Jewish voters went with their consciences and not with their fears in selecting Barack Obama as the next President of the United States. Exit polling indicates that about 77% of the Jewish vote went to Obama, which is a wonderful thing.
It’s wonderful, not because we know for certain that Obama will be a better President than John McCain would have been. We do not – though now that he is elected, we all better hope he will be at least as good. It’s wonderful because these numbers indicate that Jewish voters brought their usual voting values with them into the booth and not simply a great deal of baseless fear or racist suspicion.

The 76% is in line with past elections, indicating that Jewish voters did not change political course, despite earlier indications that they would do so in this election. It’s not that I necessarily believe Jewish values and Democratic values are more in line with each other. In fact, I believe that the tradition which I follow is bigger than can be contained within the policies of any one party, and wiser than any single candidate.
But it would have been troubling to see a sudden shift away from a candidate who articulated so many views that have been popular among Jewish voters for decades – especially when he “happened” to be black and “coincidentally” had Hussein as a middle name. Instead, we see that for better or for worse, Jewish voters put away their fears and voted their conscience. However we may feel about the outcome of this election that is a good thing.
I wonder if this might be a turning point for Jews on a whole variety of issues.

Are we ready to be less fear-driven on the future of the Jewish community in America? How about on Israel? Is it possible that we are ready to imagine that we are not a community on the brink of disappearance, but a people in the midst of a remarkable transformation?

Yesterday’s election results indicate that Jewish voters are ultimately willing to base their political decisions more on hope than fear. I wonder if the same could be said about our spiritual/communal decisions as well. I wonder what would happen if we stopped worrying about what will happen if we don’t do certain things – everybody has their list, for some it’s topped by in-marriage, for others by Shabbat observance, for others its Jewish education. I wonder what would happen if instead, if we simply asked what we hoped for as Jews and began doing that.
A people following its hopes. That approach got a black man with a “funny name” elected President of the United States, and the numbers tell us that Jews thought it was a pretty good approach. Perhaps we should apply that approach to our own Jewish community.