Every election season, I find myself facing the same question: How much politics belongs on the pulpit? My instinct has always been clear: very little.

The synagogue is one of the few remaining places where people who disagree profoundly about politics can still sit beside one another, pray from the same siddur, answer the same Kaddish, celebrate one another’s joys, and stand beside one another in moments of loss. I do not want the pulpit to become one more place where people are sorted into political camps.

I also know the peculiar authority a pulpit carries. When a rabbi speaks during services, the words do not sound quite like an opinion offered over coffee. They arrive wrapped in Torah, tradition, office, and sacred space. That imposes a responsibility to know where rabbinic authority ends.

I have never had any desire to tell members of my congregation which candidate deserves their vote. But as another election approaches, I find myself increasingly convinced that there is something I should say: I will never tell you from this pulpit for whom to vote. But I will tell you that you should vote. That distinction has become increasingly important to me.

Voting is often described as a right, and of course it is. Generations struggled to secure that right for people who had been denied it. But Judaism has always been more interested in responsibility than........

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