News Highlights HC Rabbinical Students Serve as Election Day Poll Chaplains

Yesterday, A cohort of Hebrew College rabbinical students traveled to Pennsylvania to serve as interfaith poll chaplains, functioning as a nonpartisan, pro-democracy, spiritual presence. The students received their poll chaplaincy training through a program operated by Sojourners Action in partenrship with  Faiths United to Save Democracy a “nonpartisan, multi-racial, multi-faith, and multi-generation 2022-2024 voter protection campaign. Their work was featured in  the Forward:

“‘If people come to intimidate, we’re there to make sure that doesn’t happen,’ said rabbinical student Rafi Ellenson.

Reached by phone Tuesday morning, Ellenson was traveling from Boston to Philadelphia to be a ‘poll chaplain’ at a voting site in the city — one of 10 students from Hebrew College going to the city, in the swing state of Pennsylvania, to help keep the peace at contentious polling sites.

‘We’re trained in pastoral care to be a calming presence,’ the 30-year-old said. He and his cohort will be on the lookout for ‘voter suppression tactics,’ to ‘prevent any of that from going down,’ he said. ‘Just be a general friendly face.'”