Rabbi Steve Gutow and Burt Siegel will present their analysis of the national and state election, and their predictions as to how our Jewish goals and aspirations will be affected. Steve is the Executive Director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs in New York. Burt is the Director of Community Relations of the Jewish Community Relations Council in Philadelphia.

Temple Beth Am is easy to reach by car or public transit. Located right on Old York Road (Route 611) in Abington, it is just north of the Barnes & Noble bookstore and Trader Joe's.

Admission is free. Please reserve at 215-635-2554.

Light refreshments will be served.

In 2006, the divide and conquer strategies have been applied in ways that portend long-term harm to Israel and its special relationship with the United States. For the first time, we witnessed a coordinated effort to make support for Israel a wedge issue. In a series of ads in Jewish newspapers around the country, the Republican Jewish Coalition argued that Jews should align themselves with the Republican Party because “the Democratic Party is changing. And the far left, anti-Israel segment is gaining control.”

Democrats and their support groups naturally responded by citing the traditional support of the Democratic Party for Israel, and argued on the basis of issues such as abortion rights, stem cell research and an increase in the minimum wage that Jews would not have to compromise their values in voting for Democrats.

There you have it. Will support for Israel now join gay marriage, faith based initiatives and the right to bear arms as the newest abyss separating Republicans from Democrats? We hope not.

First, while the overall results were clearly extremely positive for the Democratic party in terms of winning seats and now controlling both the House and Senate, as in the last congressional elections in which the Republican party retained control, many races were decided by very narrow margins. It would be risky, therefore to see this election as an overwhelming mandate for the Democrats to change the course of the nation in profound ways. If anything, it was an indication that America remains basically one of the least ideological of nations, and when we seem to be veering too far toward the political or social policy edges, centrists will be elected. It may well have been an arrogant lack of understanding of this political fact of life that brought a number of the more ideologically driven Republicans to resounding defeats.

The other factors in the Democratic victory were, of course, the various scandals in which Republican politicians were caught and the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq. Now, however, the Democrats will need to demonstrate that since the US has been “riding the tiger” of this war for several years, they are the party with plan to get off without the tiger taking an even bigger bite out of us. While polls have indicated from the start that most Americans Jews did not support the war, any disastrous development in that part of the world can have serious implications for Israel and US engagement.

The election of 2006 being (mostly) behind us, we now need to work for changes to strengthen our democratic process before the next election and that of 2010. The following are some of the issues which deserve our attention.

The unfairness, perception of unfairness, and increasing divisiveness which flow from gerrymandering needs to be addressed. The Democratic gains in the House of Representatives in the 2006 elections have demonstrated that seats can still be competitive, even with the absurd geographic district lines which both parties have imposed on the American electorate, but it appears to have taken an unpopular war to accomplish that result. Moreover, notwithstanding the apparent huge impact of the war on the election, and the great dissatisfaction with the current incumbents in the Congress, only about 7% of the incumbents were defeated in the House. The next redistricting will take place after the 2010 census. Now is the time to work to enact anti-gerrymandering laws throughout the country, so that whoever controls the state legislatures in 2011, we will have fair and rational voting districts.

This also is a perfect time to lobby for restricting “pork.” The public is disgusted by the corruption among members in the Congress. Nothing encourages corruption more than the ability of members of Congress to “earmark” additional spending bills onto otherwise important pieces of legislation. There were 1,439 “earmarks” in 1995; there were 13,997 “earmarks” in 2005. Limiting “earmarks” would not only save the taxpayers huge amounts of money, but would reduce the potential for corruption.

To further reduce corruption, we should use the next two years to press for effective ethics rules and oversight in the Congress. Congresswoman Pelosi has promised that the Democrats will provide a Congress of high integrity. She should be kept to her promise.

Finally, it is critical to our democratic process that the public be confident that each vote is properly counted. Let’s use the next two years to be sure all voting machines have a paper trail, and that obstacles to voting are removed.

Gerrymandering is on our minds. The election this week allayed some of our worst fears, showing that an extremely unpopular ruling party can lose their majority in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives when there is a major revolt at the polls.

But should we really be comforted? Let’s look at some results from Pennsylvania, where we have been gerrymandered pretty effectively.

There were 19 races in which a Republican and a Democrat ran for the Pennsylvania State Senate on Tuesday (in six other races – five in Democratic districts, one in a Republican district - only one of the major parties ran a candidate). In total for all 19 races, Democrats polled 758,118 votes, and Republicans polled 742,363 votes.

With just over half of the vote, you would expect Democrats to take 10 out of the 19 contested seats. With just under half of the vote, you would expect Republicans to take the other 9 seats. But what actually happened? Democrats took just 5 seats, Republicans 14.

Those who cast 50.5% of the votes took home 26% of the prize. Those who cast 49.5% of the votes walked off with 74% of the Senate seats. Despite a big victory for Democrats in most other contests in Tuesday’s election, the Pennsylvania Senate was unchanged: the Republicans went in with 14 of the contested seats and came out with the same 14 seats.

In an interview with the Tampa Tribune, JSPAN President Jeffrey Pasek raised concerns about her most recent comments. "There is room to read her statements as being extremely insensitive. I can't know what she meant. I can only look at them and say they continue to trouble me." Harris' spokesperson clarified that Harris was referring to bringing Jews into the Republican party.

Harris gained notoriety in August when she was quoted in an interview with the Florida Baptist Witness as saying that "if you are not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin." Harris defended her comments by saying she was pro-Israel and supported Holocaust education, neither of which actually addressed her actual comments.

The Florida Department of State Division of Election reports Harris lost on Tuesday to Senator Ben Nelson (D-FL) by over 22 points, garnering only 38.1% of the vote.

• Listen to an audio clip of Harris' comments
• Tampa Tribune: Harris' Prayer Call Stirs Concerns (11/4/2006)