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| Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky has endorsed Donald Trump |
The more devoutly religious one is, the more enthusiastically they support this man. How could that be? In their minds people who vote for Trump are hypocritical in the extreme. He lies. He cheats. He denigrates people. He threatens retribution against his political enemies.
He has demonstrated many times that he has the morals of an alley cat. He has bragged about his sexual escapades. He has been successfully sued for sexual harassment. He has paid off a porn star to keep quite about a sexual encounter they had. And yet the vast majority of the most fundamental Christians who strongly believe in the bible will be voting for him.
He has dog whistled approval to White Supremacists and antisemites – and has even had a dinner meeting with an open Holocaust denier. And yet the vast majority of Orthodox Jews enthusiastically support him and will be voting for him, too.
The list of his disqualifying flaws goes on. I’ve only scratched the surface.
Given the fact that the former president clearly does not seem to live any of the values religious Christians and Jews hold dear, the fact that they will be voting for him en masse seems to be perplexing in the extreme.
Those ethical and moral failings are why a lot of moderate Republican reject Trump. Arguing that it is exactly their religious values that guide them. (Not to mention the insurrection he incited - claiming the election was stolen from him)
Many of my sincere and thoughtful Orthodox Jewish friends that tend to the more liberal side of the political divide - and are themselves of high moral and ethical character ask, ‘How can any God fearing human being of any faith ignore all of those things and vote for a man like that?!’ Indeed - the Forward just reported that 33 rabbis identifying as Orthodox have endorsed Harris. (More about that later.)
The answer is really not all that complicated. The devoutly religious people that will be voting for Trump are doing so precisely because they are God fearing.
They see a country in moral decline whose values are informed by Hollywood celebrities. A country that has abandoned the bible as their moral guide. Which until a few decades ago was considered the moral and ethical standard by which mankind should live.
Religious people do not for example see abortion rights as a matter of a woman having control over her own body. They instead see a woman willing to kill her unborn child because it isn’t a convenient time for her to be pregnant
They see the ascendancy of the LGBTQ community undermining traditional biblical beliefs about gender and sexual mores.
They see religion generally being relegated to the ash heap of history by a culture that has redefined morality in humanistic rather than Godly terms. This is why so many people say the country is going in the wrong direction. While it isn't only the abandonment of religious values in favor of humanistic ones - to a lot of people (those who might be called the moral majority) that is exactly what they mean. A direction that is antithetical to the God centered values transmitted through the bible.
To them, Making America Great Again means they want to return to the values of the bible this country once held so dear - rejecting the trajectory away from those values they believe we have been spiraling into.
They see Kamala Harris and liberal Democrats who support abortion rights and LGBTQ values as furthering that trajectory when they say they want to go forward. Not backward.
When Trump was president, he reversed that trend by appointing conservative justices to the Supreme Court. They struck down Roe v Wade. That was a win to a religious person because it meant less unborn babies being killed. To a secular humanist it meant denying a woman the right to control her own body.
(To be clear, I think the procedure should be completely legal - unfettered by government restrictions. So that religious people can choose when their religion says abortion is appropriate. Not when the government says it is. But that does not mean that I see it only as a right by a woman to control her own body. Because her body is not the only thing involved when an abortion takes place. There is a little thing called a fetus that will become a full human being upon completing the pregnancy to term. An abortion destroys that fetus.)
Trump has also not been reticent about condemning gender affirming therapy for minors. Which is far more in line with biblical values.
All of which explains why religious people will be voting for Trump in such huge numbers. And why the race is frankly so close. It isn’t about the individual who is running for office. It is about the vison for the country they will pursue. Trump has already shown his preference for policies that pursue religious values despite his very unreligious behavior. Harris is seen as pursuing an almost antireligious agenda by supporting abortion on demand and LGBTQ values like gender affirming therapy for minors.
What about the aforementioned 33 Orthodox rabbis that will be supporting Harris? Upon closer examination one will note that their claim to Orthodoxy is specious. Many of them are women Which for reasons beyond the scope of this post are not accepted as rabbis by mainstream Orthodoxy. Also, that endorsement was spearheaded by Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz - a far left rabbi whose support for female Orthodox rabbis and the LGBTQ agenda makes his identity as an Orthodox rabbi questionable at best.
That being said there are legitimate Orthodox Rabbis that see voting for Trump to be so antithetical to their values, that they cannot bring themselves to vote for him even though his polices might be more favorable to their religious values. Which is understandable. They will be voting for Harris. But they are in the minority.
This is not to be taken as an endorsement of Donald Trump. It is only to explain why religious people favor him so strongly. Even if one leaves out the perception that he is more pro Israel.
This is why the race for the White House is so close. The fact happens to be that there is such a thing as a moral majority in this country. And they are going to vote for the individual whose polices will reflect their values.