There is a time when our opinions matter. That time is election day and, for many communities in our area, there is no more important election day than this Tuesday, when the municipal ballots are cast.

The Jewish Standard traditionally makes no endorsements. While we will not suggest for whom to vote, however, we feel no hesitancy in suggesting how one should vote.

Here is how: Vote with great care. The candidates who are running for office on May 8 will not help set national policy. They will not influence foreign policy in the slightest. They will, however, determine whether and when our garbage is picked up; how many police and fire personnel will be available to assist us and what kind of equipment they will have; how many hours each day and how many days each week the library will be open and who will staff it; who will be available to fill up the potholes in the street and whether they will have the materials and equipment they need.

This is not “that other election,” the less important one (the November poll being the “real” one). This is the election that counts the most because it is the one closest to home and has the greatest impact on our day-to-day lives.

It was 4:30 a.m. The men were sleeping off a night on the town, having gone to see the great Israeli character actor Shmuel Rudenski star as Tevye in a performance of “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Eight other men, carrying duffel bags filled with weapons and wearing innocent-looking track suits, walked into the building in which the men slept. The eight were members of the Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. The building they entered at that early hour was located in the Olympic Village. The men in bed sleeping were members of Israel’s Olympic team.

The date was Sept. 5, 1972, and the venue was Munich, West Germany.

As the eight terrorists entered the building, the chain of events began that would end in what would forever after be known as the Munich Massacre, televised live all around the world. Sept. 5 was to be the final day of the Games of the XX Olympiad. For 11 Israelis and five of the terrorists, it would be their last day, period. Moments after midnight on Sept. 6, the Israelis would be murdered in the midst of a botched rescue mission carried out by West German security forces.

Remarkably, to this day, the International Olympic Committee, which runs the games, has not done anything to memorialize the Munich Massacre. It has another chance to do so on July 12, when the Games of the XXX Olympiad are held in London.

We have 91 days left to convince the IOC that on this, the 40th anniversary of that horrible event, the time has come to remember the 11 victims, and the act of violence that took their lives and forever after tainted the “games of peace.”

Perhaps the best way to do that is for a moment of silence to be observed at this Olympiad and at every other Summer Olympics from now on. That, in fact, is the goal of a petition drive undertaken by the JCC in Rockland County that has now gone viral.

It only takes a minute to sign the petition and to pass it on to your friends. Just go to http://www.munich11.org. It will explain it all.

It only takes a minute of your time to ask for a minute of time out of the Olympic Games.

We will not be able to bring back the slain athletes, but if the campaign succeeds, then we can be sure that the athletes will never be forgotten for as long as the Olympic flame burns.

The Jewish world is nearly unanimous in calling for the release of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the onetime civilian analyst for the U.S. Navy who was convicted in 1987 of espionage and given a life sentence. Indeed, President Shimon Peres sent a letter to President Barack Obama urging that Pollard be freed.

Pollard is not some longtime master spy for an enemy who would destroy this country, although such a claim was made by the Reagan-Bush admnistration. The allegation subsequently was shown to be false.

Pollard was not spying for an enemy. He was spying for an ally: Israel.

That does not excuse his crime — and, as we have said before, it was and remains an inexcusable crime — but it does raise questions about why he received so harsh a sentence.

A sentence such as Pollard received is unheard of for someone guilty of spying for an ally. The average sentence before Pollard was arrested and since his incarceration is seven years. Pollard has been in prison for nearly 26 years. No one has ever explained why he received so harsh a sentence. No one has ever explained what it is that keeps that sentence in place.

We agree that the ailing Pollard should be allowed to walk out of prison, rather than be carried out in a coffin. We also hope that Pollard’s release will be made a campaign issue by Jewish groups as the presidential and congressional election seasons begin in earnest.

Our hope for justice for Jonathan Jay Pollard, however, will sound even more sincere if we as a community also demand an end to other injustices of the justice system. There are people in jail for life — for life — for such crimes as “stealing” a dollar’s worth of soda. Why? Because states over the years enacted what is known as the “three strikes law.” If you have been convicted of a crime for the third time, regardless of how trivial a crime or the motive behind it, you are put away for life.

There is some justification for this, but without allowing for judicial flexibility, injustices are certain to occur.

In some states, there are mandatory sentencing guidelines imposed on judges that require them to incarcerate someone convicted of a crime for a set — and long — period of time even if the crime was trivial or the evidence suggests mitigating circumstances.

We need to demand justice for Pollard, but it may be better received if we demanded that the justice system be just.

President Barack Obama, following in the footsteps of his predecessor, George W. Bush, has been very tight-fisted when it comes to handing out presidential pardons. If he fails to act on the request to free Jonathan Jay Pollard before the November election, almost certainly some Jewish groups will use it as an issue against him.

It must be noted, therefore, that every president of the United States from Ronald Reagan on, three Republicans and two Democrats, have refused to let Pollard go free. Unless Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, unambiguously says otherwise, he is no more likely to free Pollard if he is elected president.

Causes are best served with truth. This cause is no different.

As Israel approaches its 64th birthday this Thursday, we who live in the diaspora ought to give serious thought to what that actually means for us.

We conclude each Passover seder by proclaiming “Next year in Jerusalem.” many of us may even sing those words at birthday celebrations this week honoring the Jewish state. We say them and we sing them — but do we mean them? Do we intend to make aliyah — to disrupt our lives, and the lives of our loved ones, and move to a land far away?

When one thinks of satire, the names Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain come to mind in the literary realm, and perhaps Stephen Colbert and South Park in more modern media.

Using irony or wit (according to one library definition) to expose or attack human vice or foolishness, satirists traditionally set up situations that exemplify the object of ridicule and then take careful aim at the traits or behaviors they have targeted.

In a scholarly paper on the purpose of satire, one commentator has written, “The best satire does not seek to do harm or damage by its ridicule, unless we speak of damage to the structure of vice….Far from being simply destructive, satire is implicitly constructive, and the satirists themselves…often depict themselves as such constructive critics.”

This evening, something incredibly awesome will take place. It will occur casually, almost invisibly. In every time zone, in every corner of the world, at about the same time of day, Jews of every stripe, color, nationality, and commitment will sit down at a table at which a seder of some kind will be observed.

In every time zone, in every corner of the world, at about the same time of day, nearly every Jew in the world will share a connection with nearly every other Jew in the world.

And, as we make that connection, we also connect ourselves to the Jews of every generation going back for well over two millennia, if not all the way back to the days of Moses.

Nothing else in Jewish life — nothing else — comes close to this humbling yet inspiring moment. Nothing else comes close to reaffirming that we are one people and that through us was freedom born into the world.

Passover — Pesach — is known as “the festival of our freedom,” but because “in every generation we are obligated to see ourselves” as having been freed from the slavery of Egypt, the seder offers us the opportunity to examine the ways we enslave ourselves today and even how we enslave others.

“Enslave” is a transitive verb that first appeared in the 17th century. From its introduction, it meant making someone a slave to something, not just to someone.

For example, too many people in our world are enslaved by drugs, legal as well as illegal, including those drugs called nicotine and alcohol. Too many people are enslaved by the pursuit of money, or the acquisition of things, and for whom enough is never enough.

Enslavement is all-consuming. It can destroy character and destroy families.

Too many people today are enslaved by technology. Once upon a time, a person could leave the office, get into a car or onto public transportation, travel home, sit down to dinner and catch-up conversation with the family, then relax in the living room reading a little while listening to some music, or watching a television show the entire family could enjoy.

Today, the office goes where you go. You can read documents and answer e-mails on your tablet while slipping at will between it and a downloaded video, even as you are launching Angry Birds on your smartphone, and munching on a fast-food dinner in your den. Your children give you monosyllabic answers to questions while texting two or three friends at the same time (P911 BRB TSNF RBTL [Parent alert. Be right back. That’s so not fair. Read between the lines.]). You struggle to remember the color of their eyes, which you have not seen in months, and wonder why they cannot spell and lack social skills.

We may even be enslaved by ritual. “Let all who are hungry come and eat,” we say because the haggadah says to say it. Before we sat down to the seder, however, did we do anything to feed the hungry? “Next year in Jerusalem,” we sing, often with great gusto, even as we wish our guests well and tell them we hope to see them back at the same table next Pesach. Is this not a form of enslavement, this mindless mouthing of words that we would feel guilty not mouthing?

Tonight, and tomorrow night for those who celebrate two s’darim, here are two questions to ask: What is it that enslaves us today? What must we do to be truly free?

From all of us at The Jewish Standard, may this Pesach truly be the festival of freedom for all.

The Municipal Non-Partisan Election season is upon us. That election is May 8. School board elections precede it by a couple of weeks (April 17).

There is a congressional primary coming to the state on June 5, which also will see a presidential primary.

In other words, the election season is in high gear and, as politicians appeal for the Jewish vote, they will concentrate on their positions rergarding Israel while disparaging the views on Israel held by their opponents. They will not trouble our “one-track minds” with matters they assume we care little or nothing about, such as the economy, or health care, and so on.

As always, those politicians who do so will be making a very big mistake.

Survey after survey over the years make it clear that, for better or worse, Israel is pretty far down on most Jewish voters’ list of what is important.

The latest confirmative survey was released this week. It was conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute.

According to its findings, Torah-affirming Jewish values continue to drive us, with 84 percent of Jewish respondents putting “pursuing justice” as an important value, while 80 percent chose “caring for the widow and the orphan” ahead of other important values.

As for November’s national elections, 51 percent give priority to the economy. Below that, 15 percent think the big issue is the growing gap between the rich and the poor; 10 percent put health care first; tied at four percent are national security and concern for Israel; Iran comes in at two percent, and at the bottom of the pile at one percent each are the issues that drive the conservative base — environment, immigration, same-sex marriage, and abortion.

As for the presidential race, 62 percent said they would vote to re-elect President Barack Obama, with only 30 percent saying they prefer a Republican in the White House. These are virtually the identical numbers as existed at this time four years ago.

Of course, Jews care about the security of Israel, but they are not fooled by the rhetoric that one party or one person is better than another party or person in this regard. Social concerns —Jewish values, if you will — continue to drive Jewish voters.

The candidates who speak to those values will find willing listeners.