As Election Day 2016 draws near I thought it might be helpful if I was interviewed about the choices we face. With none of our stellar interviewers available for the assignment I decided to take the task upon myself.

Q: You’ve written several very strongly worded columns that make Donald Trump out to be a singular anathema as a candidate for US president. But many readers have wondered why you haven’t written to oppose Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in similar terms given that she shares many of her opponent’s deficiencies. Are you planning to vote for her?

A: Boy you’re quite the tough questioner aren’t you?

Q: Well it stands to reason considering that I’m you or you’re me or whatever. You do remember what Ted Cruz said about you/me don’t you?

A: Yes but let’s not bring him into this okay?

Q: I understand… As for my question?

A: As far back as 2008 I wrote a column contrasting Mrs. Clinton with famed mountain climber Sir Edmund Hillary whom she used to regularly claim as her namesake until the truth intervened. Here’s one line from the piece: “Indeed in three areas that are perhaps most essential for assessing suitability for leadership of a nation Senator Clinton and Sir Hillary appear to be polar opposites: achievement humility and moral courage.” So I don’t think the Clinton campaign is waiting with bated breath for Kobre’s contribution to arrive in the mail.

Come November 8 I will be voting for neither the Democratic nor the Republican presidential candidate. I would consider casting a write-in vote for Nebraska’s Republican senator Ben Sasse who’s a promising prospect for future national leadership but I think his very sanity might lead him to demur even if he were to be written-in by a plurality of American voters. That’s the conundrum of American leadership in these times and some would say in all times.

Q: Can you share with your readers some of what underlies your decision to abstain?

A: Sure. But at the outset I think it’s important for me to say that several months ago when I wrote a few columns about the election I had hourlong consultations with two gedolei Torah who are sources of da’as Torah for the American Torah community. Just a few days ago I again met with one of them in his home to discuss how a Torah Jew should relate to the election and what and how I ought to write about it. What I wrote earlier and what I share with you now reflects the guidance I received in those meetings.

I begin with the premise that as Torah Jews we ought to think about what it means in Jewish terms to cast a vote. Hashem runs the world including American elections and our participation in the electoral process is merely a form of hishtadlus no different from pursuing a livelihood or consulting a doctor. This one truth renders largely irrelevant all the millions of words of political analysis that have been written and spoken in the course of the last year.

Of course even without invoking Torah principles the plain fact is that the vote of any one individual anywhere is of no consequence and the same is true of even millions of “red” votes in a solidly “blue” state and vice versa. This ought to make it even easier to see our votes as electorally irrelevant and to focus instead on the very real spiritual consequences of our votes.

A vote is a moral choice. It’s an expression at some level of association with or at least unwillingness to disassociate from a candidate’s character values and beliefs. That expression registers in the hearts and minds of his family his community the larger society — and within himself. As the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson put it earlier this year addressing a different religious community:

Evangelical Christians are not merely choosing a certain political outcome. They are determining their public character — the way they are viewed by others and ultimately the way they view themselves… In legitimizing the presumptive Republican nominee evangelicals are not merely accepting who he is; they are changing who they are.

Columnist Ben Shapiro echoes Gerson:

A vote is two things: an instrument of policy and a moral imprimatur… [P]lacing the imprimatur of legitimacy on a bad human being… is sure to stain you. Your vote doesn’t just say something about the future of the country. It says something about you.

Although Gerson and Shapiro were speaking of the Republican nominee their words apply with equal force to his opponent.

There’s a reason for Chazal’s cautionary teaching (Chullin 44b) of “Harchek min hakiyur u’min hadomeh lo — Distance yourself from that which is repulsive and even from that which resembles the repulsive.” If one feels no need to do so it means he has become inured to some extent to things that ought to induce moral nausea in a spiritually healthy person and he absorbed some of the stench wafting from the source of repulsion.

Q: How then do we ever vote? The political class after all isn’t known for containing tzaddikim within its ranks.

A: The answer will turn on the mix of factors in a given situation: e.g. the character traits behavior and temperament of a candidate whether his behavior is public or private whether his behavior affects others the policies he’s promoting and the degree to which he actually believes in those policies.

Unfortunately for us and the country as a whole it’s not at all a close question this year. Both candidates are uniquely unsuited in moral terms to lead our nation or to hold any position of authority for that matter. Their very names are inextricably intertwined with deeply flawed character distorted values and grossly unethical behavior in word and deed.

Both candidates have long very public histories that can be consulted to determine whether their statements and actions during this election year are merely passing anomalies or are part of a deeply ingrained pattern of conduct going back many decades. I’ve done some of that research particularly regarding the Republican candidate whose history is less well known by some and the findings are deeply disturbing.

Q: Some people say that although they detest the behavior and character of the candidate they’re supporting they will be casting their vote for that person only because not voting is effectively a vote for the other far worse candidate. 

A: People who say that may be well meaning but are making mistakes of both fact and logic. Again both voting and failing to vote have zero effect on the electoral outcome but can be greatly significant in the spiritual scheme of things. Unless one candidate meets the threshold of moral acceptability it ought to be unthinkable for us to vote for either of two candidates whose values and behavior do violence to the traits of compassion and modesty that exemplify the Jewish People and to the Truth that is Hashem’s very seal.

Q: Any final thoughts?

A: The adam gadol with whom I recently met to discuss these matters spoke passionately about this as a time for Torah Jews to take stock of the chasm that separates them from society at large. In the space of little over a year so many elements of that society once looked upon as reliable redoubts of wholesome moral values have been left in tatters their hypocrisy and craven abandonment of principle laid bare for all to see.

From rock-ribbed conservative politicians who once championed family values to talk radio figures who created entire careers attacking liberals for the precise policies and behaviors they now embrace to leaders of the Religious Right who have remained supportive of the Republican nominee no matter how morally putrid the allegations against him become — the very foundations of many of the institutions with which many frum Jews once felt some kinship now lie exposed and rotting.

In a time such as this the tzav hasha’ah is a redoubled commitment to shore up the havdalah bein Yisrael la’amim on which our status as the Am Hanivchar is based. We can begin that journey this Election Day with a resounding statement conveyed by what we do not do. With our votes and when called for our abstention from voting we should strive to make America good again.