Q:
Can interest in politics be considered a Yetzer Hara? I mean to say, is it considered a waste of time?
A:
It’s an important question. An important question.
And the answer is it depends. If it’s a matter of influencing the public welfare, the public moral, it’s a mitzvah rabbah. I’ll give you an example.
If you can vote against a liberal candidate, people who work for gay rights, for instance, people who want the public schools to teach the children what they call sex education and demoralize them, whatever we can do it’s a mitzvah rabah because there are Jews among them.
So many Jews are in the public school. So many Jews are on the streets. And therefore, the public morality is our responsibility. Every Jew should vote for the conservatives against the liberals and if we are united we can do great things. It has been done in the past and we should continue in the future.
You know, when you come to the bracha ולמלשינים אל תהי תקוה, you’re praying against the resha’im and you say it then, ברוך אתה ה’ שובר אויבים – You break our enemies, ומכניע זדים, so I’m thinking when I make that bracha, boruch Hashem they kicked out Teddy Kolleck from Yerushalayim, שובר אויבים ומכניע זדים. He was an enemy, he was a rasha. Or I think of other resha’im in America who had big jobs and they lost their jobs, they were voted out, ברוך אתה ה’ שובר אויבים ומכניע זדים. It’s a bracha. It’s a bracha. You have to thank Hashem when they lose their jobs, these wicked politicians, they are voted out of office.
But it’s not enough to thank Hashem. We ourselves have to try to get them out of the job. We have to vote against them. And therefore, it’s a mitzvah rabah to vote. You have to know whom to vote for and to vote against. By all means.
I want to say something else. There’s a Christian Right today, religious Right, and many people say, “We can’t go with them because they’re anti-Semites.” You should know it’s a very big mistake. Their Christian Right is not interested in harming the Jews at all. They want to restore morality as much as possible and that’s exactly what we want to do. We want to restore morality. It’s easier for the Jew to be a mentch when the goyim are also mentchin. When the goyim are all immoral like today, wicked, many Jews have been dragged along with them. Therefore it’s important for us to join all those who speak up for morality, for decency.
We have to vote for those candidates that are willing to listen to us, not those who listen to the journalists, who listen to the gays or who listen to the liberals.
(November 1995)
