In December of 2009 we wrote about our objections to members of the rabbinate being involved in political discussions. At the time, the issue was a public statement, urging Senator Lieberman to vote in favor of President Obama’s healthcare legislation, which was signed by a number of rabbis in Connecticut as well as others around the country. Our specific problem was the questioning of the Senator’s motivations regarding how he was going to vote.  Last week, the White House released a list of rabbis who support Barrack Obama’s re-election. Many of the points we made in our December 2009 editorial apply. Here are three quotations we used in that article:
“Everyone knows the basic rules,” said Rabbi David Saperstein in an article in the Forward last year. The director and counsel of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism also said that, “You can talk about issues, but you can’t endorse candidates and parties, but there are all these gray areas in between that people are struggling with.”
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, in a discussion in Moment Magazine offered the following: “Democracy depends on negotiations and compromises amid constantly changing conditions. Religious approaches tend to wrap issues in the mantle of absolute values and eternal, unchanging divine commandments, which block compromise. “
“The synagogue, the church, should be a place where there is refuge from politics and the focus on the spiritual,” said Rabbi Jeffrey Wohlberg, who had recently retired as senior rabbi at Adas Israel in Washington.
We find ourselves in agreement with these three statements and in opposition to a rabbi’s involvement in political controversy. In this discussion we define “political” as being when a candidate is being discussed. When a political candidate is being endorsed or criticized, as in the case of Senator Lieberman in 2009 or President Obama in last month’s White House announcement, then that is a political discussion and one that rabbis should refrain from being involved in. If and when a rabbi does become a partisan in a political campaign, then the rules of politics, including the strictures on associations and affiliations, apply to them in the same way that they apply to any other participant in the secular arena.  Smicha (rabbinical ordination) does not give one special privilege to be, at the same time, both involved in the political melee and above criticism.
Elsewhere on these pages several rabbis take issue with an article we printed from a national news service about an organization they belong to, Rabbis for Human Rights, and the way in which it was described. We are happy to print their opinion, but we disagree with their view of Israel and maintain that Israel is a vibrant democracy capable of setting its own course and determining its own future. Israelis have gone to the polls numerous times over the last 60 years and have done just that: They have continually chosen policies designed to ensure their safety and security.  They are also the watchmen on their own walls. The Israeli majority has every right to pursue policies that it deems necessary to keep Israelis and their families safe and secure and guarantee the survival of the one Jewish state in the world.
—nrg