I read about this book first in World Magazine, where Marvin Olasky gives it high marks. Now Seth Lipsky has a longer article on Norman Podhoretz’s book, Why Are Jews Liberals? I wish I could say political conservatives and Bible-believing Christians were completely innocent of the bigotry that encouraged many Jews to embrace what is now liberalism, but I can’t. Even some of our church fathers sinned against God by disdaining Jewish people. But of course, we/they aren’t to blame ultimately.
Lipsky states:
Early in the book he quotes a passage from I.J. Singer’s novel The Brother’s Ashkenazi about Nissan, the son of a rabbi who becomes a disciple of “the prophet Marx” and who, as Singer puts it, “never let his copy of Das Kapital out of his sight and carried it everywhere, as his father had carried his prayer shawl and phylacteries.” Podhoretz comes back to this theme toward the end, quoting G.K. Chesterton as observing: “When men stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.” That was not true of the Jewish immigrants who came to America, Podhoretz writes. “Almost all the young intellectuals and political leaders among them had stopped believing in the God of Judaism, but it was not ‘anything’ they now believed, it was Marxism.” And when Marxism failed, Podhoretz writes, the “same process that had made social democracy into an acceptable refuge from orthodox Marxism now began making liberalism into an acceptable refuge from social democracy.”
For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure US Jews will move to the right. The reason isn’t political as much as it is religious.
Orthodox Jews tend to have more kids. Their kids are also a lot more likely to stay Jewish. They are likely to be the majority of people in the US who self-identify as Jews in a few decades.
Orthodox Jews are a lot more likely to be politically conservative.
There is another big factor here, and that is that Judaism is both a religion and a culture. Heterodox Jews often do not keep the religion, but preserve a lot of the cultural background.
A lot of that cultural background is Liberal (in the US meaning of the term). A traditional Jewish community was a voluntary association, but once you decided to be a member of that community you had to make payments that were equivalent to taxes. Part of those taxes went for communal needs, such as the synagogue. Other parts went for welfare for the poor. If you decided to leave the community, you were considered a bad Jew.
“Charity” is a Christian term that comes from the word of love (in Latin, I assume). The Hebrew equivalent, “Tzedakah”, comes from the root for justice.
The idea ‘Jews’ reject Christianity because of how badly Christians treat them is, in my opinion, largely a myth. (Jews at the time of Christ didn’t reject him because of how badly Christians were treating them.)
– Non-Christian Jews have their own agenda, and they don’t seem to use any Christian input (one way or the other) in how they develop their world view.
– maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how I see it.
Sands, when it comes to religion you’re right. We reject Christianity because it is incompatible with Judaism(1).
But when it comes to politics it’s a different matter. Politics in the US is all about building coalitions. The Republican party is pretty much a coalition between the social conservatives and the fiscal conservatives. It is a relevant question why so few Heterodox(2) Jews are Republicans.
(1) As Judaism is understood by Jews. This is similar to Christians rejecting Mormonism because it is incompatible from the traditional Christian view, even if it is compatible according to Mormons.
(2) Meaning of the Conservative or Reform movements. When discussing Jews, this is not a value judgment but a technical term.