Frum comic: We can't ask Obama to support Jewish issues if we don't support him ourselves.
By ALLISON HOFFMAN, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENTObama jews 224.88(photo credit: AP)
Plenty of excited Democratic voters showed up to vote on Manhattan's Upper West Side on Tuesday sporting Obama-wear, but Orthodox comedian Yisrael Campbell was the only one in the hourlong line on Broadway with side curls dangling from his "Yes We Can" baseball cap.
"I've waiting eight years for this," he told The Jerusalem Post. "Eight years, and 15 minutes so far."
Campbell said he was prepared to wait as long as it took to pull the lever inside the West End Theater, but that enthusiasm was missing across the East River in Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox Williamsburg, where poll workers chatted idly inside the gym at Intermediate School 71 while waiting for voters to turn up.
Turnout was just shy of 20 percent at lunchtime, a far cry from the anticipated 80% rates in other parts of the borough despite a concerted effort by the haredi organization Agudath Israel to register new voters this year for the first time in 20 years.
"It's dead here," said Anatoly Eysenberg, a Republican poll inspector who was assigned to the school. He blamed the low turnout on the absence of any contested local races that could provide a draw for voters disinclined to bother unless their votes made a difference.
Only one group of excited partisans seemed not to mind: A teacher from a neighboring yeshiva shepherded her blue-smocked charges to the gym to watch democracy in action. The girls, some wearing pink construction-paper tags reading "Vote for McCain!" giggled when a cheerful man who identified himself only as "Dispatcher Moish" asked them in Yiddish whom they planned to vote for.
"McCain!" most shrieked back, though a few clustered together shouting "Obama! Obama!"
"Who is McCain's vice president?" Moish asked.
"Sarah Palin!" was the universal response before they marched into the gym.
"They've learned all about democracy, so they might as well see it," said their young teacher.
Moish, who worked as an emergency ambulance dispatcher for New York City for 25 years before moving to Israel three years ago, told the Post he had come back to vote, but wouldn't say whom he'd supported.
"I always vote - I'm an American, this is my home," he said.
But a tepid get-out-the-vote effort - limited to letters sent home with yeshiva students and SUVs driving around the neighborhood blaring exhortations to vote in Yiddish - may not have been enough to motivate new voters, especially in the absence of any endorsements in the presidential race from hassidic leaders.
"I'm not aware that any grand decrees have come down from on high this year," said Rabbi David Zwiebel, vice president for public affairs at Agudath Israel. But he said turnout was higher than usual in his polling place in the Midwood neighborhood, reflecting varied levels of engagement across different ultra-Orthodox groups.
"It's a combination of this particular election and what's going on in the world - these are serious times and the well-being of our brethren in Israel is something you can't take for granted, and who sits in office is something that counts," he said.
Zwiebel nonetheless acknowledged the challenge in a "blue," or Democratic, state such as New York, where the chance of swinging the vote from Obama to McCain was calculated by the New York Post to be one in 1.9 billion, but said the goal was to demonstrate community cohesion rather than to change the result.
"When I go talk to people in Washington or in the states, I need to bring to the table a community that is politically involved, that mobilizes on election day," he said.
No instances of unusually long lines were called into an Agudath Israel voter hot line by midday, and only one problem - a poll worker in Far Rockaway, Queens, who apparently told a confused voter which candidate to choose - had been reported.
The increase in haredi voter registration - about 10,000 new voters, according to Agudath Israel - will likely pay off in future elections, others said.
"They'll be important in New York the next time there's a gubernatorial or a Senate race, something where it matters," said William Daroff, who runs the Washington office of United Jewish Communities. "The focus from the campaigns this time has been on the modern Orthodox in Cleveland, Florida, and Philadelphia, where it can make a difference."
Back on Broadway, Campbell shrugged when asked why he wasn't voting in his hometown of Philadelphia - and then gave an answer that mirrored Zwiebel's logic.
"It's important that Obama see the Jewish vote - if it comes in strong on the Upper West Side, he'll know the Jews here supported him," said Campbell, who is in New York for the year preparing for an off-Broadway show. "We can't ask him to support Jewish issues if we don't support him ourselves."
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