The Jewish vote for liberalism

 

In his book Who’s Afraid of the Religious Right?, columnist and writer Don Feder challenged his fellow Jews about their secular relativism.

“Are we merely Jew-ish or are we Jews? Are we ‘conservatives of Jewish extraction’ or are we Jews whose souls resonate to three millennia of Jewish teaching–Jews animated by the vision of Sinai, Jews who understand that loyalty to that lofty vision requires them to be conservatives of the spirit? Those of us who choose to be genuinely Jewish and genuinely conservative have at our disposal a Written and Oral Law that contains all the agenda we’ll ever need.”

But the agenda for a greater number of Jews than even Catholics in America has followed the politically liberal one, and especially in the election of Barack Obama. Now, Norman Podhoretz has a book out asking the fascinating but agonizing question Why Are Jews Liberals? This WSJ op-ed piece summarizes what few have dared say in mainstream media.

On abortion, gay rights, school prayer, gun control and assisted suicide, the survey data show that Jews are by far the most liberal of any group in America.

Most American Jews sincerely believe that their liberalism, together with their commitment to the Democratic Party as its main political vehicle, stems from the teachings of Judaism and reflects the heritage of “Jewish values.” But if this theory were valid, the Orthodox would be the most liberal sector of the Jewish community. After all, it is they who are most familiar with the Jewish religious tradition and who shape their lives around its commandments.

Yet the Orthodox enclaves are the only Jewish neighborhoods where Republican candidates get any votes to speak of. Even more telling is that on every single cultural issue, the Orthodox oppose the politically correct liberal positions taken by most other American Jews precisely because these positions conflict with Jewish law.

This debate is ever alive and heated among Catholics and political observers commenting on Catholics. Podhoretz makes the case that Jews are even more loyal to the Democratic party and to liberalism. Though 54 percent of Catholics voted for Obama, the Jewish vote was 24 points higher at 78 percent.

Podhoretz, like Feder, is very concerned about this unexamined allegiance.

All this applies most fully to Jews who are Jewish only in an ethnic sense. Indeed, many such secular Jews, when asked how they would define “a good Jew,” reply that it is equivalent to being a good liberal.

A great many Jews confuse Judaism with liberalism, says Podhoretz.

As a Jew who moved from left to right more than four decades ago, I have been hoping for many years that my fellow Jews would come to see that in contrast to what was the case in the past, our true friends are now located not among liberals, but among conservatives.

Of course in speaking of the difference between left and right, or between liberals and conservatives, I have in mind a divide wider than the conflict between Democrats and Republicans and deeper than electoral politics. The great issue between the two political communities is how they feel about the nature of American society. With all exceptions duly noted, I think it fair to say that what liberals mainly see when they look at this country is injustice and oppression of every kind—economic, social and political. By sharp contrast, conservatives see a nation shaped by a complex of traditions, principles and institutions that has afforded more freedom and, even factoring in periodic economic downturns, more prosperity to more of its citizens than in any society in human history. It follows that what liberals believe needs to be changed or discarded—and apologized for to other nations—is precisely what conservatives are dedicated to preserving, reinvigorating and proudly defending against attack.

In this realm, too, American Jewry surely belongs with the conservatives rather than the liberals. For the social, political and moral system that liberals wish to transform is the very system in and through which Jews found a home such as they had never discovered in all their forced wanderings throughout the centuries over the face of the earth.

I wrote about Don Feder’s book a few times, the latest was in 2007. At that time, Pope Benedict was talking in his Wednesday audience about unity among people of faith.

“Even among saints differences, discord and controversies arise,” commented the Holy Father. “And I find this a consolation because we see that saints have not ‘come down from heaven.’ They are people like us, with problems, even complicated problems. Sanctity does not consist in never having made mistakes or sinned. Sanctity grows in the capacity for conversion and penance, of willingness to start again and, above all, in the capacity for reconciliation and forgiveness.”

But probably more relevant to Feder’s and Podhoretz’s concern for their fellow Jews was Benedicts exhortation to people of all faith to guard against the dictatorship of relativism. Right now is a good time to recall those words.

How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth. Every day new sects spring up, and what St Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error…comes true.

Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be “tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine”, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.

Podhoretz has a similar warning.

The upshot is that in virtually every instance of a clash between Jewish law and contemporary liberalism, it is the liberal creed that prevails for most American Jews. Which is to say that for them, liberalism has become more than a political outlook. It has for all practical purposes superseded Judaism and become a religion in its own right.