Could Jews Vote in Early America?

In M ay 2016, Moment published an “Ask the Rabbis” forum on the question: “Are we commanded to vote?” All of the rabbis argued that we should vote, but they grounded their answers in a multiplicity of reasons: Jeremiah’s injunction to join in building the community in which you live; an ancient preference for some degree of democracy in government; the principle of hakarat ha-tov, recognizing the good someone has done you; the consciousness that Jews could not vote until quite recently, either because they were Jews or because the societies in which they lived were not democracies. In fact, the latter reason was by far the common one in the 18th, 19th, and even 20th-century. The British colonies in North America were among the historical settings in which many Jews could not vote because they were Jews. Read Full Article »