United Torah Judaism (UTJ) has released a new election video on Thursday, featuring singer Mendy Weiss. Set to surging, uplifting music, thousands of Hasidic Jews can be seen dancing, as Weiss sings: “a war, for the soul, over the right to exist.”
The video uses Jewish expressions such as “Go, gather all the Jews,” and “My sons, my life, my daily bread.” The first expression is taken from the book of Esther which Jews all over the world will read during the holiday of Purim.While the expression is used in this instance as a call to gather all the Jews to vote for UTJ, it is also used more generally as, in the book of Esther, the expression is used in a time of a great crisis.
The expression and “My sons, my life, my daily bread” is lifted from the Ger dynasty. In Hasidic thought these three things, sons, health, and making a living are the material things every Jewish person, and non-Jewish person, wants.
Rabbi Yitzhak Meir Alter told his followers that those who are only worried about these three things can visit other great spiritual leaders, and those who want to progress in their spiritual quest but find that a lack in one of these things hinders their progress – such people can come to him and attain salvation in both fronts, the spiritual and the material.
The singer also called on the whole of Israel, “nach a mal” (one more time) to join as one and vote UTJ.