Continental Divide

With just a few minutes to go before we are to take the stage Stan Kritzer, the elder statesman of the Temple Ner Tamid brotherhood, gathers

us speakers into a small side room off the main sanctuary for a last minute talking to.

“Now look,” Kritzer says, “we heard what happened at Sinai and we don’t want that happening here.”

At Sinai Temple in Westwood the week before, Republicans audience members shouted down Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) as he praised John Kerry’s record on Israel and defense. It was great theater, one participant told me, but lousy debate.

Stan wanted a civil, informative evening. Attorney David Nahai was to speak for Kerry. Republican Jewish Coalition of Southern California (RJC) Executive Director Larry Greenfield for President Bush, and I was moderating.

“If people are warned and they still won’t listen,” Kritzer said, “they can deal with me.”

I looked Kritzer over: a pleasant, gray-haired man in his 70s, but in his prime I’m sure he kicked butt.

It seems that over the past few weeks, that’s what things have come to. This election season, our political divisions have gone from normal to nasty. The bright side to this is that activism and involvement are up. For Hollywood Democrats, the scut work of electioneering has become glamorous. A television producer told me he’s never seen so many friends lend their hands to everything from voter registration efforts in local malls to precinct walking in south Florida.

I’ve been moderating debates and forums, a lot of them over the past weeks. Just when you’d think there’s not one Jew left who couldn’t recite the Kerry or Bush talking points, the seats fill and the sparks fly.

On Oct. 11 some 500 young professionals jammed into Sinai Temple for a debate between talk show host Dennis Prager and Forward editor J.J. Goldberg. The debate, sponsored by The Forward, The Jewish Journal and Sinai’s ATID program, followed a pattern that stuck. I polled the audience and found it was 50/50 Bush-Kerry, with a few undecideds. At the end of 90 minutes of passionate debate, I asked if anybody had changed his or her mind. Nope.

The other fact that became clear was that Israel, Iraq and terror are the gut issues for the people who show up for such events. This is an existential vote, and the speakers could not have framed their sense of the choice more starkly. Our guy will save us, their guy will destroy us.

Same debate, different people, Oct. 17 at the University of Judaism. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Van Nuys) vs. the RJC’s Greenfield. Greenfield has been as ubiquitous as CNN tracking polls lately. The crowd of 100 is again 50/50 — despite surveys that show Bush taking no more than 24 percent of the Jewish vote. But the Republicans came out in force to cheer, and Greenfield doesn’t disappoint.

Berman is, without question, one of Israel’s most important supporters in Congress, and he tells the audience he wouldn’t support Kerry if he thought for a moment doing so would compromise Israel’s security. I think I hear some low boos, although I’m not sure exactly what for.

Actually, I know what for. In a political season everything is politicized. The Journal runs ads, paid ads, earning us good clean cash, from the RJC — and our answering machines fill with nasty accusations of favoritism, as if we wouldn’t cash a Democratic check as well (we would).

A man at one debate accuses me of “showing my bias” as if I’d stripped to my boxers, or briefs.

I say, “For Kerry?”

“Yeah, right,” he sneers.

At Ner Tamid another man accuses me of favoritism.

“For Bush?” I ask.

“You wish,” he shoots back.

All week I replay a long, vicious voice message accusing The Journal of selling out to the right because we ran a few more pro-Bush letters than pro-Kerry ones, and because we reported that immigrants are voting Republican — which they are.

The bright spot of the week comes at Temple Beth Am, when I moderate a discussion, “The Jewish Perspective on Stem Cell Research.” The Orthodox, Reform and Conservative rabbis all agree that such research is vital. That’s right: three Jews, one opinion. For a moment, I wonder if the messiah will waltz in.

But that, of course, is the exception. As a moderator I struggle to get speakers to move beyond the standard campaign rhetoric, which only comforts the convinced. It’s clear this election is about security — that’s true for Jews as it is for most Americans — and there’s nothing quite so secure and warm as a mind closed to doubt.

The media doesn’t help, and the Internet has become one big I-told-you-so, where messages and articles that only reaffirm our beliefs zing about like electrons from one true believer to another.

So it’s not surprising that when we finally come face to face with those who disagree with us, we’re offended when we should be curious, we shout instead of listen, we lecture instead of ask.

In the end, Kritzer’s worse fears came to naught. The 300 or so people who attended the Ner Tamid debate were spirited and involved, but civilized.

I didn’t ask how many people had changed their votes or their minds or a single opinion — I’d learned by then that’s not the point of the exercise. The question is, what is the point? Although the Jewish vote in this election isn’t evenly split, it is deeply divided. Come Nov. 3, those divisions can deepen or heal. I know who I’m voting for Nov. 2, and I know what I’m hoping for Nov. 3.