THE DAY AFTER: Did the New York Frum Community Make a Mistake By Backing Lee Zeldin?

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Did the New York frum community make a mistake with their full-throated endorsement of an underdog, Rep. Lee Zeldin, in the Democrat-strong Empire State?

That’s something that many Matzav readers are wondering after Kathy Hochul won the gubernatorial election last night.

Indeed, endorsing an underdog challenger is not without political risk, but yeshiva advocates who spoke with Hamodia early Wednesday morning said they believed they did the right thing regardless of outcome.

“We have no regrets,” said Rav Yisroel Reisman, rosh yeshiva of Torah Vodaath and rav of Agudah of Madison, one of the rabbanim who made a rare endorsement for Zeldin, viewing the yeshiva regulations as an existential threat to the community. “A person has to do what is right, not what is expedient. Revach v’hatzalah y’amod la’yehudim mimakom acheir.” (Relief and rescue will arise for the Jews from elsewhere [Esther 4:14]).”

{Matzav.com}


44 COMMENTS

  1. Because of the endorsements for Zeldin there was
    A) more turnout (maybe historic)
    B) down ballot red for some districts flipping dem seats to gop.

    Your vote was NOT wasted. It sent a message that we will vote if we disagree.

    This time we didn’t win. Kathy isn’t feeling super comfortable with a barely 5pt lead. That is a LOT closer than dems were comfortable with.

    Next time…

  2. He was always expected to lose. There are still strategic advantages to bring viewed as a swing demographic that has hills we are willing to go scorched earth on. Consistent demographics don’t get pandered to the way swing voters do. Let them know the issues that we really care about, and that’s we’re not easy game that can be unconditionally relied upon no matter what they do. No regrets. There are times that it’s worth it to blow in the wind.

  3. They didn’t make a mistake and she did not win. It’s the rigged machines that made her the winner but in actuality she didn’t win. Election machines were “broken” in Republican areas; polling stations were shut down due to the pipe bomb threat; 20% of tabulators were out of order; many were lied to and told they already voted via Absentee Ballots; many machines were down just because; they were told to use Sharpie pens so that they’d be able to alter it because they become unreadable – THIS HAPPENED ALL OVER THE COUNTRY and this is how she “won” and how all Democrats “won”.

      • CHAS V’SHALOM!!!!!!!!! WE ARE ABSOLUTELY NOT GOING TO GET OVER IT!! WE ARE ABSOLUTELY NOT GOING TO GET OVER THE EXCEEDINGLY HORRIFIC TYRANNY OF THIS EXCESSIVELY HYPER-EVIL REGIME, YIMACH SHEMO V’ZICHRO, THAT IS FORCING THE MOST EXTREME OF EXTREME OF EXTREME TOEIVA UPON US AND UPON OR CHILDREN AND IS TURNING OUR PRIZED ICONIC CITIES INTO RUINED SEWAGE HEAPS AND IS OBLITERATING OUR SOURCES OF SUSTENANCE AND ENERGY AND IS ATTEMPTING TO PROVOKE FULL OUTRIGHT THERMONUCLEAR WAR WITH RUSSIA TO ANNIHILATE THE VAST BULK OF HUMANITY, RACHMANA LITZLAN!!!!!!!!!

        • Why are you screaming? (By capitalizing your letters, known as screaming) a calm relaxed voice is much easier to listen to and understand.
          Good Shabbos.

      • Are you serious? Do you live in a cave or what? Haven’t you heard and read about all the fraud going on? Here’s an example which someone posted: What do you say to this:

        Someone showed a little video with the following: (Not sure if the video may be added here.)

        Interesting information coming in from NY. There’s was nothing coming in from NY all evening and all of a sudden it was 99% posted in the governor’s race for NY.
        When scrolling over the red [where Zeldin officially won], it shows Zeldin at 63.1% and Hochul at 36.90% with 95% votes counted. EXACTLY, IDENTICALLY 34,311 people voting for Zeldin and EXACTLY 20,064 people voting for Hochul in EACH OF THE RED counties.

        While in the Blue districts [where Hochul officially won], they ALSO have EXACT number of votes duplicated over and over again for each of the candidates. But they have 3 different amounts because there were ‘obviously’ more Blue districts.
        In the Blue districts they had:
        EXACTLY 113,228 people voted 75.30% and Zeldin EXACTLY 37,143 people voted 24.70% in SOME OF THE BLUE counties.
        OR 73,693 votes 69.64% and Zeldin 32,134 votes 30.36% in SOME OF THE BLUE counties.
        OR 145,415 votes 85.40% and Zeldin 24,857 votes 14.60%. in SOME OF THE BLUE counties.

  4. Rav Yisroel Reisman Shlita does not need my haskamos on what he says but I was anyway thinking along the lines beforehand based on this weeks parsha and the letter Rav Hutner sent Rav Moshe Sherer in 1971 when the supreme court ruled against federal funding for religious schools after all the years of money and effort Agudah poured into that initiative . Rav Hutner starts off with Rav Yisroel Salanter’s three rules of askonus one of which is never to be disappointed when the efforts fail. And Rav Hutner adds we still speak about the zchus of the akeida even thought Avrohom never actually did it because what counts is out efforts to do things. Not the outcome. We did the right thing by turning en masse for the sake of Torah with out voting. Hashem will decide the rest.

    On a political level I do not believe there was any loss in opposing Hochul . She anyway made it clear that she wasn’t sympathetic to us and our causes. What would change had we supported her?

  5. What’s to regret? You regret voting against a woman who endorses mutilating children, late term abortions, and same gender marriage? How about teaching transgenderism to grade school children? That is inline with the torah values that these yeshivas propagate??? How much money is this worth?? Shame on the frum community for questioning themselves! FEH!!!

  6. We should pay attention to what the great צדיק Rav Avigdor Miller had to say on the subject. There was no mistake. It was an obligation.

    “ We should vote for the one who appears to us to be the most conservative. Now, I can’t tell you who that is. But there’s no question that the conservatives of today are extremely more liberal than the liberals of thirty years ago. We have already advanced so far beyond the borders of liberalism, that today we can afford to retreat many miles behind these boundries and still remain in the forefront of liberalism. And therefore, today there’s no such thing as too much conservatism. You have to vote for conservative candidates on every level – on national, state and city levels.”

  7. He’s 1000% correct. It’s not our job to be politically correct and kiss up to our politicians who threaten or chinuch for our children.

  8. Our (Frum) vote is worthless. It didn’t make even the slightest dent. Mrs. Hochul won over 75% of the vote IN BROOKLYN ALONE!!!!! Where was “our” influence????? The deck is stacked against us. We are a minority of a minority. We tend to forget that sometimes. Yes, we have to at least vote (or so we’re told), but I would suggest, from now on, to only use the write-in option. Not even vote for either one of the candidates.

    • And writing in a name will get us exactly what?

      As others here have said we need to vote as a block for the party whose values are the closest to us.

      The Hassidic Community turned out en mass for Bill De Blasio whose values were very far from ours. When it counted he threw that community under the bus.

      We should act on our principles and leave the rest up to Hashem.

    • Actually your vote is very necessary because in order for zeldon to become the governor he needed at least 30% of New York City.

    • The big talkers, complainers and schvitzers said that they voted but they did not. This information is public. Look up the voting records.

  9. The Frum Community absolutely did the right thing. Would rather be a losing winner than a winning loser. Although we lost, our values remained intact. Immorality and corruption won this time, but they will soon destroy themselves.

  10. No, the mistake was that not enough people voted for Zeldin. 5.4% is not such a big margin. Pretty good for a first-timer in a D stronghold.
    But –Why would anyone even ask this question? Do you expect that we will be punished by the winning candidate for daring to express our opinion? That’s a very frightening thought and one typical of a cowed populace in a dictatorship, not free citizens of a democracy (or constitutional republic). So we didn’t vote for her–normal people would think that perhaps there’s a message in that, and if they want our support they should find out why we didn’t vote for them and what they could do to get that support. But D thinking has infected us all, so of course we think, OOh, we made a mistake, they’re going to get us for it!
    Sick and sad.

  11. I also think Zeldin really won.

    There were zero Hochul signs anywhere near where I live. She had no support. It doesn’t make any sense.

    I personally more than one frum person in NYC whose ballot was already partially filled in when they got it. They were given a hard time when they asked for a new ballot, which was also partially filled in. This happened over and over.

    I only know one person in NYC who tried to vote, but they were turned away. They were shown that they already voted. This person called the police, but nothing happened. If in my small circle I see fraud, I am sure there was much more.

    We do not live in a democratic country anymore.

  12. It is important the frun community are not pushovers to be taken for granted and we will fight politicians which go against our interests

  13. Of course not! – They made a mistake by not all voting. Every Rosh Yeshiva and Rosh Kollel and school should have sent EVEYONE to vote!

  14. The yated doesn’t endorse candidates who lose? Why is that any different? It’s insanity to think that they did the wrong thing..

    לב מלאכים ושרים ביד ה
    applies serious will come in no matter who it is that you vote for and who it is that wins.

    You guys probably think you’re bigger than that.

    • לב מלאכים ושרים ביד ה doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t vote.
      Otherwise, Rav Miller wouldn’t have said to vote conservative.

      Obviously, you want the best candidate there, regardless.

  15. Frum didn’t vote as a block yesterday. In fact frum will no longer vote as blocks. They’re starting to think for themselves and that’s a good thing.

  16. Endorsements is about currying favors from politicians. It’s not about values. Our rabbeim teach us our values from the Torah. We don’t learn values from who we vote for. In my opinion this election was the greatest tragedy to the frum community. We proved that our vote is worthless. If I was hochul I wouldn’t even look at another Jewish askan ever again. It’s permanent damage in Albany. All this talk of no regrets is just personal soothing. If you don’t have regrets your not thinking straight. This was high stakes gambling it was a huge risk to back a guy to this level that never really had a lead. and the risk blew up in our face. No other way to look at this

    • Anon21 – I hear your argument but I tend to disagree. The fact is that this race was uncomfortably close for Hochul who is in a state where 80 percent of voters are Democrats. It would only take 6 percent of the democrat population to wake up to reality and realize that their quality of life is suffering due the corrupt policies of their supreme leaders. I think this election actually gave the Jewish population a stronger voice in the political arena.

      • Actually, my math was wrong. It would only take 3 percent of the democrat population to flip republican (in fact it would take less than that if you want to get technical). Also, keep in mind, Zeldin did not have widespread name recognition going into this election. If he were to run again in 4 years, I think he would potentially garner many more votes.

    • This was not high stakes gambling. It was gambbling at all. It was the correct histadlus

      There were few politicians that (some) in the frum community sucked up to more than De Blasio. And he would not have won without their support . Look at how he threw them under the bus. Ditto for Cuomo. But De De Blasio had no problems going back to certain frum “askonim” when he was thought he may need them. Neither did certain other openly hostile to the fum world. Because they know how easy it is to get though “askonim” support by offering them money to repeat your type of argument to the some in the frum world.

    • If anything it proved that we shouldn’t be endorsing candidates who demonstrate values antithetical to Torah. If anything it showed that we want people in office who act for the general benefit of the people, not for narrow special interests to the detriment of other (larger and more) segments of the population. If anything it showed that our votes DO matter. If those who came out late endorsing Hochul saw that so many Yidden were backing Zeldin, they should have joined and backed him too.
      Why do you say this “blew up in our face”? We’re not allowed to show how we really feel? We’re not allowed to show that we don’t approve of the current state of the state? Are you afraid Hochul going to retaliate against us because many of us voted for Zeldin? Well she is: by going ahead with her stated agenda. She’ll do what she said she would do: push vax mandates, push secular/toeivah school curricula, push measures that increase crime.
      Thanks a lot, Friends of Hochul!

  17. NO MISTAKE AT ALL. A rare display of virtue. She has been warned. So have the naive nit-wits who try to ride either tail-end of “our” Halakhic spectrum.

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