Deflection Election

It’s the day when as a community, time and again we fail mightily in our designated role on this earth

This was the week of the day called Election Day in the United States. But I prefer to call it something else.

When one stops to consider it, this business of elections is quite an amazing phenomenon from a Jewish perspective. Here’s a day that arrives every other year, and with even greater intensity every fourth year, that actually poses a massive nisayon to a frum Jew. And unless he’s mentally prepared to face it, he might well fail the test.

For months in the run-up to this day, he’s inundated — even if all he takes into his home is Jewish media — with punditry and polling and ads and endorsements and much more, all designed to make him think it’s the voters who will decide the fate of the government and its various officials. And he’s warned ominously that with his one vote he too plays some tiny role in this man-controlled drama. As the day itself approaches, both the volume and the pitch of the onslaught reach a zenith.

But what happened to the words we uttered so fervently in unison just a few weeks back, phrases such as “Hamamlich melachim v’lo hameluchah” (Hashem coronates kings and ultimate kingship is His) and “Mi yishafel u’mi yarum” (Who will fall and who will rise)? Or how about just a basic “Yisrael betach baShem”? Hashem alone runs the world, with no apparent exception I’m aware of for mortal politicians, federal, state or local. For us Torah Jews, this is as basic as it gets.