Friday, November 8, 2024

Voting is a form of prayer

Voting is a form of prayer

It’s a sacred moment, voting, and the voting booth a sacred place: Jerusalem, in a school gym.

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"I believe in the power of prayer," said Amy Coney Barrett in her prepared testimony at her confirmation hearing in 2020, just days before that year’s election.  Jews do too. But prayer takes on different forms. We pray with words, but we also pray with our feet.  

When Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel returned from marching for Civil Rights in 1965, he wrote (and here’s the full quote):

“For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.”

We pray with our commitments, and we pray with our ballots. I’ve just voted for the first time at my new address, grateful to have lived to reach this moment, grateful for the freedom to vote, and aware of my obligation to fulfill the mitzvah of saving lives and building a better world. It’s a sacred moment, voting, a moment of pure prayer: Jerusalem, in a school gym. This ballot box is our Kotel, a note inserted into its crevice, a dispatch from the front, an epistle from the heart, containing my deepest response to the Cry of our times, a Cry that demands action - action that we can all take, that all Americans must take. The fate of the nation will be determined in parking garages and school gyms and libraries, by long lines of voters waiting 3,5,8 hours or more to do something so simple, yet so earthshaking. It's all worthy of a blessing.

At times like these, it's important, for Jews and others, to remember that voting is a prime Jewish value, expressing our deep belief in the power that we possess to change the world.  

We never hear about the rabbis of the Talmud taking a poll of their constituents.  And Moses certainly didn’t take a vote before leading the people out of slavery.  Still, the democratic value inherent to voting does find expression in Jewish tradition.

Jews were deeply involved in both the women's suffrage movement of the 1920s and in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, which, among other accomplishments, achieved the extension of the right to vote to African Americans.  Some early Jewish voting-rights advocates included Clara Lemlich who, in 1909, following the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, organized one of the most important strikes in American history and who then turned her energies to creating a working-class women's suffrage organization; and Gertrude Weil, a leader of the North Carolina Equal Suffrage League beginning in 1915 and a crusader for voting rights and election reform.

This ballot box is our Kotel, a note inserted into its crevice, a dispatch from the front, an epistle from the heart, containing my deepest response to the Cry of our times.

The principle “you should go after the majority (Exodus 23:2) is understood by the rabbis to mean that the majority rules in legal disputes.  In one famous Talmudic story, a group of rabbis argue over a legal point. Even though a divine voice supports the lone opinion of one rabbi, the majority opinion wins.  Once the Torah has been transmitted to the Jewish people, the will of the people—understood as the majority opinion of the decision makers—determines the law.  (Talmud Bava Metzia 59b).

So, on November 5, or whenever you vote, why not say a “Shehechianu” blessing – or make up another, spontaneous utterance that reflects how you feel at such a crucial moment.

And certainly, for many Jews, their act of faith, the praying-with-our-feet that is voting, will be a direct response intended to counteract Amy Coney Barrett’s prayers – and her votes.

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