It’s not unusual for an elected official to leverage connections made in office to shape a new career as a lobbyist. Rabbi Yehiel Kalish is doing it the opposite way.

Sworn in Sunday night to represent the 16th District in the Illinois House of Representatives — an area that includes parts of Skokie and West Rogers Park — Rabbi Kalish will now utilize the experience and skills gained from 16 years as a lobbyist and Agudah activist in his quest to become an effective state legislator.

“It’s really going to help a lot,” Rabbi Kalish said during a telephone interview the morning after he took the oath of office. “I’m not going in as a starry-eyed freshman. I’m a veteran, I know the lobbyists, and I’ve worked from the other side with all the people I’m going to be working with now.”

Rabbi Kalish, 43, is replacing Lou Lang, 69, the Skokie Democrat who stepped down after 32 years of service. Lang’s decision to resign shortly after winning reelection in November stunned the Chicago Orthodox community, which is heavily represented in the district, sending supporters scrambling for a suitable replacement.

Under Illinois law, the Democratic committeemen in the district choose a replacement when a seat is vacated. Rabbi Kalish soon emerged as the favorite from a short list of candidates.

He was boarding a flight to New York two weeks ago when he received a call gauging his interest. “I just said I’ll do it. It was a gut reaction,” Rabbi Kalish said. “I understood what was at stake, and I knew nobody else was going to be able to step in from the frum community who could also win reelection in 2020.”

Rabbi Kalish earned semichah from the Skokie Yeshiva. He was a yungerman in the Cincinnati kollel when Agudath Israel tapped him in 2002 to establish a legislative office in the Chicago area. Five years later, Agudah dispatched him to New York to serve as its national director of government affairs, a position he left four years ago to return to Chicago and establish his own lobbying and business consulting firm, the S4 Group.

Rabbi Kalish enjoyed a very close relationship with Rav Avrohom Chaim Levin ztz”l, a member of Agudah’s Council of Torah Sages, and is one of approximately six Orthodox Jewish members of state government, a list that includes his sister, Dafna Michaelson, a Colorado Democrat.

A Lieberman Democrat

Having observed Yehiel Kalish in action several times over the years, mainly in Albany, and having had many conversations with him both on and off the record, it is clear that he speaks, both privately and publicly, with both the authority and confidence that comes from a clear knowledge of how government works, a keen sense of its power structure, and how to operate within the system.

Reviewing some notes of our first interview in 2006, I reminded Rabbi Kalish that he once told me that he considered himself a Nixon Republican growing up.

“I was, but there’s a saying, ‘If you’re not a Democrat when you’re young, you don’t have a heart, and if you’re not a Republican when you’re older, you have no brain.’ I guess I’m still young.”

All quips aside, Rabbi Kalish said he always admired the “big tent” Democratic politics personified by former US senator Joseph Lieberman, also an Orthodox Jew. “I’m definitely a Lieberman Democrat, although, on international relations I would be more conservative and hawkish.”

A Political Embrace

After returning from Israel later this week, where he was set to consult with gedolei hador to receive guidance and blessings, he will roll up his sleeves in the Illinois capital of Springfield, at an opportune time for constituents.

For the first time since 2009, Illinois lawmakers are set to consider a new “capital bill” to fund infrastructure projects. Rabbi Kalish hopes to obtain funding to improve parks and yeshivos. “We’ll have a seat at that table, and that’s exceedingly helpful because, without that seat, you’re begging for crumbs instead of handing out the bread.”

Having said that, Rabbi Kalish said if there is one thing he asks from his constituents, it is that they be patient and nonjudgmental. “I’ve been working in this field for 15 years, and most quality legislation, from concept to passage, takes a decade. People only see the end result of what we like to call a ten-year overnight success.”

For inspiration, Rabbi Kalish draws on the Pnei Yehoshua, who learned Shas dozens of times before writing his epic sefer. Even then, the great sage asked readers in his introduction not to judge him too quickly as he’d been thinking about his ideas for a long time.

“That’s what I would ask of the community,” Rabbi Kalish said. “I’m obviously not the Pnei Yehoshua, but everything I’m going to do follows my years of shimush with gedolim and after asking sh’eilahs.”

Many elected Orthodox Jewish officials struggle with reconciling their Jewish and political identities; Rabbi Kalish says he has already made peace with his.

“I am the rabbi who is a state representative not a state representative who is a rabbi,” he said. “If I’m capable at my job, I can be the Jewish candidate and have Asian and Muslim support too, so why not embrace it?”

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 745)