The “Jewish” Vote

Horsham, a lush, wealthy suburb about an hour north of Philadelphia proper, with relatively few Jews, seems an unusual place for a seat of Jewish political power. But as home to Jill Zitter, that’s what it is.

Mrs. Zitter, who practiced for years as a trial attorney, leads Democratic Jewish Outreach of Pennsylvania (DJOP), a super PAC that raises money for candidates and works to mobilize the Jewish vote for candidates in state and national elections.

Despite Republicans’ efforts to lure more Jewish voters by playing up divisions in the Democratic Party over Israel and a long list of mealy-mouthed responses to domestic anti-Semitism in the progressive activist world, secular Jews largely remain loyal to the political camp they have embraced for around a century.

For DJOP, continued Jewish devotion to Democrats speaks to the party’s resonance with their values.

“It’s essentially stayed the same, if you look at the last 30 to 40 years, 68% to 79% of the Jewish vote supports the Democratic Party,” she says, seated in the dinette of her all-white kitchen. “The Republican Jewish Coalition keeps saying this is the year they’re going to attract more Jewish votes, but it never comes to pass.”

About 20 miles closer to Philadelphia, in an affluent corner of Merion Station, on a leafy street lined with Tudor and Georgian houses, is the home base of one man trying to reverse that trend. Real estate developer Jeff Bartos ran in two unsuccessful GOP Senate primary campaigns and is now acting as an advisor to the Trump team in Pennsylvania, focusing on Israel and anti-Semitism. Seated at the table of his dark-wood-paneled dining room, Mr. Bartos acknowledges that secular Jews still overwhelmingly back Democrats, but says that over the past year, he has seen a sizable shift.

“It’s been a horrible year for anyone who loves Israel and who’s proud of their faith,” he says. “For families dealing with what’s going on in colleges, or if you have family or friends in Israel, if you’re focused on these issues, I think there’s a pretty substantial group whose calculus has changed.”

He backs up his assertion by citing a study commissioned by the Orthodox Union’s Teach Coalition showing Jewish support for Mrs. Harris only 11 points ahead, which could translate into tens of thousands of votes going Republican.

Mr. Bartos goes on to anecdotally mention a family of centrist Democrats whom he is personally close with who, while keeping their re-alignment quiet, plan on voting for Mr. Trump.

“They feel abandoned by Democrats, on Israel and on anti-Semitism,” he says.

Whether to their satisfaction or frustration, most agree that October 7 and its fallout had only limited effect on Jewish electoral choices. Several other polls show Ms. Harris retaining a far larger share of Jewish support than Teach Coalition’s results.

Steve Feldman heads Philadelphia’s chapter of the Zionist Organization of America, an organization that is officially nonpartisan but widely viewed as right-leaning. He says his interactions with Jews around the state have left him with the impression that political realignment has been limited by partisan preconceptions and the role of “Jewish issues” on voters’ radar.

“I’m seeing a heightened awareness of Jew-hatred, but I still think there’s a big disconnect among diaspora Jews between those who have a sense of connection to Israel and most of those that don’t,” says Mr. Feldman. “What’s gone on might have swayed some people, but that mostly goes back to where you get your information from and what your priorities are.”

Israel Low on the List

There are other factors that could make Israel less of a spur for Jewish Democrats to reconsider their voting preferences. While support for Israel among Democratic voters is at an all-time low, and some prominent elected Democrats have called for radical changes in American ties with the Jewish state, the Biden administration is widely viewed as a staunch ally. Few left-leaning voters believe Mrs. Harris will veer from that course.

In Pennsylvania, the GOP is further hamstrung in leveraging Israel as an issue, as two of the Democratic Party’s loudest Israel defenders and critics of anti-Israel activism are Josh Shapiro, the state’s Jewish governor, and iconoclastic freshman Senator John Fetterman.

The ZOA’s Mr. Feldman praises Mr. Fetterman’s record, and his organization honored the senator at its annual gala. But when its comes to Governor Shapiro, he feels photo-ops and soundbites have outpaced real action. He says it is characteristic of a certain “unsophistication” in gathering and digesting public affairs that dictates Jewish voting inclinations.

“It always disappoints me how unattuned people are, especially given the fragility of Jewish life,” says Mr. Feldman. “They just don’t know who their lawmakers are or where they really are on a lot of the issues that should be important to us.”

Polling illustrates that secular Jewish Democratic loyalty is less determined by a view that the party is more beneficial for Israel or better equipped to combat anti-Semitism than by the degree to which either issue ranks on voters’ score cards.

Jim Gerstein, whose polling of Jewish voters informs J Street and several Democratic and progressive groups, released a recent survey showing that his study group (which was only 9% Orthodox) ranked the “future of democracy,” inflation and the economy, and abortion as their top political priorities. Israel came in second-to-last out of 11 topics.

“Jews who support the Democratic Party care about the same issues all Americans care about,” says Mrs. Zitter. She tagged “democracy” as Jewish voters’ top concern, equating its protection with preventing Mr. Trump from returning to the White House.

“There’s a real fear that if Donald Trump wins that it could portend the end of American democracy, at least as we understand it,” says Mrs. Zitter. “Jews have never done well under czars or kings or dictators. They know they are safest in a democratic America… I also think Jewish voters understand [that] a strong US democracy means a strong democratic, pluralist Israel as well.”

Past trends suggest this telling is accurate. While bipartisan consensus over Israel largely kept the issue out of Jewish voters’ calculus in the 20th century, there is little to suggest that the issue would have budged many from the ideological comfort they felt within the Democratic Party.

The partisan gap that widened over Israel during the Obama administration did little to win secular Jews to the GOP. It seems all the less likely to effect deep change at a time when most Jewish Democrats view Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government in a negative light and support the Biden administration’s attempts to leverage control over it.

Despite the impact the past year’s events have had on some more Jewishly conscious voters, Mr. Bartos concedes that for many others, these issues have yet to make it onto their radar. Referencing a recent candidate forum he participated in at a temple in Elkins Park, a Philadelphia suburb, he said the concerns expressed by the crowd there offered little support for the theory that events in Gaza or on college campuses would lead to a sea change in Jewish voting patterns.

“We fielded questions at a synagogue on the other side of Montgomery County for about 30 minutes, all on abortion and climate change,” he says. “Not one question about Israel, not one question about anti-Semitism.”

All Eyes on Pennsylvania

While the dogfight over Pennsylvania’s Jewish vote is telling, it remains one skirmish in a multifront war to win a sprawling and complex state.

Over the past two election cycles, Pennsylvania’ importance to presidential politics skyrocketed. After decades of delivering victories to Democrats as part of the “blue wall,” the state’s coalition of urban and union voters, together with those in Michigan and Wisconsin, were all three won by Mr. Trump in 2016. They narrowly flipped back to Pennsylvania’s native son, President Joseph Biden, in 2020.

Pennsylvania’s heightened importance is a matter of electoral map math. To secure the presidency, a candidate needs to win a majority, 270 votes, from the Electoral College’s 538 seats. This year, the states near certain to go to Ms. Harris total 226. For Mr. Trump, that number is 219. The seven states that remain in contention — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — represent a total of 93.

If Mr. Trump wins North Carolina, as he did in 2020, the simplest path for either candidate to win runs through the electorally rich states of Pennsylvania, with 19 votes, and Georgia with 16.

The nearly $100 million poured into the state by the two campaigns combined over this summer reflect its importance as well as the challenge of winning over Pennsylvania.

With Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump in a statistical polling tie, all eyes are on Pennsylvania, the state most likely to determine who will be the next president of the United States. For either, any victory map without it is a long shot. Hence, the candidates’ schedules have been peppered with regular visits to the Keystone State.

Average Joes

The Lowe’s Home Improvement outlet in Willow Grove, a quiet Philadelphia suburb, seems as good a place as any to gauge how voters feel about the contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump.

Of course, no one location can reveal much everything about the leanings of a state with around 13 million people. But a cursory glance at Willow Grove makes it at least appear to fit the role of the “Anytown, USA.”

If there is anything that marks this location, it is its utter ordinariness. A strip of chain stores located off a local route, it gives no sign of distinctiveness and could be in any of America’s stereotypically cookie-cutter suburbs. Yet that drabness is precisely what makes it ripe for finding the “average Joe” citizens who could be a bellwether of larger trends.

On a mild early fall afternoon, a few scattered shoppers seem dwarfed by the big-box-style layout of the iconic housewares superstore.

Jonathan, a registered Republican in his early 40s who lists abortion and immigration as his top policy concerns, voted for Mr. Trump in past elections and plans on doing so again.

Why?

“Lesser of two evils,” he says, adding that Mr. Trump was also “more likely to eliminate evil.”

David and Aron, two men in their twenties buying construction materials, say they are both mostly concerned with the economy. Neither belong to a political party, and both plan to vote for Mr. Trump, also calling him the “lesser of two evils.”

Even as this highly unscientific survey paints Lowe’s of Willow Grove as a Trump country, in areas closer to Philadelphia proper, people with very different opinions are not hard to find.

Wyncote is around a half hour from the city, with a distinctively working- to middle-class, marginally urban feel to it. Inside its Aldi supermarket, there are a significant number of shoppers for a weekday afternoon, a little more than half of them black.

Two older black men demure when asked to share their views on elections with a mumble and slight shake of the head.

John, a middle-aged white registered Democrat, lists “women’s rights” as a top concern and plans to cast his vote for Ms. Harris.

“Trump’s terrible, he’s never been right about anything,” he says.

A strip mall in the well-to-do suburb of Wynnewood is dominated by bands of 17- and 18-year-olds making the rounds of a set of eateries, an Old Navy, and a former department store converted into a Halloween clearinghouse. They are dressed in sweatshirts and other baggy casual-wear, the brand names of which likely make them far more expensive than they appear. None seem interested in the Harris campaign office stuck between other retailers in the outdoor center, nor do snippets of their conversations reveal more than typical teens looking for ways to spend time after school and stall off homework.

While he hurries to close his eyeglasses store, Bruce, in step with the area’s political leanings, says he plans to cast a ballot for Ms. Harris.

“Trump is just too dangerous,” he says.

The most positive take on the election comes from Kate, an immigrant from Belarus who operates a kiosk selling coffee and pastries in Northeast Philadelphia. In a heavy accented English, she says she is a citizen but does not intend to vote because “I don’t know anything about all this political stuff.”

Despite the obvious limits of this man-in-the-street survey, a single theme emerges that transcends party lines — no one has anything positive to say about their candidate of choice, just rejections of their opponent.

That carries a gloomy note. Perhaps the days are gone when leaders garnered admiration even from their own camps. Even among Mr. Trump’s admirers, few view him as more than a warrior against common enemies. Ms. Harris’s popularity seems rooted in being the only way to prevent Mr. Trump from returning to the White House.

Yet especially in Pennsylvania, a state known for moderate politicians like the late Republican senator Arlen Spector, current senior Democratic senator Bob Casey, and first-term governor Josh Shapiro, a lack of “rah-rah” enthusiasm carries hope. The state no doubt contains thousands of progressive activists ready to take to the streets and proclaim their “resistance” to a second Trump term, and MAGA loyalists gearing up to protest a “stolen” Harris victory. Yet the Trump voters in Lowe’s of Willow Grove and Harris ones in Wyncote and Wynnewood seem more likely to take a loss by their chosen candidate with a moment of disappointment and an attempt to go on with their lives — the bedrock of a civil society.

“A Complete Shift”

Pennsylvania aptly illustrates how Mr. Trump’s impact has transformed America’s political map. The state was memorably described by James Carville, campaign director for Bill Clinton, as “Philadelphia and Pittsburgh at either end with Alabama in the middle.” Now, its urban centers remain solidly Democratic and its rural interior Republican, but everything else has changed.

“We’ve seen the traditional ‘collar counties’ around Philadelphia that were heavily Republican since the Civil War go Democrat, and the white working class out west and around Pittsburgh that always voted Democrat has gone Republican,” says J. Wesley Leckrone, political science professor at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania. “It’s almost a complete shift.”

Philadelphia’s “collar counties” (Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware) once represented support of corporate America and professionals for Republicans as guardians of business interests and law and order. Yet in recent decades, more left-leaning voters moving from within Philadelphia turned them ever bluer, a trend accelerated by the aversion many college-educated voters already living there had toward Mr. Trump.

At the same time, working-class areas like Allegheny and Cambria counties around Pittsburgh, and Carbon, Lackawanna, and Luzern counties near Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, where union membership once dictated loyalty to the Democratic Party, have turned increasingly red.

“These people were already more culturally conservative and over time have less ties to their unions,” says Daniel Mallinson, professor of public policy at Penn State University. “Cambria went for Obama in 2008 and then switched to Trump. These Obama-Trump voters feel economically and culturally left behind and are looking for something different. The common thread is the change element.”

Even as blue-collar voters are lured to Mr. Trump by his economic nationalism and goals of revitalizing domestic manufacturing, few unions have followed suit. United Steel Workers and other major labor organizations continue to back Democrats including Ms. Harris.

“Union leaders have been in their positions for a long time and have been steeped in Democratic Party politics,” says Professor Mallinson, explaining the seemingly out-of-step endorsements.

A notable exception was the Teamsters Union, which declined to back either candidate, a sign of the weakening hold unions have on their members.

“I don’t think the union has a lot of sway,” says Professor Leckrone. “I think these workers are kind of like the Reagan Democrats who turned on law-and-order issues. Now, on social issues, race, immigration, they’re the new generation going Republican.”

Pennsylvania’s balanced mix of partisan bases makes it fiercely competitive. In 2020, President Biden won there by one percentage point, and in 2016, Mr. Trump prevailed with less than that. Democrats once had a significant registration advantage in Pennsylvania, but it has since been cut to around 300,000.

Its urban populations are receptive to Democrats’ two key messages of Mr. Trump as an existential threat to democracy and the urgency to protect abortion rights. But in some of the state’s swingiest areas, issues like gun rights, coal mining, and fracking rank high on many voters’ lists.

“It’s a microcosm of the country,” says Jeff Bartos. “You have some of the most fertile farmland in the world, you have some of the richest natural resources in the world, you have two huge cities on either end, and a lot of smaller ones in between like Harrisburg, York, Erie… I love it, but it’s a huge challenge.”

“A Turnout Game”

Attempting to handle the challenge of running campaigns in a large and diverse state, both the Trump and Harris teams have opened a network of offices but largely stuck to their national messages.

Asked to make a staff member available for an interview for this article, the Harris campaign lived up to its reputation as media-shy. The most that myriad efforts — including a call to Pennsylvania’s party chair’s mobile phone — yielded was an email with background information touting the Harris campaign’s robust infrastructure in Pennsylvania and shining a light on the Trump team’s lagging ground presence.

Both camps are engaged in the costly and trying task of rallying their bases while trying to pick off chunks of persuadable voters in opposing blocks.

Kush Desai, deputy Battleground States and Pennsylvania communication director for the Trump campaign, says both initiatives work with the same message.

“The base and the undecided voters all have the same top issues — they’re all paying more for a gallon of milk and a gallon of gas in Montgomery County, as they are in the western part of the state,” he says. “The message is the same. This election is a choice between another four years of the Harris-Biden administration’s rising prices at home and disaster abroad or a return to the peace, prosperity, and stability of the Trump administration.”

A Washington Post poll from showed that 66% of Pennsylvanians gave the present economy a poor rating, and voters who say the economy is their top issue back Mr. Trump by 65%.

Mr. Trump and his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, have spent most of their time in Pennsylvania in regions dominated by their white working-class base. But they have also alternated with far more visits to black and Hispanic areas of Philadelphia and smaller cities than previous Republican candidates.

Likewise, Ms. Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, have focused on driving turnout in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but they have made several visits to areas seen as part of the Trump base, like stops in Jonestown and Wilke-Barre.

A trio of Pennsylvania’s formerly industrial cities — Allentown, Hazelton, and Reading — have become Hispanic boomtowns over the past decade, and growing support for the GOP there is key to the Trump campaign’s pick-off strategy.

Still, Mr. Trump faces headwinds. His unpopularity in cities and with women remains. While polls are deadlocked in a statistical tie, most show Mrs. Harris ahead by one to three points.

With less money than the Harris campaign, Mr. Trump’s turnout efforts are delegated to volunteers from outside organizations. These groups are charged with trying to get low-propensity independent voters to the polls, and the level of their success could determine the election.

“Among people who vote all the time, Harris leads, but with ones that don’t always vote, Trump leads,” says Berwood Yost, director of Franklin and Marshall College’s Center for Opinion Research. He went on to describe the Trump campaign’s reliance on outsiders to drive turnout “risky.”

There is also a potentially critical sliver of white-collar Republican-leaning voters who remain skeptical of Mr. Trump.

“Trump’s base is all in, but if you look at the older, more traditional Republican faction, it looks like a lot of them are still persuadable,” says Mr. Yost. “Progressives and moderate Democrats are basically solidified [around Harris].”

Black voters, and especially black women, heavily favor the vice president. Both groups historically have volatile turnout levels, but if data on their enthusiasm is correct, it would play heavily to the Harris camp’s advantage.

“We saw a lot more energy among blacks than there was with Biden,” says Professor Leckrone. “There’s excitement about her being the first biracial woman president, that should mobilize some people who might have stayed home otherwise. On both sides, most people’s minds are made up, it’s mostly just a turnout game at this point.”

Don’t Kvetch, Vote

With wide agreement that maximizing turnout will be determinant, Unite the Vote PA is attempting to capitalize on the outsized mark one well-mobilized community can make.

Visibly placed in a ground-floor location on a main thoroughfare of the upscale Merion Station neighborhood and run by the Orthodox Union’s Teach Coalition’s Pennsylvania division, this pop-up get-out the vote campaign bears all the signs of its concerted effort to mobilize its community’s collective voice.

One wall of its office is bedecked with maps of counties with an organizable Jewish presence. Another set on the opposite wall break down suburbs with a larger Orthodox presence like Merion and Bala Cynwyd, ward by ward.

This fort is manned by Teach Coalition PA’s executive director, Arrielle Frankson-Morris, and regional director Hadassa Levenson, whose bubbly enthusiasm give the long, narrow room a great deal of positive energy. With one table laden with drinks and snacks and another with get-out the vote paraphernalia, like T-shirts emblazoned with “Don’t Kvetch, Vote,” and a steady stream of volunteers coming and going, it gives off the impression of a cheery war room.

Teach PA has been engaged for years in efforts to advocate for more state aid for non-public schools. As part of that, it took an active role in encouraging those in its network to vote en masse and show politicians the importance of being attuned to their interests. Now, Mrs. Frankson-Morris says that the domestic fallout of the war in Gaza had pushed many more people to roll up their sleeves.

“It’s been a rough time and people want to do something,” she says. “I think the lens of anti-Semitism has heightened everything for a lot of people, and the idea of helping our community to have a voice is resonating a lot.”

At the core of Unite the Vote’s efforts is making sure that as many yeshivah- and day-school-connected citizens as possible vote. It directs a team of volunteer captains, each assigned a certain shul or institution, charged to make sure members are registered and motivated to vote. It also helps facilitate early voting and absentee ballots, including for students learning away from home.

All involved said that while the importance of Pennsylvania to the electoral map is a motivator, obstacles remain.

“A lot of people don’t originate from Pennsylvania and are used to saying ‘my vote doesn’t count anyway,’ ” says Yitzchak Levi, captain for the Philadelphia Community Kollel. “Part of our job is to make them realize how in a presidential election, Pennsylvania is very different from New York.”

Frum Philly

About a half-hour drive away, but in a markedly different frame of existence, is Philadelphia’s Northeast neighborhood. Historically home to a robust Jewish community and still maintaining an active one, its garden apartments and small, single-family homes give it the gritty appeal of middle-class pockets of New York’s outer boroughs. And if one comes in search of grit, David Kushner’s humble Northeast Philadelphia home is an excellent place to find it.

His windows bearing American and Israeli flags are but a small sign of his enthusiasm for political engagement. The plethora of bumper stickers from Jewish organizations that decorate the exterior of his garage bespeak Mr. Kushner’s involvement in a number of communal projects, most prominently Amudim, for whom he is director of government relations and special projects.

Part and parcel of the eclectic mix that is David Kushner, a seventh-generation Philadelphian with knipted peyos and a comfortable heimish Yiddish, is his deep knowledge of the state’s politics and Jewish orientation towards it.

“There is no question the vast majority of the Orthodox vote will go for Trump — some think it’s 90% to 95%, but I tend to agree with those who think it’s closer to 75% to 80%,” he says. “I think especially among some of the Modern Orthodox, particularly with women, there are people who can’t stomach Trump. They may vote for Harris or stay home.”

Mr. Kushner’s dining room office also gives the impression of a war room, filled with the smell of cigarette smoke, with three packs on the side to keep the scent going. The scene is rounded out by a set of photographs on the walls featuring Mr. Kushner together with the Bobover Rebbe, the Novominsker Rebbe, and ybdlch”t Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky.

In a friendly but authoritative manner, Mr. Kushner regretfully explains that despite Pennsylvania’s central role in presidential elections, many have a low interest in turning out.

Doing his part to combat that, at the request of Agudath Israel of America and the Philadelphia Yeshivah’s roshei yeshivah, Mr. Kushner was dispatched to the city’s famed beis medrash to register 125 of its eligible bochurim to vote.

“We might have 3,000 to 4,000 Orthodox families and a similar number of bochurim, but we’d never get recognized because the geography spreads us out,” he says.

While Philadelphia boasts several well-established Orthodox institutions, its main communities are divided between the city’s Northeast and suburbs of the Merion–Bala Cynwyd area, together with a few other pockets as far out as Bensalem. Communities in cities around the state like Pittsburgh and Scranton are modest in size.

While getting a read on the political leanings of a group usually requires polling, the relatively small and close-knit Orthodox Philadelphians seem easier to gauge, and Unite the Vote’s captains are uniquely positioned to report on the community. Of the four interviewed, each confirms a different piece of Mr. Kushner’s assumptions.

Yedidya Kaganoff, an alumnus of Philadelphia’s kollel who is working with the Kol Torah shul, says support there is “100% for Trump,” citing resistance to progressive social agendas and taxes as key factors.

Yitzchak Levi says that among the members of the kollel, where he is captain, he is unaware of anyone planning to back any candidate besides Mr. Trump.

Speaking of his own Trump support, Mr. Levi cites Israel policy as his top factor.

“[Harris] said clearly that the only way for Israel to exist is as a two-state solution. If you stand for Israel, I don’t know how you could vote in that direction,” he says.

Dovid Daniel is serving as captain of the Modern Orthodox–oriented Merion Shtiebel and is also in touch with the membership of several other area shuls as well as with staff and parents of the Caskey Torah Academy, where he serves as president. He confirms prognostications that while most of Philadelphia’s Modern Orthodox voters back Mr. Trump, dissent is sizable.

“The people in my ecosystem are pretty centrist,” he says. “About 70% are backing Trump, but there’s a good 10% to 15% who were never-Trumpers who will either not show up or write in a candidate, and another 15% or so who will vote for Harris.”

Those charged with the Trump camp’s Jewish engagement are aware of the strong backing the former president enjoys in Orthodox circles but are concerned with how much of that support will materialize at the polls.

“It’s a question of getting the Orthodox to vote, so turnout is the main issue there,” says Trump surrogate Jeff Bartos.

While Orthodox backing for Mr. Trump seems solid, it also seems tempered from former races. The community still views Mr. Trump as the candidate more aligned with its interests, but in pace with many other GOP voters, its adulation is more tempered.

“In 2020, there were a lot of Trump lawn signs around here, but now, I haven’t seen a single one,” says another of Unite the Vote’s team captains, Heshy Bucholtz, who serves as a judge of elections for his ward. “There’s less enthusiasm.”

Steady as She Goes

Even as Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump fight for Pennsylvania with the intensity of a dark alley brawl, it is not obvious at first sight.

The occasional lawn signs for either candidate pop up with roughly the same regularity as in any place around election time. A preponderance of Harris-Walz posters (many with rainbow backgrounds) outside the gated mansions in one wealthy suburb left no clue as to whether their presence was the work of a single enthusiast or an indication of the root of the vice president’s significant funding advantage.

Pennsylvanians confirm that media are inundated with political commercials, but no billboards for either candidate were present along highways around Philadelphia, save a few digital Trump-Vance ads at evening rush hour along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. A long circuitous trip through a set of mostly black low-income neighborhoods found the area without a single trace of the presidential race.

Putting aside speculation as to why that is, presumably Pennsylvanians appreciate that the heightened national attention has not turned their public square into a color war match.

David Kushner, Northeast Philadelphia’s political guru, says that while he strongly encourages participation in elections, a healthy perspective is vital.

“I’ve seen families and chavrusas get into serious fights over ‘Trump yeah’ and ‘Trump no,’ which is ridiculous,” he says. “There’s an old concept that bears reviving. Do your homework, go out and vote, then farloz zich ofn Eibeshter, and say whoever wins, lev malachim b’yad Hashem.” —

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1033)