Voting for the World's Existence | Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

November 5th, Election Day, the most important day of the calendar. Many are calling this the most important election of their lifetime. There's so much at stake. Originally, it was Biden versus Trump, now it's Trump versus Harris. The tension is unbelievable. Everyone is glued to their screens, to their radios. Who's it going to be? Trump? Harris? And how much they value our vote. In 2020, political spending, including rallies, TV ads, billboards and the like, was $14.4 billion. This year, OpenSecrets predicts it will be at least 15.9 billion, maybe 16 billion. $16 billion. What they're asking you to do is to leave work, leave your family, leave whatever you'd rather be doing, and vote. Now, maybe it'll take you a half an hour, maybe less. The question is, How much do they value your time? Well, let's do some math. If you divide $15.9 billion between 186.5 million people, that's the number of Americans who are registered to vote as of September 2024, you'll be giving each one of them 85 dollars and 25 cents. Not bad for a half an hour of your time. But let's look at this another way. The Nefesh HaChaim says that the reason Hashem created the world as a sphere was that it will always be that somewhere there’d be day, somewhere on the planet, there would be daylight, somewhere on this globe, people would be awake, and there'll be a frum 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 תוהו ובוהו. The Nefesh HaChaim learns this from the pasuk in Yirmiyahu, Were it not for Hashem’s Bris of day and night, the Torah, the continual learning of the Torah, I would never have created the physical world, said Hashem. Without that constant energy of Torah learning and observance of the Mitzvos, the whole world would return to primordial emptiness. The Worldometers World Population Clock says that right now there are 8.2 billion people in the world. On Erev Rosh HaShanah, the year before last, the Jewish Agency said that the number of Jews worldwide stood at approximately 15.7 million. We are little more than 0.2% of the entire world's population. But it doesn't stop there. According to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in 2022, only 1 in 7 Jews are frum. In other words, there are only 2 million people, us, giving life to the 8.2 billion inhabitants of this planet. If you do some simple math, every second you learn Torah or do a Mitzvah, or resist the temptation to look where you shouldn't, you just gave life to 4,000 people. 4,000. And if, חלילה, frum Yidden would suddenly take a day off altogether, stop doing the Mitzvos, stop learning, davening, giving, doing Chesed, the world, all 8.2 billion people, would quite literally cease to exist. It's really quite impressive how powerful our actions are. Politicians may value your vote at $85 and change, but a frum Jew breathes life, the most valuable gift in the world, into 4,000 people every single second.