Grandpa died suddenly and without warning on November 2nd 1968. The presidential election that would bring Richard Nixon to the White House was three days away.
It was already a miserable year. The Vietnam War was raging with no end in sight as we all watched American cities burning on the television news. Issues of race relations were so hotly debated that almost 10 million people (13.5% of the voters) were about to cast their ballots for segregationist Governor George Wallace. Both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy had been shot dead. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the kindly vicarious pediatrician to a generation, was under indictment for conspiracy to encourage violations of the draft laws and none of us knew if student deferments would still be available for next fall’s college semester. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey’s campaign, hobbled by his association with the Johnson administration and divisions within the Democratic Party was, in the final weeks, showing signs of catching on and catching up in the polls.
Grandma was distraught, the husband with whom she had shared almost every moment for almost 50 years was now gone. The morning after Grandpa died we found out that she could barely see. They had covered up her multiple vision problems; she already had heart disease and diabetes. Who knew if she would make it?
If the 40 year old memory serves; Grandpa was buried the following Monday, Election Day was the first full day of shiva. Now it is important to understand that my grandparents, who emigrated to the United States as small children and whose educations terminated upon graduation from the 8th grade at Lower East Side public schools, were the kind of Jews to whom Orthodoxy came naturally when they were inclined to be observant – which was not all that often. Like most Jews, they snuggled up to The Tradition when they needed its support, mainly around lifecycle events and especially around death.
Upon returning from the funeral Grandma realized she had forgotten to ask the rabbi (Orthodox of course) an important question. We got him on the phone for her. She sought a halakic ruling as to whether or not it was permissible to leave the house and break the shiva for the purpose of going out to vote. We will never know how the rabbi responded to this decidedly modern American question. What I do know is that on Election Day 1968, for the first time in my life, at the age of 17 (the voting age was 21) I entered and pulled the levers on a New York City voting machine. I was not committing fraud, nor did I violate any laws. I was simply the person Grandma chose to assist her when she left the shiva house in order to vote against Richard Nixon and lament that fact that Grandpa could not do so as well.
What made my grandmother so insistent on voting that year? She and my grandfather were fairly apolitical. They were not members of a labor union and if they participated in the Workmen’s Circle it was an attachment to Yiddish culture not socialism. I never heard them talk about civil rights or Vietnam, except to be concerned that I, their eldest grandson, might be drafted the following year. They had loved FDR and mourned Julius and Ethel Rosenberg but were committed minor capitalists, owners of a small business. They were “Sam and Rose the Tailors”! They were proud naturalized citizens; just old enough to remember their early lives in the shetl, recall the rigors of immigration and appreciate the opportunities that grew out of the tenements that were their first American homes.
Grandma left the house of mourning in order to vote because she remembered who Richard Nixon really was. She and her contemporaries were still reeling from, among other things, his 1950 California campaign for the US Senate against Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas with its red baiting, innuendos about his opposition’s disloyalty and not so covert anti-Semitism. She saw voting in general and voting against demagoguery in particular as a mitzvah that took precedence over the Laws surrounding death and mourning. Grandma was not disrespecting Grandpa’s memory, she was honoring it.
Forty years later, almost to the day, several of the great grandchildren who she never knew are about to exercise the right that Grandma and her parents crossed an ocean to attain. We owe it to her, to all of our grandparents not only to vote, but to vote wisely. If the uneducated but hard working men and women of her generation could see through the hype, scare tactics and falsehoods of the 1968 election can we who are by and large more educated and secure do any less?
This is not a partisan statement. It is merely an admonition to today’s Jews saying that when we vote (and I presume you all will) that our choices should be based on facts and not fear, informed by policy preferences and not propaganda, influenced by information not innuendo.
Israel is not an issue this year. Both candidates and parties are committed to Israel’s survival – if only as a means to their own political health. Congress will remain squarely in Israel’s corner – that’s where the real help for Israel originates – and having Israel as a ‘football’ in US politics does not, in the long run, help her cause. There are, however, real differences in policy between Senator McCain and Senator Obama on critical questions like: taxs; economic recovery; energy; reproductive rights; medical care; foreign affairs and, as in 1968, a difficult, intractable and unprecedented war. Jews may and do differ on the approach to real issues such as these. Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, we are required, maybe even commanded, to vote our considered, rational opinions.
In 1968 Grandma had a clear black and white choice. That day her side lost but by his second term the world knew that the vote I cast for her was right. This year it is not so easy. Putting aside all the pundits, propagandists and comedians there are no villains among the serious presidential and vice-presidential contenders; no commies, anti-Semites, anti-Americans or idiots. At issue is simply this: Which set of policy visions is your best bet for making the United States, in all respects, a stronger nation and healthier society that will be better for everyone, including the Jews. Is that a tough choice – well Grandma never told me it was going to be easy!
Happy Election Day!
Rabbi Steve Denker
