I know many New Yorkers who are looking at the mayoral race and seeing it as an impossible situation — a Sophie’s Choice, if you will, one without any good or moral outcome. With two and a half days left to go, those who haven’t yet cast their votes know they cannot vote for Zohran Mamdani, an Islamo-communist who will turn New York into an antisemitic hellhole. However, they know that Curtis Sliwa, the best candidate, cannot win.

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The problem is that their sense of revulsion about voting for Andrew Cuomo, who is a sleazy guy who killed old people, has them believing that it is impossible for them to vote for the one person who, theoretically, can defeat Mamdani. In other words, they feel it is morally wrong to vote for the lesser of two evils because it’s still evil.

However, I was reading Dennis Prager’s exegesis of Genesis, and he makes the argument that, when faced with a bad choice, you are allowed to choose the lesser of two evils without selling your soul. The context is Chapter 14, which describes a raging war among the various kings in Canaan. (They have wonderful ancient names such as Amraphel, Arioch, Chedorlaomer, Birsha, Shemeber, etc.)

The various kings form alliances amongst themselves, which can be confusing, but the ultimate point is that one of these alliances managed to raid Sodom and Gomorrah, taking all their wealth. Significantly, the raiders also took Lot, who, as just about everyone knows, lived in Sodom. What only well-versed people know is that he was the nephew of Abraham, then still called “Abram,” the progenitor of the Jewish people. (Genesis 14:12.)

Abram unhesitatingly took his men and set off to rescue his nephew. (Genesis 14:14.) He joined forces with the King of Sodom and rescued not only Lot and his possessions, but the other people of Sodom, along with their possessions. (Genesis 14:16.)

Despite willingly rescuing the people and treasure of Sodom, Abram righteously refused a reward from the king. (Genesis 14:23.) We are given to understand that he did so because he knew that Sodom and Gomorrah were sinful. (Genesis 13:13.)

The question, of course, is how Abram, knowing that Sodom was evil, could retain his righteous status if he joined with Sodom? Prager’s answer is that Abram’s choice “is another example of biblical moral wisdom.” He explains,

In waging war against evil, we cannot always choose whom we would most like as our allies. Sometimes we are morally bound to fight alongside bad people in order to defeat worse people. There are those who reject this assertion, arguing that “the lesser of two evils is still evil.” But no one denies that the lesser evil is evil. The biblical and moral argument is that between a greater and a lesser evil, good is achieved by first defeating the greater evil for the obvious reason that less evil is always better than more evil. After Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Winston Churchill, one of the staunchest anti-Communists, joined forces with the Communist Soviet Union and its murderous dictator, Josef Stalin, in order to defeat Hitler and Nazism. As Churchill put it to the British Parliament: “If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”

The Rational Bible: Genesis (pp. 250-251). Kindle Edition.

In this case, the greater evil is a Mamdani mayoralty, with the lesser evil being to place Cuomo in Gracie Mansion.

Those who refuse to vote or who throw away a vote on Sliwa (and I say that despite liking Sliwa the best of the three, even as I recognize that he has no chance of winning) are not making a biblical choice.

There are still two and a half days left to vote for New York City’s next mayor. If you haven’t voted yet, you might want to think about striking a pragmatic blow against the greater evil, rather than making a merely symbolic stand in favor of a virtuous loser.