Yashpreet Singh Matharu from the Sikh Coalition and Dani Levine from Hillel International discuss how faith inspires young people to participate in the electoral process.
In the kickoff episode of Faith in Elections, host Jenan Mohajir speaks with Yashpreet Singh Matharu from the Sikh Coalition and Dani Levine from Hillel International. Both guests share how their faith traditions motivate young people to engage in the democratic process, highlighting the importance of civic involvement within the Sikh and Jewish communities. Yashpreet emphasizes the Sikh principle of seva (selfless service), while Dani reflects on musar (Jewish ethical practice) as guiding frameworks for their work. They discuss the unique challenges their communities face in the 2024 election, strategies to bridge generational gaps, and why protecting a free and fair democratic process is among their highest priorities.
Guest Bios:
Yashpreet Singh Matharu, Community Development Manager at the Sikh Coalition, is dedicated to empowering young Sikh leaders and fostering civic engagement. Drawing from his experience growing up as an interpreter for his Punjabi parents, Yashpreet turned his passion for community advocacy into action by working with Michigan State Representative Ranjeev Puri. Now, he focuses on connecting Sikh student associations and volunteers nationwide, promoting civil rights, interfaith solidarity, and awareness of Sikh culture.
A key part of Yashpreet’s work is leading a fellowship program aimed at mobilizing young Sikhs to engage their communities in the democratic process. By equipping youth with tools to navigate U.S. politics, he hopes to bridge generational gaps and increase civic participation within the Sikh community, ensuring their voices are heard and represented in the political landscape.
Dani Levine is the Senior Director of Social Impact at Hillel International. Dani brings extensive experience in Jewish social justice work to her role at Hillel, including a decade of work at Avodah. Dani holds a BA in Environmental Studies and Comparative American Studies from Oberlin College, and a Masters of Public Health with a focus on Environmental Health and Policy from Tulane University. Outside of work, Dani is actively involved in her local New Orleans and Jewish community, where she lives with her wife and three children. Embracing the local food, music, and culture, Dani finds inspiration away from the desk. Through her career and community engagement, Dani is inspired by Jewish values and practice to work towards co-creating a more just world.
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[00:00:00] Jenan Mohajir: My maternal grandmother, I called her "Nanu," was born and raised in a rural Indian village. She moved to the southern Indian city of Chennai when she married my grandfather, who spent a lifetime in civil service as a fireman. She watched as her country, India, struggled for freedom from colonization and emerged as a democracy in 1947. She voted in every election until she passed away in the midst of the COVID pandemic.
One of my last memories of her, gathered from WhatsApp calls and pictures from my uncle, are of her casting her last vote from her home. A hip injury had rendered her unable to walk to the polling booth steps away from her house, but she had demanded her right to vote, even though she couldn't walk, and was immunocompromised due to the COVID lockdown. Local poll workers had come to collect her vote with witnesses and video documentation.
She passed away soon after in the fall of 2021. I often think about what it must have meant for her to vote, a woman who had lived through British colonization and had witnessed the birth of a new country, all with the growing pains and uncertainties of building a democracy. It occurs to me that I have always taken my right to vote for granted.
Today, I wanted to talk to two individuals who are making sure their communities are well represented in our American democracy. I'm Jenan Mohajir, Vice President of External Affairs and co-host of Faith in Elections, a special pre-election series highlighting the work of people building bridges across diverse communities and upholding free and fair elections in a season marked by chaos and division.
On our first episode, we are lucky to sit down with two leaders in Interfaith America, Faith in Election Playbook grantees. We have Yashpreet Singh Matharu, Community Development Manager at the Sikh Coalition. Through his work on Get Out the Vote, he is dedicated to empowering young leaders and fostering civic engagement in Sikh communities all over America.
We have Dani Levine, the Senior Director of Social Impact at Hillel International. Her work on college campuses encourages engagement in our democratic process while making sure all are welcome. Dani brings extensive experience in Jewish social justice work at her role to Hillel.
Together, we have a conversation with Dani and Yashpreet about how they are encouraging people in their religious communities to become civically engaged, and specifically how, in this pivotal election, they are working to get out the vote. What common opportunities and challenges do they face? What can they learn from one another?
I would love to hear a little bit about how you both came into this work, if there was a singular aha moment, or if there were many moments that kind of put you on this path. Yashpreet, do you want to start us off?
[00:02:49] Yashpreet Singh Matharu: Yes. Absolutely. I fell into this role because of naivety in a way. When I was finishing up high school, I was working just like at home goods, just doing what most high school graduate people would do. I really wanted to get another job. I was like, "I need to do something else. This is so much work. You don't get paid very much."
I started looking around. At the time, I really cared about environmental issues, and obviously, I still do. There was an organization that promised something very interesting. The promise was that you could get your community involved in environmental action, and hold your elected representatives responsible to get this work done.
The organization is called Clean Water Action. When I showed up, that was exactly what they did. They were a canvassing team, we would go door to door, we would talk to people about environmental work, we would collect letters about-- it could be anything from shutting down pipelines to replacing lead pipes to water bottling issues in Michigan and other parts of the Great Lakes's region. Then you would take those letters and every once in a while, maybe every three months, we would go and lobby in Lansing and deliver those letters. I realized that this is an extremely powerful way to be doing this kind of work, this direct involvement. It was something--
That's when that seed was first planted in my brain. That was super exciting. I think it was a little bit almost too direct in a way. You can make some change, but I was working at a level that was very grassroots. I wanted to see where it could go, what the higher level looked like. I wanted to turn back towards my community as well and bring some of those skills back.
The first Sikh elected official who was running for office in Michigan, Ranjeev Puri, was in my neighborhood in Canton, Michigan. I said, "Let me get involved with him." We worked for quite a while getting him elected and he was elected, which was super, super fun to be a part of that process. I learned more organizing skills from there, decided to go to college to study actually philosophy and social change as well.
Then, obviously, you need a job after that. The Sikh Coalition had this lovely position open and I worked as hard as I could to get that position. Now I get to bring all of those skills I had into this new environment in a national way, which has been very, very exciting.
[00:05:07] Jenan: Yes. Thank you for that. Dani, what about you? What's the pathway that brought you here?
[00:05:12] Dani Levine: There were so many, so many different pathways. I think probably there's three snapshots that might help illustrate it. I grew up in Washington, D.C. and from a young age, my parents took us to protests, whether they were protesting a specific administration or policy or celebrating a specific administration or policy. I loved it.
I remember I have memories of holding signs and chanting and being in crowds of people and feeling very energized. That my parents told me, I remember my father told me about the experience of his colleagues in Tiananmen Square and the difference of what it means to be able to voice our opinions freely and that we had this luxury, even though I grew up in D.C. Once they became available, my parents got Taxation Without Representation license plates. We held that sort of we live in a place in which we have democracy and our democracy is imperfect.
Second, I ended up getting involved with a Jewish youth group called Habonim Dror. That's a youth-led group where I went. I went to summer camp. They have activities during the year and they're really serious about the youth-led piece of it. All of the drafting of the goals and the bylaws of the organization happens by the young people involved.
I remember it about probably age 14 or 15, the first time I was really old enough to participate in one of the gatherings and we wrote the-- voted on the different platforms. I loved it. I was learning Robert's Rules of Order, which is so silly, but I was so into it. I was like, "This is--" and people are taking me seriously at 14 or 15 years old. I can be a silly kid with my friends and then step into this room and also with my friends talk about the things that matter to us and have a platform to do it. Both of those things, I think, gave me the confidence and the and also got me excited about it.
Then I think that the third piece of it is really just my-- I was really immersed in Jewish culture, I think, through my family and an idea of obligation. There is this idea that I hold now. I have a spiritual practice called Musar, which is a Jewish spiritual ethics practice. I think a lot about the concept of we're all we have. I use this phrase a lot to talk about when to practice a trait called Savlanut, which means patience or tolerance or forbearance when it seems hard. The phrase I use is they're my people, they're your people, and we're the only ones we've got.
I think a lot about in the story of Moses and God, the Exodus story, I think, is a narrative of the Jewish people, that is one of the defining narratives of sort of Jewish peoplehood. In that narrative, we are an impossible people for our prophet and our God are arguing about like, "Oh, these people are impossible."
I feel that way all the time about humanity. We can be impossible, from the smallest level to the biggest level, we can be impossible. Yet, we're all we have. We can either wipe out and start over, which didn't bode well in the biblical stories of the flood, didn't really bode well, or we can work with what we have and make sure that we have a partner who can help us find restraint and then we can do our best to move forward.
[00:08:26] Jenan: Thank you for that. That's a really beautiful reflection on the story of Moses and the connection of that to real-time and real-- present day. As you all listen to each other's stories, what sounds familiar to you in each other's narratives? What are some things that resonate with both of you about each other's stories?
[00:08:49] Dani: Well, Yashpreet, I also got started in the environmental world. I really thought that was going to be the place that I would focus. I was fed up with people and I did my undergrad in environmental studies. Then I moved to California and I was doing environmental nonprofit work and then doing green building work.
Then I did my master's in environmental policy and health in New Orleans after Katrina. I got a job. Doing this work, all that I thought it was, and it ended up that I needed a connection also beyond the environmental work. I felt like I needed to work in community. I'm curious what that pivot was for you, if you if you felt a pivot or if you still feel pulled to it and how that connection has manifested for you.
[00:09:36] Yashpreet: Yes. It's something I think about often because it is something that I haven't-- I flip on over and over again. In some places, I feel that the community is doing a lot for themselves in a way that's really amazing. Sikhs have this ability. We also are quite driven by the idea of justice. I think that was really nice to hear your story, your relationship with that as well. I think that's really fantastic.
Sometimes, for me as a person, it's also great to step out of my own community. I'm always on either side of that barrier between the two. Inside the community itself, the work in the US, Sikhs are a very small population, and so the work becomes more and more necessary to do, and that's why I always end up staying here, even if the communities I serve are really quite small. When I go about my work, sometimes, I feel that service to my own community, while super important, I also do want to see a way into humanity in general.
[00:10:43] Jenan: There are these five phrases that we use often at Interfaith America, which I wanted to state for you and then ask you a question around it. We say diversity is a treasure, identity is a source of pride, cooperation is better than division, faith is a bridge, and everyone is a contributor. Thinking about those five phrases, and then thinking about the particular aspect of faith being a bridge instead of a barrier, I'm curious, what are some of the challenges that are specific to your communities in this particular election cycle? What are some challenges particular to the Sikh community? What are some challenges particularly for the Jewish communities? Where are you on seeing those play out in your spaces?
[00:11:26] Yashpreet: It's a very difficult question. It's a very difficult question because there are a number of issues right now that challenge this idea that we hold of togetherness. I think, from my understanding, there was a time in the Punjab region that faith was something that you practiced within your family, and it was respected by all people.
Due to the partition of India, of these divisions that were created, it became very easy to see your own community as opposed to another community. That is something that has not gone away. In fact, I think in recent years, in the last two Indian elections, are being fortified and reinstated. That is particularly challenging for the Sikh community. I think a lot of people decide not to be involved in politics whatsoever because they know they're not going to be represented. Punjab has a history of being-- the people in Punjab being disenfranchised, but also statehood being taken away from the state, and agency being taken away from the state, divisions being forced, in fact, almost completely fabricated and forced on the communities to make sure that people don't get involved in politics, so those voices aren't heard.
For a lot of those people, I think that tendency has come to the US as well. In at least my community growing up, voting was not something that was really fortified. Obviously, people saw it as good, but the action wasn't taken. Also on the other end, there wasn't a lot of outside involvement to get people involved as well.
I do see this changing in India itself. I believe Punjab had some of the highest voter turnout it's had in a number of years, I think higher than the voter turnout in the US. We were at 64%, 65%. I think last election, the US was maybe 62% or 63%, so a huge change in India is happening because people are learning how to combat this division and are, I think, really tired of the division that comes from-- that has been forced upon Sikhs and other people who live in the Punjab region, and have decided that is not going to be the way that they continue their trajectory as citizens of in India.
My hope is that some of that energy comes back to the US. It's a completely different game, especially because representation for Sikhs is very, very new. It's very much developing. The ideas and the stories still need to be built to help us come back into our communities and give back. I think interfaith alliances are a really big part of that.
[00:14:04] Jenan: Dani, what do you think?
[00:14:06] Dani: There's so many things. I can't speak for the Jewish community writ large. I work with young people. I work with students on campuses. Really, I work more closely with the professionals who work with students. I can think about some of the barriers that Jewish college students face in being involved civically. I think those are probably pretty common for most young people or many young people are, specifically a college-age population or a college-student population.
I also think there's an interesting tension between sort of public and private expressions of Judaism that I think plays out and has played out for a long time in Jewish life in America about how much to be involved publicly and how much to be privately involved.
Then I think there's this idea about from the story of Queen Esther. In summary, there's a woman who ends up becoming chosen by the king to be his new his new wife, and she hides that she's Jewish. Then the king has an advisor who doesn't like Jewish people and wants to get rid of all the Jews.
She has this argument with her uncle who's raised her, who says something like, "Do you think that just because you've attained the highest position possible for a woman in this land, that it'll protect you from this decree against the Jews?" Either you speak up now or you risk not only losing all of your people, but yourself, too, in your silence as you stand by.
I think that encapsulates the feeling among a lot of Jewish people and certainly on campuses, this fear of speaking up and drawing attention. "I've been hidden. I'm not sure if I want to make this part of my public identity or relate these things, my civic and my Jewish life," or how they're related. Also this idea that-- there's a quote from it, "Perhaps you were born for such a time as this." Actually, maybe it's exactly what we should be doing and how you should be acting. You're not going to hide within the structures. It's not going to protect you, so you need to be who you are and claim it.
[00:16:12] Jenan: I'm curious, as you are doing this work on college campuses with young Jews around the country, what are some of the questions that you are hearing in this particular election season with regards to toxic polarization? What are things that people are bringing to you? What are you hearing?
[00:16:28] Dani: In my role at Hillel, we also work on bridge building and interfaith work in addition to the civic engagement work. We have this big civic engagement push that we call MitzVote, it's M-I-T-Z-V-O-T-E. It's a pun on the Hebrew word mitzvah, mitzvot, the plural, which means commandment or obligation, and of course, vote, V-O-T-E. We sometimes joke that voting is the actual-- the final commandment, the 615th commandment.
We have that campaign and that campaign is really rooted in civic education. It's completely nonpartisan. It's issue-neutral. It is about civic engagement, civic education, and really eliminating the barriers that Jewish college students and their peers, that all college students face in getting involved in civic life. That's voting, that's running for office, that's working on campaigns, that's knowing what's going on around them. We have that whole initiative.
We also know that our bridge-building work, another part of our work to build relationships across difference is vital for the civic engagement work for a couple of reasons. One is that we're a minority, Jewish people are a minority in this country, and we have been able to thrive because we have a strong democracy that protects minorities. We understand that maintaining a strong democracy that allows some level of polarization, but not toxic polarization. People have to be able to disagree. There can be a majority and a minority opinion, and the minority opinion has to be respected and the minority beliefs for minority communities have to be respected and have access to rights and privileges guaranteed by the country.
That's something that really motivates our work and is a connection point between our civic engagement work and our bridge-building work. The other piece of it is just the Jewish tradition has a rich history of disagreement and understanding ourselves and our arguments through disagreement. My organization is called Hillel, the great Rabbi Hillel, and he famously disagreed with the Rabbi Shammai over and over and over. They would disagree with each other.
In the end, Hillel's opinions won out because Hillel's opinions included Shammai's opinions also. We strive to create environments in which we can understand the other person or the groups in which we disagree, try and hold as much space as we can for their opinions, and disagree on the ideas without saying, "Shammai is wrong and all of his people are terrible," but rather, "We disagree with this idea. Let's be in relationship and try and build a society in which we can all follow rules that support each other and create space for differing opinion."
[00:19:08] Jenan: Yes. Yashpreet, how would you think about this? What does it look like for you to be doing this work within your community and using strategies to motivate Sikh communities to vote and to be participating in this electoral process and democracy, et cetera? At the same time, what is the role of bridging in that work?
[00:19:29] Yashpreet: I think the best way to look at it is through the lens of access. When we started doing this work again after 2022, which was a much smaller campaign, we realized that resources exist not in language. That was one thing we wanted to work on. You take the resources, you make sure that they're in Punjabi and they're accessible. The way that those get to the communities is not always very easy. In the US, maybe there's 0.3% Sikhs. We're going to talk about maybe than less than 700,000 people from coast to coast, most of them in California, maybe 20,000 in Michigan, 10,000 in Illinois, maybe a bit more.
We're talking about really just very small communities of people to get to them without the access of organizations that do state-specific work was a really, really big challenge. They gave me the ability to be creative with the answer to it, so the way that I wanted to approach this is step one, as I already mentioned, take everything that we have and make sure that it's in Punjabi.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice is one of our partners who has been super helpful. They created a hotline. Now people can call into the hotline, click whatever number, like, number four, or whatever it is, get moved to the Punjabi hotline, and ask questions in Punjabi, and get a call back from somebody, a volunteer will have the answers.
On side, now that we had everything prepared, the next step was making sure that it actually got to a place of worship to gurdwaras across the country. We decided to get a team of fellows together in swing states, but also in states with big populations like California and New York, and give them everything they need to go and do this work. They'll set up a table, they'll go to events for a lot of Sikhs who are congregating and just talk about voter engagement and Sikh engagement.
I think it's new for a lot of organizations. For us this year, it's been a great way to not only support the community, but also get connected to them in a way that has been much more face-to-face and much more enjoyable for us all. The fellows have been instrumental for that.
[00:21:32] Jenan: Very cool. I wanted to ask you a follow-up question, which is are you using different strategies when you're speaking to young people, young Sikhs who are born here, raised here, who are, in some ways, have hyphenated identities as Sikhs and Americans? Is the strategy that you use with that population different than what you would use with our elders, our parents, our grandparents, our aunts, et cetera?
[00:21:58] Yashpreet: Absolutely. Young people who have grown up here are very interested, and that has been probably the easiest aspect of the work. We can go to these Sikh student associations from campus to campus and tell them what we're doing and we will have volunteers to use to go into gurdwaras and talk to people who have recently immigrated or perhaps have not taken the action to register, people from the older generation. For them, it's the first time.
The strategy difference is simply that we're using a population who knows to reach a population who doesn't. That gap is coincidentally correlated with age. People who are younger are ready to go. They just need the ability to-- they just need the words and the action to take. The elder generation is ready to accept. That's been a very fun part of the work.
[00:22:49] Jenan: Yashpreet, do you face any pushback about bringing politics into religious spaces?
[00:22:54] Yashpreet: Yes. Absolutely. It's something that is common because I think the Sikh community, and I think this maybe echoes a part of your conversation, is no stranger to debate as well. There's always challenges within the community itself. Since the U.S. population is so new, this causes a lot of divisions in the community.
A lot of gurdwaras have become very sensitive. They don't want their community to be fractured. A lot of them will choose to not be civically involved. That's something we're super aware of. It's something that's been, I think people, has been happening for years. For us, the thing that we need to present when we present first and foremost is that we don't-- we're not here to represent any political party. We do it because it is more as a tool of access and not as a, as a projection of ideals onto people. That has helped a lot. I'm not going to say that it's helped in every single situation, but in many situations, when we get the initial pushback, this simple change of framework as an aspect of freedom instead of a projection of ideals has been very helpful.
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[00:23:59] Jenan: After the break, we'll learn about how Dani and Yashpreet work with people outside of their communities and what they think about the role of ritual and civic duty.
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Welcome back to Faith in Elections. We're back with Dani Levine of Hillel International and Yashpreet Singh of the Sikh Coalition. I wanted to find out how they work within and beyond their own Sikh and Jewish communities to break down the barriers to voting, including setting up polling places on college campuses.
As you're thinking about the strategies that you're using, you're breaking down barriers to access, you're working with external communities, I'm wondering once all of that is in place, what are the issues in this election cycle that are really important to your communities? Dani, let's start off with you and then I'll come back to you, Yashpreet.
[00:24:49] Dani: I think that every issue is important to someone. Really, the Jewish community is not monolithic. There are trends and obviously there are different issues that can be used as wedge issues or divisive issues. I think we can see that playing out. I don't feel equipped to speak on what are the issues. The way we talk about it with our students and our professionals, because we really do try and stay issue neutral, we really are issue neutral. We're trying to help people find ways in which they can take action on the things that they care about.
For our students, we want to help them think about, "What are the things you care about? How can you act on your values and how can civic engagement and voting as one part of civic engagement be a part of acting on your values?" We really-- Sometimes, we get questions about, "Well, why are you focusing on this campus? In this state? This campus in this state?"
We don't focus on any specific geographic area. Sometimes, students are more motivated when they think their vote will actually make a difference. That often correlates to swing states. It doesn't have to be because you can have issues on local ballots that are just as-- decided by just a small margin as a major national election. I think the issues are what is important to any individual person is what we're trying to bring out.
[00:26:15] Yashpreet: In a similar way. For us, we have to avoid some of the larger national conversations that people are talking about as a byproduct of being a 501(c)(3) organization. I think every Sikh person who has come to the US has a story about how their identity was not being perceived as it actually is, whether that's in the workplace, in schools, basically anywhere.
For Sikh boys, there's always this issue of a lot of Sikh boys are growing up-- this happened to me as well. They'll be mistaken for girls instead. It's something that's always, when you're a kid, maybe it can get to you. That's a small example. There are also examples of being mixed up as other religions. That is, I think Sikhs are really adamant about being seen as an independent faith with love and respect to all other faiths, but still independent and completely with ideology that is of its own, of their own.
These are the issues that we take at the policy level. Bringing an understanding of who Sikhs are at the most basic level to curriculums in the states. That's a campaign we've worked on for years. We've done it in 19 states. We want to keep on going to make sure that middle schoolers, high schoolers, when they talk about religions, Sikhi at least gets a mention, correcting mistakes in textbooks that have happened.
When I was growing up, a common conflation was that Sikhs are a mixture of Hindus and Muslims. Another higher level or more national, I guess, issue is that there has been a number of actions against Sikh community members in the last year or so. There was a really high-profile case of an assassination that happened in Canada, two attempted assassinations in the US having to do with transnational repression, stifling Sikh voices because the ideologies that they hold.
Although the Sikh Coalition doesn't take a stance on the particular issue, we are vehement that as people, we should be able to have the full access to freedom of speech and not have lives threatened. That has also been a big motivator for people to go out and be involved in their local campaigns to ask the representatives, what are we doing about these issues? To raise not only safety in our community, but also access to representation for Sikhs.
[00:28:37] Jenan: Thank you for sharing that. Dani, I have read this quote from you that has been sitting with me and I wanted to ask you about it. These are your words, so I'm going to read your quote back to you. "For me, prayer has always seemed a bit a cop-out, instead of working for something, I'll just pray or I'll send thoughts and prayers instead of making meaningful legislation. The concept of prayer as a meaningful part of justice work has generally felt very trite to me. Despite the frustration with prayer, I have always enjoyed ritual."
I was sitting with this and I-- this obviously speaks to the diversity of ways that lots of Jews identify with their Jewishness and identify with ritual and with their theology, et cetera. What was really interesting to me as I read this quote is I immediately thought of the very famous Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel quote that everyone quotes in response to the work that he was doing with the Civil Rights Movement, where he said something, like, "While he was marching in Selma, it was as if his legs were in prayer."
I was reminded of that because I think essentially what you're saying here is that action is a form of prayer for you or action is a form of living out your values in meaningful ways. We'd love to hear a little bit of your thought process around the role of ritual and prayer or maybe not the role of ritual and prayer as it relates to the work that you're doing in the community.
[00:30:00] Dani: Sure. I wonder when I said that or wrote that. I mentioned I study Musar. Musar is this Jewish spiritual ethics, and a lot of what Musar is about is about balance. Through my Musar journey, I have created a space for prayer as well in my own spiritual practice. I think, of course, this, Rabbi Heschel idea of praying with our feet, that we can pray through action.
In my own practice, I think there's a quote I come back to, "Pray as if everything depends on God, act as if everything depends on you." I think there's a tremendous amount of benefit that prayer offers, but it is not my theology that prayer gives a certain outcome.
One of our values, our beliefs is we're created, "B'tzelem Elohim," "In the image of God." We have our own capabilities also. If we abdicate our own responsibility and leave it all in the realm of prayer, we're not actually doing what we can. I think I have some space for both now in my own life. I think we need, we need spiritual nourishment. We need spiritual resilience, whether that comes from your faith community or another community.
For me, personally, and I think for many of the students who seek Hillel, that is meaningful for them and they need it. I think particularly for me being part of a-- I live in the deep South. I live in New Orleans, Louisiana. My kids have to say the Our Father after their sports practices, at the public rec league that my kids play with, because I live in a Catholic city and that's just accepted here. There's only so many times they're going to tell the coach that they're Jewish before they just take their hat off and put their head down.
We need places where we can be affirmed in our beliefs, where we can find nourishment beyond ourselves, because this gets back to the first question you asked. "As a 20-year-old, I think I had a savior complex. I thought there was nothing that prayer--" "Prayer didn't do anything. It was just about me." I have matured a little bit, I think, a little bit, in 20 years to understand that I'm not going to fix it all. The people I'm with are not going to fix it all. There is more than we understand and know but we need to have balance. We need to find space for both.
We can support ourselves spiritually. Part of that is being in relationship with others and especially with people we don't agree with, I think. Some of that is what are the actions we can take from the very simple service steps. I spent 10 years at Avodah, which is a Jewish service organization. How does being in service to people in our communities help? Then what are the bigger steps we need to take around changing the systems we live in?
Then, really, just like envisioning a world in which our needs are met and the needs of our communities are met. That I think is the hardest part and the place where there is a step for prayer, but it can't be, prayer can't be the only thing. When we have the tools to act, we have to act.
[00:32:56] Jenan: Yes. I love that. I love the quote that you said, "Pray as if everything depends on God and act as if everything depends on you." That actually takes me back to a core Sikh tenant, which is Seva, that is a core part of your community, Yashpreet. I'm curious what you think about the role of Seva in your work.
[00:33:19] Yashpreet: I'm glad you brought that up. What I love about my work right now is that we can take that aspect of Seva and bring it to the larger, our larger community as well. Not only giving people food but also by raising awareness for Sikhs or giving Sikhs the ability to practice their faith. Also, laying a path forward for them to go and do Seva in new and exciting ways.
When I was growing up, what's something common that we would do is make sure that we were involved with our interfaith communities. That's a great way to do service to your community, doing food drives beyond just the gurdwara and working with groups in our schools and things like that so we can continue to grow what Seva is in the US itself.
In India, since Seva, it's a concept that not even Sikhs practice alone but many communities practice. There's so many great manifestations of ideas of Seva that Sikhs holds very dear. To bring those to the US is a huge goal and involvement in raising Sikh awareness is definitely the first step towards that.
[00:34:28] Jenan: Great. I wanted to ask you all to share a particular story or maybe a couple of vignettes about the people that you've been working with in your programs and how has the experience of that program impacted them? Dani, let's start with you.
[00:34:45] Dani: Yes. There's so many. I think about at our campus in Madison, Wisconsin, the Hillel there has long recognized the need for the collaboration or the connection, I guess, between like a Hillel and civic engagement work. They've actually-- their Hillel is now a polling place.
They started advocating for other Hillels to consider where are there what we call polling place deserts? Where are their absences of polling places? Students who are more likely to not have cars, to not have the ability to wait a long time because they're on a class schedule and, they may or may not get out, where do we need more polling places? To encourage other Hillels that have buildings on campuses, are you in a polling place desert? Can you become a polling place to provide access? The benefit for that is, of course, there's a benefit because then, all students on a campus have a place where they can participate civically, which is incredible.
Students are more likely than to become lifelong voters, which is better for everyone. It's better for our democracy. It's better for the individual. When you can build self-efficacy at a young age, then you're likely to increase the practice and it's better for our world when everyone is involved, when the citizens are involved.
The other benefit is that what can be an insular aspect, like a Hillel, which is not always, but can be seen as only for Jewish people or for the needs only of Jewish people. When the space is opened up and people come through because they're participating in a Hillel, it can help build bridges and open up and invite people into a space or into relationship and into communities.
[00:36:30] Yashpreet: That's really interesting. I would love to hear how you've done the work to approach-- to get more polling locations created. That's something that we've been looking into ourselves, but still in the works of developing.
[00:36:42] Dani: We work really closely with the Andrew Goodman Foundation. I love working with them for a lot of reasons. Also, if you don't know the story of Andrew Goodman, he was a white Jewish civil rights worker who was murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi during Freedom Summer, along with James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner.
His family created this foundation after his murder. They have worked since then on civic engagement and enfranchisement in this country. That organization and the story of Andy Goodman help us understand both what is possible when we work together, the evils that we are facing around disenfranchisement and the reality that has existed of imperfections in our democracy and exclusion in our democracy.
Then they do all like the helpful work of helping us identify polling place deserts. They will tell us, "Here are all the locations where we really need someone. Here are the things." They offer trainings. Some of our campuses, there's a lot of fear in the Jewish community. I don't know if it's similar in the Sikh community. When your house of worship becomes a target for violence that, I know both of our communities have experienced, people are really hesitant to then inviting people in.
A lot of that is conversation within our faith communities. Are you comfortable and ready to open up as a polling place? Some places say no and some places say yes. Then just working with them, if you are comfortable, we want to make sure you really understand what's going to be expected so you can do it, really being transparent. Then hearing the success stories from people like Art Hillel in Wisconsin and hearing them tell the stories of all of the good it has done, both for their Jewish community and also for the community writ large. That's really motivating.
[00:38:35] Jenan: Yashpreet, do you have a quick story about people who've taken part in your programs and the experience, how it's impacted them?
[00:38:42] Yashpreet: Yes. The fellows have been having a really great time in their own communities. We've had a couple of events where the community has just decided to get these kids on stage and let them speak about what's going on and really celebrate the fact that there is somebody taking action in their community, in their neighborhoods.
We are also in the Sikh student associations. We are doing our first Get Out to Vote canvas in New York City. We're going to be in-person in Richmond Hill, getting people on their feet, walking around, and sharing information. That has been very exciting for the community as well. I'm shocked by how many volunteers are already interested before we've even made an ask for volunteers. We are lucky to be really enjoying the process.
[00:39:25] Jenan: Yes. As grantees of Faith in Elections Playbook and speaking from the perspective of people who work with young Sikhs and young Jews and also others in your communities, I'm curious, what is the value of a free, fair, and safe election in 2024, where the process and the results are trusted without resulting in more political violence? Why does this matter? Why is that important to you both?
[00:39:52] Dani: Jewish people are a minority in this country, a very small minority. A democracy that ensures the rights of the minorities are protected is absolutely vital to our community's ongoing ability to thrive and live and enjoy success as Americans. If people lose confidence in our democracy, then we lose our democracy. Ensuring that people understand combating the spread of myths and disinformation, getting people excited about participating in the democratic process, becoming champions of the democratic process, all of that helps to ensure that our democracy maintains itself, is maintained. It's not a magical thing that just happens. We are it. We are the people. We the people. We are the people.
[00:40:40] Yashpreet: I think many Sikhs came to the US looking for a place that they could practice freely and express themselves without the fear of violence at polls and things of this nature, things that people, even my father or people that I grew up in my own community of the older generation are very familiar with because of their own upbringing. Maintaining election security and making sure that free and fair election is the norm, is a complete necessity. I think that the more propagation of danger happens at the polls, the less people really believe that they are in the right place. They're doing the things that they're in a place where they feel safe and they can express themselves, which is the dream that they came here to begin with. It's a very dangerous path to walk down.
[00:41:33] Jenan: I wanted to bring this up or wrap up our conversation with a rapid-fire question. You both are probably familiar. One of Interfaith America's literal and metaphorical hopes is that we are building a potluck nation. I would love to know literally what food are you bringing to the potluck that is Interfaith America as Sikh and Jewish leaders? Then also, what are you literally bringing from your communal and work to this potluck?
[00:42:00] Yashpreet: In terms of dishes, this is an easy one for me. Commonly, milk is very important to the community. Also, saag is very, very important. It's easy to grow. People eat it all the time. Then wheat and corn, both. In a combination of those, we're going to have saag with paneer. Then we will bring some roti or some makki roti, which is a roti that's made out of corn. It's very thick. It's very delicious. It's the staple meal of Punjab.
In terms of involvement, I think we will try to bring something that we've already mentioned, which is service to our community. As much as we can, the ability to give back to the people and the ability to see all people who live in our communities as equals. That's the ideals that we want to stand on.
[00:42:41] Dani: Yum. I can't wait for this potluck because it sounds hissy. Look, I live in Louisiana and I have some avid outdoorsmen. I think I'll bring some smoked fish, maybe some fresh caught redfish, a little smoked redfish, maybe a little smoked salmon from way up north, wild-caught, sustainable. Maybe a little cream cheese and if you can get it, some good bagels. If not, a nice little flatbread is fine, too. I think we'll bring this ability to hold a competing narrative, gamba gam, gamba gam, which is, "This and this, alu velu, this and these." The ability to hold and try and find value in two different narratives or multiple narratives.
[00:43:28] Jenan: Thank you so much, Dani and Yashpreet, for this great conversation. I'm really grateful for the vulnerability and for the honesty, and I'm really excited to see the fruit of your work happen in the next few weeks and for years to come.
[music]
[00:43:41] Dani: Thank you so much.
[00:43:43] Yashpreet: It's a privilege to be here. Thank you so much.
[00:43:46] Jenan: It is so inspiring to be a witness to the many ways in which today's guests are working across intergenerational lines and focusing on young people to ensure that their communities are represented at the polls. I've been thinking about how Dani engages Musar, a practice of Jewish spiritual ethics to guide her work, and Yashpreet uses his commitment to Seva, the Sikh practice of serving one's community.
Thank you again to Dani and Yashpreet for sharing how they managed to thread the incredibly fine needle that is religion, politics, civic duty, and community engagement. To learn about Get Out the Vote, visit sikhcoalition.org. For MitzVote, you can go to hillel.org/mitzvote. That's M-I-T-Z-V-O-T-E.
We would love to hear from you. Leave us a review and follow us on Instagram @interfaithamerica. To read more about this conversation and to find resources and stories about bridge building in our religiously diverse nation, visit our website, interfaithamerica.org.
Faith in Elections is part of our Voices of Interfaith America podcast network. This episode was hosted by me, Jenan Mohajir. Production was provided by Keisha TK Dutes, our executive producer, and "Manny Faces," our producer and audio editor for Philo's Future Media, with story editing by Johanna Zorn.
The Interfaith America team is Silma Suba and Rheya Spigner, our executive producers, Noah Silverman, our editorial director, and our Democracy Initiatives team, Senior Director Becca Hartman-Pickerill and Manager Rollie Olson. We couldn't do this without our coordinating producers, Teri Simon and Olivia Stufflebeam, Rachel Crowe, our production assistant, and Katherine O'Brien, our marketing manager.
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