Some things are matters of judgement and some things are forbidden. I’ll write a little about prudential judgments in voting in due course, but, first of all, there are certain parties it is, in my opinion, absolutely forbidden to vote for and here is the list.
1. Yahadut haTorah
Below is a picture of the Moetzes Gedolei haTorah of the Agudas Yisroel in Israel.
On the left with a red ring around him is Menachem Mendel Hager, founder of a Vizhnitz offshoot known as Vizhnitz Merkaz or Mendelisten. As we have discussed elsewhere, Chassidus started off as a rebranding of moderate Sabbatean tendencies in Podolia and Volhynia in which the signature Sabbatean doctrine of the quasi-divine tzaddik who acts as an intermediary between his followers and God was applied to a wide range of entrepreneurial holymen and magicians. Chassidus in its authentic form became very rare after the Holocaust (though it started growing exponentially in the last few decades) and was largely replaced by a Hungarian-Romanian tendency, exhibited in its purest form by Satmar, which emphasises cultural Chassidus as a prop for traditionalism, while downplaying the theological side to the greatest extent possible compatible with maintaining plausible deniability. In his wing of Vizhnitz, though, Menachem Mendel has gone old school demanding his followers say prayers to him at various times of day, teaching that he does not really have a corporeal body etc., and setting up some kind of weird Rosh haShanah to commemorate his becoming Rebbe. Followers who have left in response to this madness have been victims of targeted harassment and beatings.
I am aware of two Rabbis who have said the obvious truth, namely that Menachem Mendel is running an idolatrous cult that is outside of Judaism. The first is R. Chaim Yosef Dovid Weiss, Rav of Satmar in Antwerp, who has authored a number of teshuvot on questions asked by those who have left or are leaving the cult (you can read them in this rather clumsily arranged booklet below that also collates various pieces of evidence of the terrible goings on in Vizhnitz Merkaz). The second is R. Eliyakim Schlesinger of Stamford Hill (recently deceased זצ’’ל).
This illustrates a rather depressing but unavoidable point. I prefer the ‘non-Zionist’ position of moderate Charedim to the extremist anti-Zionist position on substance. But the fact is that, regardless of the merits of Zionism, contact with the State of Israel is pure cancer for Charedim, and really for religious Jews in general. In fact, a list of Rabbis, mostly associated with Peleg or the Eida Charedis also signed a letter against Menachem Mendel, but all of them subsequently declared that they hadn’t signed it, or didn’t understand what they had signed, or didn’t mean it in the sense it was understood or otherwise weaselled out, so it’s not even enough to be an ordinary extremist, you have to flee from this thing like ebola.
Back to the Moetzes. Menachem Mendel maintains his place at the council, but has boycotted meetings since the appointment of the present secretary, Yakov Walzer, a Vizhnitz chossid who is opposed to idol worship. Recently, Menachem Mendel has switched from his previous affiliation to Gur to supporting the Belz-Slonim alliance in a bid to have Walzer fired. He has also used the conscription controversy to boost his street cred by sending out his freaks to demonstrate in front of the Knesset. Time will tell if his bid for greater power is successful, but what of it? Why is this a thing? As Rav Schlesinger said, he’s a goy, kick him out. If he wore jeans, he’d be out for sure, so how is this not worse?
I’ll pause here for a brief personal reflection. It takes a bit of time to get used to it, but there’s really no way to avoid it: Orthodox Judaism as a real entity embodied in concrete institutions simply does not care about idolatry. It’s not strictly in favour of it, it just doesn’t care. If you make a fuss about it, you can predict in advance the rolling of the eyes, the curling of the lips, a particular tone of voice used when scoffing. It’s all very tiresome. If it’s Chabad, it’s fine because they give out grape juice to holiday-makers in Burma; if it’s Breslov it’s because they take troubled youth and, in place of vandalising bus stops, encourage them to vandalise the property of Arabs. But Menachem Mendel doesn’t do any of that even. Take away all the evil, and he’s just a dickhead clowning around in a shiny coat and still, nothing happens, no-one cares.
Well, I care, cringe and nebbish though it may be. Goings on in Ger, as we have discussed, arguably justify this judgment on its own, but given how off the chain Vizhnitz Merkaz is, it’s a slam dunk that it is forbidden to vote Yahadut haTorah. If you’re litvish and wondering what this has to do with you, then, yes, hypothetically, if Degel ran separately from the Aguda, then it would be permitted to vote for them, but they aren’t, so it isn’t.
2. Otzma Yehudit
This section we can keep a bit shorter. I have already written about Ben Gvir’s trip to America’s center of idolatry, 770 Crown Heights, where he was recorded on camera endorsing the propositions that Menachem Mendel Schneerson is alive, resident in the building and the messiah. The connection between meshichist Chabad (which in Israel, basically is Chabad) and Ben Gvir has been documented by others and I won’t belabour it. Any remaining doubt about the matter was dispelled by the selection of a meshichist, Yosef Goldberger, to number 9 on their list (a position that gives him a small, but not negligible, chance of election). It is clearly forbidden to vote for this party.
3. Democratim
On the question of security and foreign policy, I am closest to the right-wing of the Democratim (that is to say what was once the Labour party). It would definitely be a good thing if someone represented this position in the Knesset and, preferably, in the government too. I also believe that, as a human being, Yair Golan is far and away the best of the party leaders, and the kind of person that you or I should stand up for when he enters the room. However, the fact is that they have decided to run on a policy of abolishing Israel’s existing safeguards against 21st century liberalism’s excesses, as well as the Jewishness of the state in a substantive sense. Given the mess we have made of the religion, and the always-increasing correlation between religiosity and general turdiness created by our kiruv strategy, one can very well understand why an educated and morally sensitive person of basically sane disposition would want to get as far away from it as possible. However, that is not the same thing as actually voting for it. Israel is plenty liberal on every question other than how to treat Arabs already, it doesn’t need any more. One day, the Left in this country might realise before it’s too late that in order to get a foreign policy based on restraint and some kind of universalist tempering of ethnic sadism they have to be willing to bargain away some of the degeneracy they are in favour of. But that’s not what they decided for this election, and they shouldn’t be rewarded for it. I don’t predict that their policies will make all that much difference, even if implemented, which they might not be even in the event of electoral victory. This is not a consequentialist argument. If you are Jewish, you can’t vote against Judaism.
Matters of taste
Now for my personal takes. I am against voting. I think, considered as an act in and of itself, that it is a disgusting thing to do, namely to ceremonially pledge allegiance to a system of government that is inherently morally wrong, a giant machine for driving people insane. I also think that making too big a deal of it is also incorrect. Thus, if you can plausibly change your own bank balance or your incarceration status by voting, then it would be sacralising the system in a different sort of way not to do it. If it would be worth cleaning up a puddle of sick for, then it’s also worth voting for. You also shouldn’t argue with people who do vote, as if not voting is some kind of political solution in itself. The ideal of #novote is to achieve the closest thing as possible to a state of emotional indifference to voting, to embrace, virtually, the status of a subject, because that is what you want to be. On the other hand, this can get a bit hard to maintain in stressful circumstances.
