My free time these days is spent canvassing – Jon Ossoff for the Georgia 6th! I have tried phone banking before. However, it usually seems pointless. Either the person is already an avid supporter, or s/he doesn’t want to talk to you at all. But face-to-face, if you go to enough houses, there is always something interesting . . . .
Of course, the return for your time is not great. You spend 2-3 hours canvassing, and only at best win over one or two votes. You could ask whether it’s worth it. Why not work for two hours, and just give the campaign some money?
I don’t know how to explain this, but I feel sure that gaining one or two votes each time I go out canvassing is worth the effort. Can’t prove this, but I can rationalize it. Because the impact from thousands of us canvassing, each of us turning out a few more voters, does not just end on election day. It can go on for years.
But in case that is not enough, it is also personal . . . Last Saturday, I went out canvassing and had an encounter that made my day – Heck, it made my month. So I’d like to share it with you.
We canvassers are told to spend only a minute or two at each house. Especially, by the end of the election cycle, we are only looking to get out our vote, not to change the minds of die-hard Republicans. We don’t argue.
But I do spend longer at some houses. For one thing, there are still a few undecided voters. I will try to give them some reasons, in an objective style, to think favorably about Ossoff. For another, you just occasionally run into a unique and quirky situation. If I sense an opening, I will spend a longer time talking. That’s what happened on Saturday.
For those of you who are not so patient, I’m afraid this will be a long-ish story. But I think the details matter.
The campaign provides me with a list of addresses to visit, and the names of (likely) democratic voters in each household. So, as I approach a house, I always look to see (and remember) the names provided.
In this instance, I was given two names, a 52 year old woman (let’s call her Susan),and her 24 year old son.
The husband, if any, was not on my list. Of course, there might not be such a man in the house, but I knew from past canvassing experience, and from the size and wealth of the house, that more likely the husband exists but he is a republican, whereas the wife is democrat (which the husband sometimes doesn’t know). This can make for awkward situations. Should I out the wife in front of her husband? But that is a topic for a different diary.
As I approach the door, I see a woman with a dog on the side of the yard. She lookeda bit younger than 50’s . . . Well-groomed, blonde (or perhaps bleached, I don’t know these things), and modern in dress and style.
Her appearance is relevant, because it gives me cues in “reading” her, as you will soon see.
“Susan xxxx?” I start to introduce myself, then stop in the middle, because she is obviously distracted, trying to catch her dog who is running free in the yard.
The dog was expressing fondness for his human by playing a game of tease-tag, wagging his tail and looking expectantly each time Susan approached, before darting away the moment she reached for his collar.
I certainly know this game. A dog can play it all day.
So, being something of a dog whisperer myself, I got down on my knees. Spoke calmly and invitingly. I’m sure the dog had no idea what I would do, but saw me as a friendly stranger, bent down to his eye level. He decided to come up to “sniff,” and I collared him.
Susan picked up her dog appreciatively. I then told her I was out canvassing for Jon Ossoff, and asked her if she knew about the special election, which of course she did. I asked if she was voting for Jon. She said she “liked” him and hoped he would win.
I mistakenly took that for a “yes”. But the campaign wanted us to push early voting, and this was the last Saturday that anyone could vote early. So I pushed. “Have you voted yet?” “No.” “Did you know you can vote today?”
She told me a lot in one cryptic reply: “I keep a strict Sabbath.”
Of course, I got it. Sabbath (Saturday) = Jew. Strict observance = (likely)Orthodox. So she will not drive her car on the Sabbath (becausedriving is like working, since it burns gasoline to move the car).
“I’m Jewish too,” I responded, making a connection, and then added (to be honest), “but I’m not very religious.” Her body language told me she was fine with that.
I still assumed (incorrectly) that she was planning to vote for Ossoff. So I asked: “What about your son, is he planning to vote for Jon.”
She kind of flinched. Her body visibly tightened: “He’s Baal Te Shuva,” she said. Which she was kind enough to explain to me.
It means he’s gone back to “Judaism”, i.e. not mere orthodox Judaism, but ultra-orthodox Judaism. “And you know how conservative they are .. . ” she said, meaning they are politically ultra-conservative. Then she caught herself “. . . usually.”
Keep in mind that Susan is Orthodox too. But from the way she dressed and from the way she talked about it, it is clear that she is what we call Modern Orthodox. There is no sharp cultural barrier between her and me.
Her cultural barrier is with her son.
As it happens, I can relate. My best friend from childhood married a woman who is a rabbi. They had three children – a boy (oldest) and then two girls. The family was always close to each other growing up. The parents are good progressive people with excellent child-rearing values. Very non-materialistic family. Stressed values. The daughters are ardent feminists and active in the political left. But as a young adult, the son married a very orthodox woman. They had children and he turned harshly away from his mother, I think, because she was not Jewish enough (despite being a rabbi).
So I open up to Susan by telling her about my friend
It struck a chord. She said: “Yes, it’s really difficult. I try not to think aboutpolitics at all.” Which is why she wasn’t planning to vote for Jon. It was easier for her just not to vote.
In the mean time (and I can’t quite remember the order of the conversation here) we digressed. I guess I explained that I grew up in Baltimore, and I had rebelled against the huge divides in the Baltimore Jewish community – not only between the Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Jews, but more importantly between the German Jews and the Russian Jews.
For those who don’t know, the German Jews emigrated to America first. Think 1848 and the uprising in Berlin. The Russian/Polish/Eastern European Jews came later. Think the 1890’s to early 1900’s when there was a wave of vicious pogroms.
The German Jews were already established, assimilated, and often wealthy when the Russian Jews arrived, with their long beards, strange customs, clothes, and languages. Long story short, the German Jews recreated the discrimination they had suffered by discriminating against the Russian Jews. For example, the German Jews built their own country clubs because they were excluded from Christian country clubs. But then they refused to allow Russian Jews to join.
I said this by way of telling Susan that this is the “Judaism” I rebelled against. Until I moved to Carbondale, Illinois, where there were almost no Jews, but we actually did have a small synagogue. Only this was one synagogue for all the Jews, whether they were Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox. “It wasn’t perfect,” I told her. “But we all tolerated each other, and we all got along.”
Susan then told me that she grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, and they had the same divide between Russian and German Jews. Only she saw it from the other side. She was a German Jew. Her people, the German Jews, tried hard to show the Christians how assimilated they were, how secular, “. .. but it didn’t matter; they still hated us.” Then she told me how the Russian Jews seemed to be much happier.
Apparently, that is why she came to embrace her Judaism more strictly. Still, I think she kept her liberal beliefs (She bragged to me about how her maternal grandfather used to vote for Eugene Debs). It was just that most of the people in her Synagogue are much more politically conservative than she is.
And of course, her son had taken it to a whole different level, which caused a serious rift that she tried to overcome.
Susan struck me as a strong and articulate woman. It wasn’t that she felt bullied into submission. It was more like she loved her family (and community) and did not want to betray them by voting for Ossoff, even though she knew they were wrong. She stressed spirituality over politics.
Anyway, that was the theory I went with. So I said to her that politics had become so demonized. Liberals think that conservatives are evil, and conservatives think that liberals are evil. “But really,” I told her, “in most cases, the difference is not one of good vs evil, but merely right vs. wrong. Good people can be very wrong sometimes.”
In so doing, I was tacitly calling up the Jewish notions of “righteousness” and “tsedakah”, that the spiritual thing to do is to vote her own conscience.
“I’m a lawyer,” I told her, “I don’t usually do this kind of canvassing. But I’m canvassing for Ossoff because it is the right thing to do.”
This again struck a chord. “My rabbi,” she said, “was just talking about how we should try to do one righteous thing each week.”
And then she said: “This will be my righteous deed for the week. I’m going to vote for Ossoff.”
She seemed quite sure. And repeated it several times.
So I reminded her where to vote, which she knew.
As we said goodbye, she told me: “I just want you to know that you have done your righteous deed for the week as well. I wouldn’t have voted if it weren’t for you.”
…………………………….
I went out to canvas that Saturday on a whim. I had not signed up in advance. It wasn’t my usual time or day for canvasing. I just happened to have a couple of spare hours, and I just happened to get this particular packet, sending me to this particular house on the Sabbath.
I was just the right person at the right time.
I may not be religious, but this was “bashert”. it was meant to be.