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<<Previous -- Table of Contents -- Next>> CHALLENGES TO JEWISH IDENTITY Why
are the Jews Liberals?-A Symposium ... Like Norman Podhoretz, I am often asked by non-Jewish conservatives why American Jews cling so tenaciously to the Left and vote so consistently for Democrats, and like him I believe the answer to that question is theological: liberalism has superseded Judaism as the religion of most American Jews. Most American Jews ... seem to have learned from an early age that to be Jewish is to be a liberal Democrat, no matter what. No matter that anti-Semitism today makes its home primarily on the Left, while in most quarters of the Right, hostility toward Jews has been anathematized. No matter that Israel's worst enemies cong/egate with leftists, while its staunchest defenders tend to be resolute conservatives. No matter that Republicans support the Jewish state by far larger margins than Democrats do. No matter that on a host of issues-homosexuality, abortion, capital punishment, racial preferences, public prayer-the "Torah" of contemporary liberalism, as Podhoretz calls it, diverges'l;harply from the Torah of Judaism. As Why Are Jews Liberals? convincingly and depressingly demonstrates, the loyalty of American Jews to the Left has been unaffected by the failure of the Left to reciprocate that loyalty The Jewish predilection for ill-advised political choices isn't new .... The longing to "be like all the nations" is a recuning motif in Jewish history. Baal worshipers in the time of the prophets, Judean Hellenists in the Chanukah story, 19th-century assimilationist maskilim, Jewish socialists enthralled by Marx's classless Utopia, modern post-Zionists in quest of a non-Jewish Israel-down through the ages, in one way or another, innumerable Jews have fought or fled from Jewish "otherness" and embraced ways of life or beliefs that promised to make them less distinctive. Given the cruelty and violence to which Jews were so often subjected, it is not surprising that many would seek to shed or neutralize their Jewishness .... "[L]iberalism, secular and
universalist-there is the dead end into which the flight from Jewish
separateness This liberalism isn't rational. It isn't sensible. It certainly isn't good for the Jews. But it is, as religions often are, deeply reassuring. It is reassuring for liberal Jews
to believe that all people are fundamentally decent and reasonable,
and that all disputes can be settled through compromise and conciliation.
It is reassuring to believe in a world in which nothing is ever solved
by war, so that military force is unnecessary and expensive weapons
systems are wasteful. It is reassuring to believe that America is a
secular nation, that God and religion have no place in the public square,
and that no debt of gratitude is owed to the Christians who created
the extraordinary society in which American Jews have thrived. It is
reassuring to believe that crime is caused by guns, that academia is
the seat of wisdom, and that humanity's biggest problem is global warming.
It is reassuring to believe that compassion can be achieved by passing
the right laws and that big government can create prosperity. It is
reassuring to believe that tikkun olam-healing the world-is a synonym
for the liberal agenda and that the Above all, it is reassuring to believe that Jews are no different from anyone else, that they are not called to a unique role in human events, and that the best way to be a good Jew is to be a conscientious citizen of the world. To be liberal, in short, is to be "like all the nations." It is a seductive and comforting belief, and American Jews are far from the first to embrace it. (Commentary Magazine, September 2009) <<Previous -- Table of Contents -- Next>> |
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