Rabbis for Ceasefire urge followers to vote for liberal candidates despite ‘impossible position’

Rabbis for Ceasefire released a statement Monday meant in part to urge progressive Jews who were considering boycotting the presidential election to participate. Photo by Getty Images

By Arno Rosenfeld October 28, 2024

Though it is prohibited from endorsing a candidate, Rabbis for Ceasefire, a group formed last fall to oppose Israel’s war in Gaza, encouraged its followers to vote for candidates who support liberal policies in the upcoming election, despite concerns over Democratic support for Israel.

Supporters of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris are hoping that this sort of thinking among those disappointed in her approach to the Israel-Hamas war will translate into votes for her on Election Day.

“We must each make a choice at the ballot box that we feel will best position our multifaith, multiracial, queer-affirming communities to care for one another and the earth,” the nonprofit Rabbis for Ceasefire said in a statement. “And to retain the right to protest and organize to realize the world we need.”

The statement comes more than a month after the Uncommitted National Movement, which encouraged voters to oppose President Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries said it would not endorse Harris but called for “Uncommitted voters to register anti-Trump votes,” referring to former President Donald Trump, a Republican.

Some translated that as permission to vote for Harris, since other choices — voting for Trump or a third party candidate — could benefit the former president.

(Uncommitted was organized as a political action committee, which can campaign for and against candidates.)

Rabbi Alissa Wise, who founded Rabbis for Ceasefire last October, said the goal of the statement was in part to reach progressive Jews considering boycotting the election over anger at Vice President Kamala Harris’s support for Israel.

“We wanted to give people a little bit of room and space to be gentle with themselves,” Wise said in an interview. “There’s no way to come out of this unscathed, spiritually or ethically.”

More than 360 rabbis and rabbinical students have signed onto Rabbis for Ceasefire’s call for an end to Israeli military operations in Gaza and for Hamas to release Israeli hostages seized during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in southern Israel.

Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari, who leads Kol Tzedek, a Reconstructionist congregation in Philadelphia, has helped organize Rabbis for Ceasefire and said that many of his congregants are struggling with whether to vote this year.

“They are gutted and enraged by the U.S.’s continued funding of this genocide in Gaza,” Fornari said. “They face their own internal moral conundrum.”

But Fornari said in an email to the congregation Sunday that he had voted for Harris and other Democrats, and urged them to participate in the election. He added that some members are considering “swapping” votes with liberal voters in non-swing states who will not vote for Harris in exchange for their backing the Democrat in Pennsylvania.

The statement from Rabbis for Ceasefire also cautioned against blaming other progressives, especially Arab and Muslim voters, for failing to support Harris. “It does not help our movement for justice and collective liberation to fault one another on the left for the failings of our political system,” it said.

Some Democrats are worried that Harris’s support for Israel, including in the ongoing Gaza war, may cost her enough votes among Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan to flip the state — and possibly the election — to Trump. During Michigan’s February primary, more than 100,000 people voted “uncommitted” at the urging of pro-Palestinian activists.

“The left, and I think all political movements, tend to eat each other alive,” Wise said. “We wanted to encourage people to get above the fray and keep our eyes focused on the long haul.”