Nachama Soloveichik, an heir to America’s leading Orthodox rabbinic dynasty, is caught between two calendars that rule her life. According to the Jewish calendar, Tuesday will mark the beginning of Shavuot, the holiday that celebrates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. But by Pennsylvania’s election calendar, Tuesday is primary night—the beginning of the six-month countdown to November’s midterm elections, when Soloveichik’s boss, the conservative Catholic politician Pat Toomey, hopes to win the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Arlen Specter, the Jewish former Republican who is now running as a Democrat in one of the country’s most closely watched races.
As Toomey’s press secretary, Soloveichik, who is 29, wants to be at the party the campaign has booked at a hotel in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, but as an observant Jew, she’s not sure how she’ll get back to her home in Allentown, nine miles west, without violating the restrictions on driving or working on the holiday. “If I were in Manhattan and had to walk from Washington Heights to Wall Street, I could do it, but the problem is that here there aren’t sidewalks,” Soloveichik told me, when we met last week at a Starbucks near Toomey’s campaign headquarters. “But I don’t want to be stranded in my apartment wondering who won the Democratic primary.”