Just two weeks shy of my 8th birthday, in an era when Disney and Nickelodeon usually dominated our living room television, my mom sat me down on Jan. 4, 2007 to watch something I’d never seen before.
It was a bit more special than it sounds because not only was this foreign to me, but to the rest of the world as well. Nancy Pelosi was being sworn in as the first female speaker of the House of Representatives. I admittedly attribute my fondness surrounding the memory to my mom’s name also being Nancy; as a second grader, I found their bridged connection just as cool as the fact that Pelosi was making history.
At this time, I was also in Jewish day school learning how to read and write Hebrew and what it means to be a mensch. It was instilled in me early on that being Jewish isn’t just about rituals; it’s also about the responsibility of standing up for others and tikkun olam, or repairing the world.
My political and Jewish identities never seemed to overlap growing up; instead, they often floated alongside each other like bubbles that occasionally brush against one another but rarely merge. I grew up learning about the importance of social justice through our Hebrew texts, but the tangible connections to the political landscape remained distant.
As I grew older and attended secular school, these roles reversed as I began to study the nitty gritty in history and government classes, focusing on understanding laundry lists of Supreme Court precedents (shout out to the infamous “How a Bill Becomes a Law” song).
I began to notice the stark contrast between the moral imperatives of my early Jewish education and the political discourse around me. My upbringing emphasized values like justice, compassion and the importance of standing up against oppression, and I found these ideals directly clashing with the rise of Trumpism and his accomplices ahead of the election. As a young Jewish woman in 2016, I watched an administration come into power that undeniably spews hateful and dangerous rhetoric about both women and Jews. The Trump administration lit a spark in me. I knew I had to dedicate every part of myself to never allowing them, or people who shared their views, to be in control of our government again.
That spark became a full-blown flame during my college years when I went to Emory, nestled in the very place where historic civil rights leaders emerged and laid the groundwork for the movement. It was on Emory’s campus that I learned in depth about the relentless struggle for voting rights and began to understand that the right to vote is a hard-won battle within a system that is far from fixed.
Immersed in political advocacy courses, I learned about Heather Booth. She was a Jewish political activist who as a teenager visited the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. She was so moved by the people of the Warsaw Ghetto who fought against Nazi oppression that she dove headfirst into advocacy herself. She participated heartily in the civil rights movement: She attended sit-ins, traveled to Mississippi for Freedom Summer and created an abortion counseling service, risking criminal charges in the days before Roe v. Wade.
Discovering Booth’s political advocacy path guided by Jewish values was a major catalyst in setting me on my own journey. Her story inspired me to get involved with the Jewish Democratic Council of America, where the values I had absorbed in Jewish day school merged seamlessly with my fervor for civic engagement. It became clear to me that voting isn’t just a civic duty — it’s a Jewish value, an obligation rooted in our commitment to pursue justice and advocate for one another.
The passion I felt for justice and equality was not merely a political sentiment; it was an extension of my Jewish upbringing. This realization was both liberating and empowering. I was not just a Jewish woman engaging in politics; I was embodying the very essence of my faith through my activism.
Learning from political legacies like civil rights activists and my congressman, John Lewis, strengthened my faith in voting and working to change our country and our system through electoral measures. Working on the Stacey Abrams campaign after college crystallized my belief that voting is a sacred act. Each ballot cast asserts our values and our commitment to creating a just society where all communities can feel safe and thrive.
Right now, the complexities of being Jewish feel sharper than ever. We are witnessing a surge in antisemitic sentiments. Our identities are under scrutiny in ways some of us have never experienced before — or worse, in ways that for some of us, feel all too eerily familiar.
This societal backdrop can leave us as Jews feeling vulnerable since the very essence of who we are is challenged by misinformation and hatred. Yet, within this struggle lies a crucial opportunity for us to assert our place in the world.
The choice we face now is to rise to this moment with resilience. In this famous phrase from the Torah, “Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof,” the word ‘Tzedek’ is intentionally duplicated. The translation is “Justice, Justice you shall pursue,” and the repetition makes it clear that justice is not a suggestion, but a command. Our votes are not merely a means of participating in democracy; they are an obligation to protect our values, all communities facing hatred and scrutiny and the future of our democracy.
So as we are one day away from a pivotal vote in our country, I implore you: Pursue justice. I hope to once again sit with my mom in front of the television for a historic moment after election season — but this time it will be on Jan. 20, 2025, just days after my 26th birthday, to watch Kamala Harris be sworn in as the first female president of the United States.
