In the fall of 1970, I spent four or five days, together with about twenty other University of Chicago students, canvassing in the ghetto of Indianapolis on behalf of incumbent Democrat senator Vance Hartke. We went house to house, introducing ourselves to the residents and asking them whether they needed any help getting to the polls on election day. On election day, we returned to every residence we had visited to find out whether the inhabitants had voted yet and to ensure that they did so if they had not.
(This was long before the day of ubiquitous mail-in ballots, which allow for even more efficient means of ensuring maximum votes: Have the ostensible voters let you fill out their ballots and deliver them for counting.)
I can't say whether our efforts determined the outcome of that election, though Hartke did win, but there is little doubt that the strategy was a good one: Identify voters who would be almost sure to vote for our candidate and make sure they get to the polls. In the inner city of Indianapolis, circa 1970, there could be little doubt that the Democratic vote would be almost 100 percent.
The so-called "ground game" has long been recognized by political operatives as crucial to winning elections. And it is much more efficient that political advertising, which is hugely expensive, especially in large media markets, and which you never know whether your ad will hit home with viewers or prove to be a dud. The get-out-the-vote efforts of Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA organization in 2024 are credited with having had a major impact on Donald Trump's sweep of all seven swing states, and catapulted Kirk, too briefly, to the front rank of the Republican Party.
Nowhere is the "ground game" more crucial than in low-turnout elections, in which any clearly defined bloc of voters may be sufficient to determine the outcome. Primaries in one-party districts are an example of such low-turnout affairs. The three New York City Democrat congressional primaries in which outspokenly anti-Israel, DSA-supported candidates all prevailed, and a fourth in Denver, where a previously unheard of 29-year-old DSA member defeated a 15-term incumbent first elected to Congress before she was born, are good examples.
INNER-CITY BLACK RESIDENTS are not, however, the only bloc voters. Orthodox Jews are another, especially when elections turn on issues of high relevance to Israel. My friend Binyamin Ehrenkranz, whom I first met over a decade ago when he was working for the Tikvah Fund, has been making the case in a various Jewish periodicals that the communal election budgets have been badly misallocated for some time — too much money spent on advertising, too little on the ground game — and as a consequence, we are losing elections we might have won.
Binyamin lives in Chicago, where the candidate backed by national Jewish groups to the tune of $5 million limped to a distant third behind two anti-Israel candidates — one Jewish and one Palestinian — in a recent Democratic congressional primary. Yet that congressional district is home to the densest concentration of observant Jews in Illinois.
Similarly, the Democratic primary in one of the New York City congressional districts won by a DSA candidate turned on less than 3,000 votes out of 65,000 cast. That is far less than the number of eligible Orthodox Jewish voters in the district, which is home to the main campus of Yeshiva University.
And yet the Jewish community is ideally built for successful get-out-the-vote drives, and has repeatedly shown itself capable of organizing when its interests are at stake. Each shul has up-to-date membership lists. The spirit of volunteerism of the type needed to phone or visit those on the membership lists is instilled at birth. And the authority of rabbinic leaders is felt where they put their weight behind a candidate.
As in the inner city of Indianapolis, where support for Democratic candidates could once be assumed, the support of Orthodox Jews for pro-Israel candidates, where Israel is a major campaign issue, can generally assumed. Every additional voter brought to the polls is a victory.
Finally, local under-the-radar ground operations are far less likely to create the type of backlash seen in Michigan, where AIPAC poured $30 million into the candidacy of Representative Haley Stevens, mostly in the form of expensive ad buys. Her opponent, the virulently anti-Israel Abdul el-Sayed, made attacks on AIPAC and "getting big money out of politics" one of his primary campaign issues. (He won, though by a far slimmer margin that pre-election polls predicted.)
Ehrenkranz, who has created a consulting firm, Glory Partners, to aid the election efforts of faith communities, helped run a ground campaign on behalf of the local Agudath Israel in the above-mentioned Chicago-area primary, based on the built-in assets that the Orthodox community brings to electioneering. As a result, voter turnout in the Orthodox Jewish community roughly doubled that in the Chicago metropolitan area.
Jews like to think of themselves as clever people. But until we take the necessary steps to maximize our electoral clout, the point is far from proven. Just writing large checks is not enough.
The Power of Sincere Teshuvah
Recently, my wife and I entertained a couple slightly older than us for Shabbos lunch. Though we have gotten together for meals several times in the past, this time the wife surprised me by mentioning, apropos of nothing in the preceding conversation, that her father came from a completely nonreligious home in Germany. Perhaps she knew of, or intuited, my love of baal teshuvah stories.
Her revelation was certainly a surprise to me, as I knew our guests to have been highly respected members of the Golders Green community for years. Here is her father's story.
He had always been interested in learning more about being Jewish, but his parents did everything possible to stifle that interest. Not until he was transferred by his employer to another city was he able to learn anything about being Jewish. At 24, he knocked on the door of the rav of Stuttgart, and asked him whether he would teach him the alef-beis.
Eventually, he made his way to England, and in his late thirties he joined the British Army. He was scheduled to participate in the D-Day landing at Normandy, but was left out of the D-day unit at the last moment.
He did not marry until he was 41, and was 12 years older than our guest's mother, who had received a proper Hirschian education in her native Frankfurt. Prior to their engagement, her asked his hoped-for bride, "I want to establish a proper Jewish home in every respect, but I don't know how. Will you help me?"
The sincerity and simplicity of his initial request to the rav of Stuttgart and that later request to his wife-to-be are unmistakable. And that sincerity was reflected in everything he did. He took the words of Pirkei Avos literally — "Run like a hind to do the will of your Father in Heaven" — and would run to shul until he no longer could.
Most remarkably, he retained the respect and affection of his entire large family, despite his having chosen a path so different from that of everyone else. His mother lived in her own private quarters in his home in her later years, even though she never fully reconciled to her son's choice of an Orthodox life.
And Hashem responded to that sincerity with obvious siyata d'Shmaya. His grandchildren include one of the most sought-after rabbinic speakers in America today and a talmid chacham of note, another who is a rosh chaburah in Lakewood, a prominent communal rav in London, and another grandson-in-law who is also a rav in London and whose wife is a leading educator.
This story of the remarkable impact of one Jew's desire to connect to his heritage, in an era long before there was any baal teshuvah movement or institutions, carries an important message, as we begin the month of Elul, of the power of a sincere search for a relationship with Hashem.
Ripples of Positivity
Upon reaching a certain age in Israel, one must submit both a medical report and that of an eye exam when renewing one's driver's license. So, nearing 75, I contacted a friend who is an optometrist and the owner of an eyeglasses store to set up an appointment. He and I were in the same morning shiur for many years before he moved to Efrat, since which time we have had far less contact.
I had to drive across Jerusalem to reach his store, and did not arrive in the best of moods. But as soon as I walked into the store, I realized that there was something different about this particular establishment.
I felt immediately that I had entered a happy space. Employees called out to one another across the wide room. As it turned out, almost every one of those employees has been working for my friend for at least 20 years and several of them for much longer. They are not just coworkers but good friends.
It did not take me long to figure out the good vibe. It starts at the top. My friend, the owner, is the nicest person I know. He always has a smile on his face, and is eager to accommodate everyone. It is impossible to imagine him speaking harshly to anyone.
After my eye exam, he suggested that I should give multifocals another try, as my prescription needed adjustment in any event. And as he introduced me to the woman who would be fitting me, and making stylistic suggestions, he referred to her simply as "the best." My guess is that each employee is similarly described as the best in whatever his or her personal area of expertise.
What I learned from my two visits to the store — once for the eye exam and a second time to pick up my new glasses — is the power that each of us has to create ripples of positive feelings in our immediate environment, whether by a smile or a compliment, and the opportunities to do so should be seized upon.