From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
In Williamsburg Hasidic bastion, a religious imperative to vote for Trump
NEW YORK — At the Independence Towers Senior Center in Brooklyn Heights there’s no line and a new voter trickles in every minute or so.
The polling site is located in the heart of Williamsburg’s Satmar Hasidic community, though every tenth voter appears to be a young hipster or Latinx immigrant.
Rabbi Izzy Rosenberg, who describes himself as a “macher,” or fixer, in the Satmar community, says it’s a “commandment for all Jews to vote for Donald Trump.”
He then pulls his phone out of his pocket, and scrolls through his extra-large print WhatsApp messages to find one that reads: “Attention: Show this to any Jew who is considering voting for Joe Biden.”
The text that follows is a story of a shouting match Biden had with former prime minister Menachem Begin in 1982 when the former was a young senator.
According to several accounts, Biden slammed his fists on a desk and warned Begin that continued Israeli settlement expansion would jeopardize US support for the Jewish state.
“This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don’t threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the US lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats,” Begin responded, according to the story, which has resurfaced ahead of the election.
“This George Biden is a danger to Israel,” Rosenberg says.
A recent Ami Magazine poll indicated that 80 percent of Orthodox voters support Trump.
The rabbi acknowledges that most in the Satmar community “don’t support the State of Israel from a religious standpoint but they support the Jews who live there because they are Jews.”
As he speaks, an agitated Hasidic man walks out of the polling site, yelling, “It’s ridiculous.”
Asked what had happened, the man says he showed up to the wrong station but is annoyed because the staffer inside told him to put his mask over his nose.
“You can’t breathe with this thing on,” he says, declining to identify himself beyond his first name, Moshe. “When there were all those Black Lives riots, I didn’t see masks.”
One man pulls a mask out of his pocket upon entering the polling station. Others already have masks on.
In the background, a truck can be heard rolling through the neighborhood with a Yiddish message blasting on the loudspeaker, “No matter who it’s for, go out and vote!”
Most voters coming out of the polling station decline to be interviewed, with many holding flip phones to their ears and signaling that they’re in the middle of a conversation.
— Jacob Magid
The Times of Israel Community.