The turnout at a Manhattan “Jewish Reconstructionist” congregation’s election night watch party was emblematic of something about the future of American Jewry. To read what, click here.
Category Archives: News
Thank You, President Biden
In the maelstrom of what passes for political discourse these days, the Jewish imperative of hakaras hatov is too often missing in action. A piece I wrote about the outgoing administration is here.
The Worst of Times
My lie-dar is well honed; it beeps when my eyes lay upon tendentious falsehoods in media reports.
To read of what set off some recent beeps, please click here.
SAVE is Moot
Marta, a Honduran noncitizen immigrant who lives in a suburban Atlanta apartment complex, just wanted the two men who appeared at her door and said they were there to help Latinos navigate the election system “to go away.” Fearing she might be deported if she said the wrong thing, when they asked her if she had registered to vote, she just answered yes, hoping that would satisfy them.
It did indeed, though not the way she thought. The men, who surreptitiously videotaped the encounter, were working with the Heritage Foundation on a quest to reveal the extent of noncitizen voting, which is illegal (other than in a few local municipalities for local offices). The group eventually posted a video showing Marta and other noncitizens who also said they had registered to vote.
In truth, though, Marta (who, for obvious reasons, did not want her surname to be publicized) was not registered to vote and had never tried to register in the nine years that she had lived in the United States, according to a private fact-checking group brought in to investigate. Two other women who were featured in the video were also tracked down and confessed to having lied about registering to vote. State investigators found no evidence that any of the seven people on the tape had ever registered to vote.
Nevertheless, the video concluded that, “Based on our findings, the integrity of the 2024 election is in great jeopardy.” Elon Musk, X’s owner, helped the video go viral (it amassed more than 56 million views).
The issue of noncitizens preparing to vote in droves in November is on the political front burner. It has, in fact, held up approval of the federal budget. Because, appended to the budget proposal has been the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act,” or SAVE, which would require voters to present proof of citizenship, like a passport or birth certificate, in order to be able to vote.
Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson failed to pass a six-month extension of government funding with the measure, insisted upon by former President Trump and many Republican members of Congress, attached. Early this week, Congressional leaders reached an agreement (without a SAVE component) to keep the government working for three months, pushing final budget decisions until after the election.
Politics aside, though, the SAVE provision seems sane. Noncitizens should not be permitted to vote.
And they are not. There is already a federal law that penalizes any noncitizen who tries to vote. Illegally voting in a federal election can land a violator in prison for a year, and a noncitizen found guilty of voting faces deportation and denial of future immigration status. That, opponents of SAVE contend, is more than sufficient deterrent.
And SAVE’s requirement to prove citizenship, they add, would disenfranchise millions of voters. Less than half of Americans hold passports, and obtaining birth certificates, which few people have handy, can be time-consuming and requires payment of a fee.
But whether those critics are correct or not, is noncitizen voting a problem in the first place?
According to the libertarian Cato Institute’s Walter Olson, “Those who levy sensational charges [of widespread illegal voting] should bear the burden of proving them. But they haven’t.”
Even the Heritage Foundation itself has documented only 23 cases of noncitizens voting – over the course of two decades.
There have been glitches, though. Oregon’s DMV has revealed that, due to a “data entry issue,” it mistakenly registered at least 306 non-citizens as voters since 2021. The error was caught, though, before any of those registrants had a chance to try to vote.
More than any previous presidential election season, this one’s fuel seems to be fomenting fear. Each candidate doesn’t just tout his or her accomplishments or qualifications, and doesn’t just attack the opponent’s. Each claims that if he or she loses the election, the country will be destroyed, pushed off the brink into dictatorship or anarchy or fascism.
And unfounded fears of things like noncitizens voting en masse ratchet up the fear factor.
Despite all the panic-purveying, though, and whoever wins, let’s hope that, post-election, the republic will not only, b’ezras Hashem, survive but thrive.
© 2024 Ami Magazine
Ugly Fringes
We have Tucker Carlson to thank for creating some long-needed pan-partisan unity of late. To read how he managed that, please click here.
Moribund Mullocracy?
Is the Iranian mullocracy moribund? There is some intriguing writing on the wall for the country’s Shiite leadership. To read what’s on the wall, or, at least, in the air, click here.
Slippery Slur
Did you know that the Torah says to vote for Kamala Harris? Or that she’s a radical socialist? Me neither. And what “socialism” encompasses might surprise you. You can read my thoughts on the matter here.
The UN’s ‘memories’ of antisemitic terrorism are painfully faulty
A piece I wrote about the U.N.’s sad decline (and worse) is here.
Re’ei – Killing’s Toll on Killers
Killing takes a toll – on the killed, of course; that’s pretty obvious. But also on the killers.
That is something that the Ohr Hachaim introduces in his commentary on the pasuk “And He will give you mercy and have mercy upon you” (Devarim, 13:18).
That “give you mercy” is his focus. He writes:
“This act of killing [here of the idolaters of an ir hanidachas] creates a natural cruelty in the heart of a person.”
He continues by referring to what “we are told by the sect of Yishmaelim who murder at the command of the leader, that they experience a great euphoria when they kill a man, and the natural feeling of pity is extinguished in them…”
Therefore, he explains, “Hashem assures the Jews that [after their commanded act of killing], their innate feelings of mercy… will be returned to them anew” despite their having been weakened through the act of killing.
And, further, that they will thereby be granted Heavenly mercy themselves, since “Hashem has mercy only on the merciful.”
Modern psychiatry recognizes something called “perpetrator trauma,” a presentation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms caused by an act or acts of killing.
But what the Ohr Hachaim is expounding upon is a different upshot of perpetrating violence: the erosion of the natural human instinct of mercy.
And his report about not only the post-murder desensitization of assassins (the word “assassin,” as it happens, derived from an Arabic name for the reputedly murderous Nizari Ismaili sect) but of their being enthralled by taking lives resonates all too strongly today, when we have seen Yishmaeli murderers exulting after killing men, women and children. Even the mere imagining of murdering Jews is enough to enrapture some, as they joyfully and mindlessly chant their hope to rid the Holy Land of Jews “from the river to the sea.”
© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran
The Vote’s in the Mail
Voting by mail is a thing these days; so is controversy about it.
To read about the extent of fraud in remote voting, please click here.