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December 1, 2000/Kislev 10, 5761, Vol. 53, No.10
Letters to the EditorDecember 1, 2000
Speak out on voting rightsEditor:I am concerned by the failure of the national and local Jewish leadership to defend either the voting rights of the Jewish community of Palm Beach County, or electoral democracy as one of the most basic and essential rights of all citizens of this society. From the standpoint of either universal ethical and constitutional concerns or the protection of a Jewish community first from disfranchisement and then from public ridicule, the national Jewish leadership utterly failed to lead. The arrogance of public officials who defamed Jewish voters, pouring contempt on them for "stupidity" in miscasting their votes, went unrebuked by the Anti-Defamation League - though the rabbi of a Palm Beach congregation, Richard Yellin, presented sworn testimony about how many of the butterfly ballots were printed in ways different from the approved version, and about the extreme difficulty of voting accurately. The director of the American Jewish Congress claims never to have heard reports of denial of civil rights or voting rights, though the NAACP held public hearings on the exclusion of African-American and Haitian-American voters from the polls, by state police or election judges who violated clear laws and regulations, as well as voting rights under the Constitution. Indeed, even while the AJCongress heard nothing, a courageous rabbi from California, Steven Jacobs, somehow heard these charges of racist disfranchisement quickly enough to take part in teach-ins and speak-outs across Florida. The claim by some Jewish leaders that their organizational tax exemptions precluded them from raising these questions ring false on at least two grounds: (a) the protection of voting rights is not a matter of the partisan politics forbidden to tax-exempt groups; (b) individual leaders could have come together with leaders of other religious and other communities in an emergency committee for electoral democracy to hold press conferences without compromising their organizations, or for that matter needing to wait for national boards to approve such an effort. Yet they did nothing. Why this shameful withdrawal from the arena of democracy? Rabbi Arthur Waskow Director, The Shalom Center Philadelphia |
