I have always loved Election Day. The ideal of having an engaged citizenry collectively come together—millions of us, across the states—recognizing that our well-being is wrapped up in one another’s; that our lives are, for better or for worse, in one another’s hands (as made all the more clear by this pandemic); and that we are indeed, as we wrote about last week, our brothers’ keepers, our sisters’ keepers, our siblings’ keepers—this ideal has always felt electric to me on Election Day: the bustle of millions of citizens marking their ballots (ballots which you can watch being counted live in Philadelphia here), making their voices heard, signaling which direction they want our nation to pursue. (It doesn’t hurt that I have a deep affinity for graphs and charts and maps: meticulously following what should be red and what should be blue has always filled this lover of order’s heart.)
Of course, it has never been as simple as this ideal. For centuries, millions of our citizens have been disenfranchised: whether it was while they were enslaved, or before the passage of the 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments to the Constitution, or before the passage of the Voting Rights Act through obstacles like literacy tests and poll taxes, or through more subtle present-day obstacles like limited polling times and locations, our lived reality has never quite lived up to this idyllic vision.
Still, that is the vision towards which we aspire, and importantly, it is not an exclusively American invention; our Jewish forebears also recognized the sacredness of ensuring that the voices of the people are heard when determining who will lead us. In the Talmud, a centerpiece of our sacred canon, we read:
Rabbi Yitzḥak said: one may only appoint a leader over a community if he consults with, and gains the consent of, the community (Berachot 55a).
Notably, whereas the Talmud is perhaps most well-known for its recording of dissenting voices, what’s striking in this passage is their absence: there are none. The implication of the Talmud is clear: leaders should not be appointed over a community without gaining the permission of that community.
In the United States, that is our ideal: making sure we have a democracy; that our citizens’ voices are reflected in the representation of our government. That means making sure that everyone’s votes are counted—that no one who cast a vote gets overlooked, no matter how long it takes; that our system of governance is reflective of who, and how many people, cast votes, no matter where they live; that our yearning to make this world better than we found it is reflected in who represents us.
Perhaps then we can say we are truly living up to our Democratic ideals. Ken Yehi Ratzon, as we traditionally say: may it truly be so.
