Why Do Jews Vote Democrat?

From Neo-Neocon:

Jews and politics

There’s an old and un-PC saying coined by Jewish sociolographer andneocon Milton Himmelfarb:

Jews earn like Episcopalians, and vote like Puerto Ricans.

Commenter “John Dough” may or may not be aware of Himmelfarb’s barb, but he has a related question when he observes:

I continue to be amazed at the American Jewish community continued support for the liberal position. This Islamic sympathizing president is doing his best to foment another holocaust. Quoting from “Back to the Future” …… “Hello, is anybody home”?

Himmelfarb was speaking more of personal economics vs political affiliation; J. Dough was referring to a more existential dilemma. But the basic question is the same: why are Jews liberals?

The question is so puzzling, and the answer so complex, that another neocon—Norman Podhoretz—wrote an entire book on the subject a few years ago. It’s on my list of “must-reads,” but I’m sorry to say I haven’t gotten around to it (the list is long). The Amazon blurb mentions that it was the question Podhoretz was asked most often in his long career, and I can well believe it.

I said I have not read the book, but I’m pretty sure it’s well worth reading (Podhoretz usually is). From the descriptions at Amazon, it seems he’s saying that Jews historically supported liberalism because it favored the end of persecution, and that originally Democrats were big supporters of Israel. That ended quite some time ago, as did the pro-Israel stance of the left—or, as, Ruth Wisse put it in her review of his book, “Part of the answer comes in [Podhoretz's] survey of the historical connection between the Jews and liberalism, the rest in his up-to-date analysis of how liberalism became a proxy for Judaism.”

That last phrase (“liberalism became a proxy for Judaism”) is, in my opinion, the key. My answer to John Dough and anyone who would ask the question he asked is that most (not all) of the Jews who support the left politically are Jews in the ethnic and perhaps cultural but not the deeply religious sense (I’ve already discussed the phenomenon of “Jews who are not Jews” here).

Religious Jews have very different politics. In fact, they tend to be Republicans:

Politically, Orthodox Jews are far more conservative than other Jews. For example, 57% of Orthodox Jews describe themselves as Republicans or say they lean toward the Republican Party, while 36% are Democrats or lean Democratic. Among Jews as a whole, the balance tilts strongly in the other direction: 70% of Jews overall are Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, while just 22% are Republican or lean Republican.

Orthodox Jews, however, are in the minority among American Jews. Some statistics here:

[A 2003 Harris] survey found that of the 4.3 million strongly connected Jews, 46% belong to a synagogue. Among those households who belong to a synagogue, 38% are members of Reform synagogues, 33% Conservative, 22% Orthodox, 2% Reconstructionist, and 5% other types…
The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey found that around 3.4 million American Jews call themselves religious out of a general Jewish population of about 5.4 million [some claim the Jewish population in the US is actually a million more than that, depending on how you define it]. The number of Jews who identify themselves as only culturally Jewish has risen from 20% in 1990 to 37% in 2008, according to the study.

If you add Reform Jews to non-religious Jews, you get over 54% (by my admittedly speedy calculations). That says a lot right there. Particularly for the non-religious Jews (37% of the total), and also for many Reform Jews (38% of the observant 46%, or 17%), identification with Israel is low. In fact, many Jews have absorbed the prevailing leftist idea that after the Six-Day War Israel made some sort of change that meant it was no longer on the side of good but had turned into something bad (we won’t get into the specifics here, but that was a turning point where the left began to see Israel as a colonizer and exploiter rather than a nice noble socialist nation).

You might wonder why these Jews don’t understand that in an atmosphere of growing anti-Semitism they, too, would be at risk. The capacity of the human being for denial is large, and secular Jews in particular have a tendency to think this couldn’t or wouldn’t happen to them. They feel quite secure in their ability to demonize Israel because they do not identify strongly with it or its fate.* In the wordsof Mitchell Bard, “Jews have devoted themselves to politics with almost religious fervor.” Some of that fervor is the fervor that usedto be given to religion itself.

[* NOTE: In another survey, even many so-called “religious” Jews are mostly secular:

…62% [of Jews surveyed] say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture, while just 15% say it is mainly a matter of religion. Even among Jews by religion, more than half (55%) say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture…

More details here

• 61 percent of American Jews agree that “there a way for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully. Compare this to 50 percent of the American public.
• The biggest supporters of a two-state solution are secular Jews (72 percent), Conservative Jews (62 percent) and Reform Jews (58 percent).
• The biggest skeptics are Orthodox Jews (30 percent) and white Evangelical Christian (42 percent)…
• 60 percent of Jews say they approve of Obama’s policy toward Israel. This is highest among Jews over 65 (at 66 percent) and Reform Jews (65 percent). Conservative Jews are also supportive (60 percent), with secular Jews a touch less so (54 percent).
• Support is lowest among Christian groups; 38 percent of American Christians support Obama’s Israel policy, including just 26 percent of white Evangelical Christians.
• The most critical Jewish group is Orthodox Jews, 36 percent of whom approve of Obama’s approach to Israel…
• Pew came up with nine different traits commonly associated with Jewish identity and asked Jewish respondents to answer whether each is “essential to being Jewish.” Among those nine traits, “caring about Israel” was the fifth most likely to be selected. 43 percent called this essential.
• Traits more likely to be considered “essential to being Jewish” than caring about Israel, from most to least popular: Remembering the Holocaust, leading an ethical and moral life, working for justice/equality, being intellectually curious.
• Among religious Jews, 49 percent called caring about Israel an essential Jewish trait. It still ranks fifth for this group.
• Among secular Jews, only 23 percent called caring about Israel an essential Jewish trait. It ranks sixth, behind “having a good sense of humor.”

It’s very telling, I think.

I would add that most American Jews live in the strongly liberal enclaves of New York City and Los Angleles. These cities are liberal in part because they have so many Jews, of course, but there are plenty of other US cities without such huge Jewish populations that are just as strongly liberal. It is highly possible that the Jews of NY and LA are so strongly liberal for many of the same reasons that the non-Jewish populations in large urban coastal centers are so strongly liberal.]