yitz is affiliated with. That wasn’t possible, however, because he’s not affiliated with any; indeed, the candidate supported by much of the MO community, Josh Gottheimer, supports neither Yitz nor Tamar. Supporting Yitz over Tamar because of what Fulop, not Tamar, thinks, is therefore both wrong and an unfair and unequal assessment of the two candidates.
The sad part is that it’s actually possible to support, endorse, and vote for both Tamar and Yitz since there are two open seats. So why didn’t the educators do that rather than endorse Yitz’s running mate, who, unlike Tamar, has no record of a relationship and commitment to the MO community and its goals? One signatory told me that had he known that was possible, he might have done so. Sorry; from sophisticated, knowledgeable educators, that answer doesn’t get a passing grade from me.
I don’t like writing about politics; I’d much rather write about kindness, friendship, and responsibility, or tell stories about growing up in Far Rockaway or my wonderful children and adorable grandchildren. Hopefully I’ll return soon to my true loves. But events demand what they do, so sometimes I must pick up my pen in sorrow rather than joy.
