“...and all the nations of the world will bless themselves by him (Avraham)” (18:18)
How valuable was your vote on November 5th?
In 2020 political spending, including rallies and TV ads, billboards etc. was 14.4 billion dollars. This year OpenSecrets predicts it will have been at least 15.9 billion. 16 billion dollars!
How important is our vote to them? How much do they value your time? What they are asking you to do is to leave work, leave your family, leave whatever you’d rather do - and vote.
Maybe it will take you half an hour – maybe less.
The question is how much do they value your time?
Well. Let’s do the math.
If you divide 15.9 billion dollars between 186.5 million people – that’s the number of Americans who are registered to vote as of September 2024 - you will be giving each one of them 85 dollars and 25 cents.
Not bad for half an hour of your time!
But let’s look at your time another way. Nefesh HaChaim says that the reason Hashem created the world as a sphere was that it would always be day somewhere. Somewhere on the globe, people will be awake, and there will be a Jew burning the midnight oil toiling in Torah. Because, if there would be one split second when no Jew was learning Torah, the world would return to Tohu u’vohu. Without that constant energy of Torah learning and observance, the whole world would return to primordial emptiness.
The Worldometer’s World Population Clock says that right now there are 8.2 billion people in the world. On Erev Rosh Hashana the year before last, the Jewish Agency said the number of Jews worldwide stood at approximately 15.7 million compared to 15.6 million in the year before that. More conservative estimates put it nearer 14 million, but whichever way you look at it, we are little more than 0.2 per cent of the world.
But it doesn’t stop there. According to the Institute for Jewish Policy research in 2022, only one in seven Jews are religious. In other words, there are only 2 million people giving life to the 8.2 billion inhabitants of this planet.
If you do some simple math, every second you learn Torah, or you do a mitzvah, you just gave life to 4000 people. Four Thousand.
And if, G-d forbid, Jews would suddenly take a day off all together, stop doing the mitzvahs, learning, davening, giving, the world – 8.2 billion people - would, quite literally, cease to exist.
It's quite impressive how powerful our actions are! Not just in the next world, not for just our children, but for the world to exist today, for all of Mankind.
Those who keep the Torah — less than a tiny 0.2 percent of the world – are supporting 8.2 billion people.
Politicians may value your vote at 85 dollars and change, but a religious Jew breathes life – the most valuable gift in the world - into 4000 people every single second.
