Harris concedes 2024 election, Biden, Trump speak for first time since Trump win

Just days out from the presidential election, Shalva Perlman doesn’t know for sure how she will cast her ballot.

The two issues on her mind: protecting abortion rights and supporting Israel.

The issue that she expects to prioritize in the voting booth: Israel.

“I’m having difficulty voting at all,” Perlman said. “I’ve been a registered Democrat for a while, but I don’t know. It’s difficult to vote Democrat with everything happening in the Middle East right now.”

Perlman is a junior at Stern College for Women at Yeshiva University, the flagship Orthodox educational institution. And as an Orthodox Jew, she is part of a constituency that has moved to the right and toward Trump in recent years, driven in large part by attitudes on Israel.

Each US presidential candidate offers a contrasting economic approach, with “key differences that could have a direct global market impact and sizable implications for many investors worldwide,” according to Edmond de Rothschild Bank’s Global Investment Research team and Edmond de Rothschild (Israel) Ltd. CEO Nir Yeshaya.

An example of these contrasting approaches is the candidates’ takes on corporate taxation, according to the research team. Vice President Kamala Harris proposes raising corporate tax, which would likely impact high-margin, US-focused sectors such as communications, technology, and energy, said the team.

This could impact consumers reliant on US household spending by causing a decrease in spending by more “affluent consumers,” the bank said.

“On the other hand, targeted tax cuts for low- to middle-income households, combined with support for homebuyers and renters, could benefit basic-goods and low-cost consumer sectors,” it added.

Former president Donald Trump’s approach to corporate tax, however, could include extending tax cuts from 2018 and a possible additional 15% cut to the corporate tax rate for US-based manufacturers, the bank said.

Last month, clergy from 15 faith communities in Northern Virginia — Jewish, Evangelical, Mainline Protestant and Muslim — gathered at a local park to plant an elm tree. It was an optimistic gesture (they called it “Growing Hope in Democracy”) inspired by the anxiety all of their congregations were feeling about the upcoming election — not just the outcome, but the violence, polarization and discord that has surrounded the entire campaign.

“If God forbid things go sideways after the election, look around at your neighbors,” Rabbi Michael Holzman, of Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation, recalled saying at the event. “We are going to be the people that hold together our local community.”

A sapling might not strike you as the boldest response to an election that some are calling the most divisive in American history, but Holzman, 50, said that interfaith gatherings like the one in Northern Virginia “create a moral ballast that holds the ship of state upright.”

Holzman is committed to using faith as an antidote to political polarization. At NVHC, a Reform synagogue, he helped create the award-winning Rebuilding Democracy Project to bring Jewish values and texts to bear on creating constructive civic and communal dialogue. A national, nonsectarian version, the American Scripture Project, launched in 2022.

President Trump is the fighter American Jews "desperately need" to stand up to the evil being perpetrated in the world right now, Republican National Committee National Spokeswoman Elizabeth Pipko said to The Jerusalem Post in a statement on Sunday in a final appeal to Jewish voters in the battleground states. 

Pipko said for many American Jews like herself, October 7 and the year that followed will "forever remind us of the threats we face around the world, and in our own country," as to this day, she knows people in major cities across the US who are afraid to leave their homes appearing visibly Jewish. 

"It is not difficult for most to recognize that the leadership of Kamala Harris failed when it came to our protection and that the Democrat party of our parents and grandparents no longer exists," Pipko said. "This election should come down to the safety and protection of our loved ones. Because nothing else can matter when that is at risk."

Pipko said in his first term, Trump "unequivocally stood by Israel, our greatest ally, and always stood strong in the face of evil terrorism and those who wanted to cause harm to the American people."