Chabad Rabbi Running for Congress – Against Boteach

While Israel and her supporters throughout the world wonder whether or not us president Barack Obama intends to support Israel against Iran, Rabbi Dovid Smith, currently running as an independent for congress in NJ’s newly redrawn district 9, has no doubt the answer is no.

“The President’s remarks are a set-up to try to force Israel to surrender the Jewish State’s own nuclear weapons, and the pro-Israel community, which is keeping the crisis with Iran on the front burner, is actually not acting in Israel’s best interests,” said Rabbi Smith, a corporate litigation attorney and Lubavitch pulpit rabbi who resides with his wife and seven children in Passaic.

He believes that, as a result of the crisis, the Obama administration will seek “a regional solution to the nuclear issue, and, for Obama, that will mean destroying Israel’s defensive nuclear arsenal.”

“By creating this crisis, Israel’s enemies seek to accomplish something that would otherwise be impossible. They understand that chaos is often used as an excuse to bring change for the worse,” he said.

Strong Voice

According to Rabbi Smith, only strong, independent voices in Congress will act as a deterrent to this sort of aspiration, which leads to his explaining why he is running as an independent candidate (not a candidate from the Independent Party) in the 9th District, a long-time Democrat stronghold.

Ask him why he thinks he can defeat one of the two Democratic incumbents currently vying to represent the new district, to say nothing of the two — possibly three — Republican contenders, and Rabbi Smith, 39, tells the story of a certain discussion around the Sukkah table at his home in Passaic, where he and his family have lived for the past ten years.

He was explaining to his seven children why, in light of the German experience, in which the Nazis, he said, were able to achieve power and accomplish evil because G-d had been abolished from German society, especially the schools, the United States must elect leaders who will insist on freedom. Real freedom, he told his family, means keeping G-d in the forefront and recognizing that the fundamentals of morality and freedom are a “matched set.”

“Runaway debt undermines civilization, just as terrorism and immorality do, and it happens when society’s belief in G-d is chilled,” he said.

Just Talk?

His children listened quietly, and then one of the younger ones spoke up: “Tattie, why don’t you go to Washington and tell them how to do it?”

Rabbi Smith recalled laughing as he tried to explain to the child that, as a busy attorney with offices in Manhattan and New Jersey, and the rabbi at Beis Menachem of Passaic- Clifton, he simply did not have the time to run for office.

“But if you don’t do it, then it’s all just talk,” said one of his older children.

Rabbi Smith remembers the moment of silence before his wife, Elisheva, told him, “If you do run, I’ll support you.”

Jewish Candidates

In short order, papers were filed and petitions were signed, and Rabbi Smith’s name was slated to be on the ballot, not as a candidate from the Independent Party, but, rather, as an individual, a true “independent.”

He will not have to participate in a primary, and in the general election in November, any registered voter can pull the lever for him.

Republicans or Independents who are changing their affiliation to “Democrat” or “unaffiliated” in order to vote in the June Democratic primary, will still be able to vote for Rabbi Smith (or anyone else, for that matter) in the general election.

If Rabbi Shmuley Boteach actually decides to run in the GOP primary in June, and wins, and Steve Rothman is successful in the Democratic primary, all three candidates for Congress from the 9th will be Jewish, and two of them — Rabbis Boteach and Smith — identify with the Lubavitch movement.

More Conservative Voters

Rabbi Smith is convinced that while both Democratic incumbents running in the 9th District support same-sex marriage, the district’s rankand-file voters agree with him and do not. He also thinks most of them would prefer school vouchers so that they can decide for themselves whether to send their children to public, parochial, or secularprivate schools.

“If I could, I would rescue every child from the government-run public schools and encourage parents to use vouchers to send their children to schools which will teach them that G-d exists,” he said.

It is not that Rabbi Smith denies the value of a secular education. Raised in a Modern Orthodox home in Toronto, Canada, he went to the University of California at Berkeley where he doublemajored in philosophy and molecular biology.

At Berkeley, he took all his meals at the Chabad House, and, by the time he graduated, he considered himself an adherent of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

He graduated from the Tulane University School of Law and although he has studied at Lubavitch yeshivoth in Israel, he received rabbinic ordination from Tomchei Timimim Lubavitch in Brooklyn, popularly known as 770.

The Message

He chose to run as an independent rather than enter the GOP primary, because he says that the Republicans seem to define themselves “more by what they are against than what they stand for.”

While he said he is in the race to win, there is no question he is also eager to bring his message to the 9th District’s voters.

He has not given up on the idea of attracting the many voters in the 9th who supported Mr. Obama in 2008—and will probably vote for him again.

“They also want freedom and must be shown that, by accepting government handouts, they are being enslaved and deprived of the very freedom they are seeking,” he said.

Rabbi Smith believes that financial independence is not just for individuals, but for countries as well. He sees American aid to Israel as the conduit used by Washington to pressure the Jewish state to continue surrendering land.

“The aid is not Israel’s lifeline. It is used as a means to force Israel to accept an indefensible position. The Democrats and Republicans, by accepting the so-called two-state solution, which was forced on Israel, have left Israel to negotiate with the terrorist Palestinian Authority regime,” he said.

Connecting

He maintains that while leftists often do not understand his arguments, such as his opposition to same-sex marriage because it is essentially “anti-life,” his policies resonate among the 9th’s workingclass voters.

The author of two books on the Torah and the Seven Noahide Commandments, Rabbi Smith said he has tremendous respect for his solid, hardworking prospective constituents.

“They don’t understand why the Jewish community supports politicians who demand that Israel negotiate with the terrorists or who support policies that are essentially anti-moral and anti- G-d,” he said.

Tea Party Support

He certainly won supporters at a recent Tea Party meeting in the district, where one questioner told him, “The world wants to get rid of Israel because Israel represents the laws of G-d, which the world does not want to adhere to.”

While Rabbi Smith does not doubt that many politicians throughout the world feel just that way, he believes the majority of voters in the 9th District do not.

“They want a representative who will read every page of every bill that comes to his desk—and I will do that. To stay independent, we must all vote independent,” he said.